Mandrake Linux 10

Support

This guest operating system is supported on the following VMware products:

General Installation Notes

Be sure to read General Guidelines for All VMware Products as well as this guide to installing your specific guest operating system.

The easiest method of installing Mandrake Linux 10 in a virtual machine is to use the standard Mandrake Linux distribution CD. The notes below describe an installation using the standard distribution CD; however, installing Mandrake Linux 10 via the boot floppy/network method is supported as well. If your VMware product supports it, you may also install from a PXE server.

Before installing the operating system, be sure that you have already created and configured a new virtual machine.

Note: During the Mandrake Linux 10 installation, you are offered a choice of XFree86 X servers. You may choose either one, but do not run that X server. Instead, to get an accelerated SVGA X server running inside the virtual machine, you should install the VMware Tools package immediately after installing Mandrake Linux 10.

Installation Steps

  1. Insert the Mandrake Linux 10 CD in the CD-ROM drive.
  2. Power on the virtual machine to start installing Mandrake Linux 10.
  3. Follow the installation steps as you would for a physical machine. Be sure to make the choices outlined in the following steps.
  4. Use the text mode installer. At the opening screen, press F1 for options, then enter text for text mode.
  5. In the partitioning step, unless you have special requirements, it is all right to let Mandrake Linux automatically allocate the space. Select Use free space.
  6. When you reach the Summary screen, configure the graphical interface.

    Select Graphical Interface, then click Do. Make the following selections:

This completes basic installation of the Mandrake Linux 10 guest operating system.

VMware Tools

Be sure to install VMware Tools in your guest operating system. For details, see the manual for your VMware product or follow the appropriate link in the knowledge base article at www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=340.

Enabling Sound in a Mandrake 10 Guest

VMware GSX Server: The sound device is disabled by default and must be enabled with the virtual machine control panel (VM > Settings) after the operating system has been installed. To set up the virtual machine to play sound, see Configuring Sound in the GSX Server documentation.

Known Issues

Clock in Guest Operating System May Run Too Quickly or Too Slowly

If the clock in your guest operating system runs too quickly or too slowly, use one of the workarounds described in the knowledge base article at www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1420.

Changing Resolution in the Guest Operating System

To change the display resolution in the guest operating system, as root (-su) rerun the VMware Tools configuration program vmware-config-tools.pl and select the desired resolution from the list this program presents. If you prefer, you may edit the X configuration file directly to make the change.

Getting a DHCP Address in the Guest Operating System

When the guest operating system tries to get a DHCP address, the attempt fails and an error message says the link is down. To work around this problem, become root (su -) and use a text editor to edit the following files in the guest operating system:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth<n>
/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth<n>

In both cases, <n> is the number of the Ethernet adapter - for example, eth0.

In each of the two files, add the following line:

MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes

Then run the command ifup eth<n> (where <n> is the number of the Ethernet adapter) or restart the guest operating system.

Guest Screen Saver

On a Linux host with an XFree86 3.x X server, it is best not to run a screen saver in the guest operating system. Guest screen savers that demand a lot of processing power can cause the X server on the host to freeze.