Red Hat Linux 7.3

This section contains product support, installation instructions, and known issues for the Red Hat Linux 7.3 operating system.

32-Bit Support

The following VMware products support 32-bit Red Hat Linux 7.3:

•	VMware Workstation

Red Hat Linux 7.3 – Workstation 4.0, 4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.0.5, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.5.3, 5.0, 5.5, 5.5.1, 5.5.2, 5.5.3, 5.5.4, 5.5.5, 5.5.6, 5.5.7, 5.5.8, 5.5.9, 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4, 6.0.5, 6.5, 6.5.1, 6.5.2

Additional Support

•	SMP– 2-way experimental support on Workstation 5.5, 5.5.1, 5.5.2, 5.5.3, 5.5.4, 5.5.5, 5.5.6, 5.5.7, 5.5.8, 5.5.9, 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4, 6.0.5, 6.5, 6.5.1, 6.5.2

•	VMware ACE

Red Hat Linux 7.3 – ACE 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6, 1.0.7, 1.0.8, 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.0.4, 2.0.5, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.5.2

•	VMware GSX Server

Red Hat Linux 7.3 – GSX Server 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.1

•	VMware Server

Red Hat Linux 7.3 – VMware Server 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6, 1.0.7, 1.0.8, 1.0.9

Additional Support

•	SMP – 2-way experimental support on VMware Server 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6, 1.0.7, 1.0.8, 1.0.9

•	VMware ESX Server

Red Hat Linux 7.3 – ESX 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.5.3, 2.5.4, 2.5.5

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 Red Hat Linux 7.3 in a virtual machine is to use the standard Red Hat distribution CD. The notes below describe an installation using the standard distribution CD; however, installing Red Hat Linux 7.3 via the boot floppy/network method is supported as well. If your VMware product supports it, you can 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 You should not run the X server that is installed when you set up Red Hat Linux 7.3. Instead, to get an accelerated SVGA X server running inside the virtual machine, you should install the VMware Tools package immediately after installing Red Hat Linux 7.3.

 

Note With many Linux guest operating systems, various problems have been observed when the BusLogic virtual SCSI adapter is used with VMware virtual machines. VMware recommends that you use the LSI Logic virtual SCSI adapter with this guest operating system.

 

Note If you are installing a guest operating system through VMware VirtualCenter or vCenter Server, be sure it is supported under the VMware product—ESX Server or VMware Server—on which you are running the virtual machine.

Installation Steps

1	Insert the Red Hat Linux 7.3 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive.

2	Power on the virtual machine to start installing Red Hat Linux 7.3.

You must install Red Hat Linux 7.3 using the text mode installer, which you can choose when you first boot the installer. At the Red Hat Linux 7.3 CD boot prompt, you are offered the following choices:

To install or upgrade a system ... in graphical mode ...
To install or upgrade a system ... in text mode, type: text <ENTER>.
To enable expert mode, ...
Use the function keys listed below ...

To choose the text mode installer, type text and press Enter.

3	Follow the installation steps as you would for a physical machine. Be sure to make the choices outlined in the following steps.

4	In the Mouse Selection screen, choose Generic – 3 Button Mouse (PS/2) and select the option Emulate 3 Buttons for three-button mouse support in the virtual machine.

5	Choose the language and keyboard, and then in the Installation Type screen, choose either Server or Workstation for the installation type.

6	You might see a warning that says:

Bad partition table. The partition table on device sda is corrupted. To create new partitions, it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on the drive.

This does not mean that anything is wrong with the hard drive on your physical computer. It simply means that the virtual hard drive in your virtual machine needs to be partitioned and formatted. Select the Initialize button and press Enter. Also note that sda appears in the message as the device name if the virtual disk in question is a SCSI disk; if the virtual disk is an IDE drive, hda appears in the message as the device name instead.

7	Allow automatic partitioning of the disk to occur in the Automatic Partitioning screen.

8	If your computer is connected to a LAN that provides DHCP support, in the Network Configuration screen, you can select the option Use bootp/dhcp. If you prefer, you can also set the networking parameters manually.

9	In the Video Card Selection screen, choose any card from the list.

10	In the Video Card Configuration screen, choose Skip X Configuration.

This completes basic installation of the Red Hat Linux 7.3 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 http://kb.vmware.com/kb/340.

Do not start the X server in the guest operating system until you install VMware Tools.

IPv6

In many Linux distributions, if IPv6 is enabled, VMware Tools cannot be configured with vmware-config-tools.pl after installation. In this case, VMware Tools is unable to set the network device correctly for the virtual machine, and displays a message similar to

Unloading pcnet32 module

unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free

This message repeats continuously until you reboot the virtual machine. To prevent this problem in virtual machines running Linux, disable IPv6 before installing VMware Tools.

 

Note VMware ESX 4.0 and later releases support IPv6. You do not need to disable IPv6 before installing VMware Tools.

To disable IPv6 in a virtual machine running Linux

1	If the file /etc/sysconfig/network contains the line NETWORKING_IPV6=yes, change the line to NETWORKING_IPV6=no.

2	In the file /etc/modules.conf, add the following lines:

alias ipv6 off

alias net-pf-10 off

After you disable IPv6, you should be able to install and configure VMware Tools successfully.

 

Note When you start installing VMware Tools (by typing ./vmware-install.pl in the vmware-tools-distrib directory), the following message appears: Found an installed version of the VMware SVGA driver for XFree86 4. Some versions of this driver included with the XFree86 4 distributions do not work properly. Would you like to install a stable (but possibly older) version of the driver over the currently installed one?

If you plan to dual boot the virtual machine, answer Yes to allow the driver to be installed. Answer Yes again to back up the existing video driver files and also copy the XF86Config-4.dist file to XF86Config-4.vm. The latter file is used when dual booting the virtual machine.

If you do not intend to dual boot the virtual machine, answer No to keep the existing driver.

Known Issues

Configuration Changes Might Be Necessary for Proper Timekeeping Behavior

The default timekeeping configuration for this guest operating system might experience problems. For Linux timekeeping best practices, see the VMware knowledge base article at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006427.

Guest Screen Saver

VMware Workstation or VMware GSX Server: 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.

Migration to a Different Processor

VMware recommends you do not migrate a Linux virtual machine between hosts when one host is running on an AMD processor and the other is running on an Intel processor.

During installation, many distributions of Linux choose a kernel that is optimized for the specific processor on which it is being installed, and some distributions install a generic kernel by default, but provide architecture-specific kernels that the user can choose to install. The kernel might contain instructions that are available only on that processor. These instructions can have adverse effects when run on a host with the wrong type of processor.

Thus, a Linux virtual machine created on a host with an AMD processor might not work if migrated to a host with an Intel processor. The reverse is also true: a Linux virtual machine created on a host with an Intel processor might not work if migrated to a host with an AMD processor.

This problem is not specific to virtual machines and also occurs on physical computers. For example, if you move a hard drive with a Linux installation from an AMD machine to an Intel machine, you are also likely to experience problems trying to boot from that drive.

Disable PAE in ESX Server Virtual Machines

ESX Server 2.5.x: Although ESX Server 2.5.x virtual machines are compatible with Physical Address Extension (PAE), they are not optimized for it. As a result, guest operating systems with PAE enabled might experience poor performance. For best performance, VMware recommends that you disable PAE in guest operating systems. For more information and instructions on disabling PAE, see the knowledge base article at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2020.