- Crowded Data Centers and Service-Rich Software
- Virtualization: The "New" Kid on the Block
- Step 1: Download a Virtual Image of Your Required Operating System
- Step 2: Download and Install VMware Player
- Step 3: Run the Operating System Image
- Step 4: Shut Down the Operating System Image
- Step 5: Configure the Virtual Image for Networking
- Conclusion
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Step 3: Run the Operating System Image
I’m assuming by now that you’ve downloaded both VMware Player and one of the Linux VMware images from Thoughtpolice. If so, you’re ready to run your selected Linux image. Select the Open command in the player to display a browse window, which you can use to navigate to the location of your virtual machine. Once you locate the required file, it will appear in VMware Player, as shown in Figure 3.
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Figure 3 Browsing to a virtual machine image.
Notice the .vmx file extension in Figure 3. This is the format for a VMware virtual machine image. To select the required image, just click it once and then click the Open button. This action launches the virtual machine, and you’ll see the boot sequence for a complete version of Linux. What’s kind of magic is that it happens inside the confines of a Windows PC. You may have to enter the virtual machine and press Enter in order to be prompted to enter the username and password. When you’re prompted to log into the virtual machine, you can use the username-and-password pair notroot and thoughtpolice, as shown in Figure 4.
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Figure 4 Linux is booted and ready for use.
When you want to move between the virtual machine and your native Windows operating system, just press the Ctrl and Alt keys. This key pair signals to the virtual machine that you want to move the focus to the native machine. When you want to direct input to the virtual machine, press Ctrl-G. In fact, do that and then run the ifconfig Linux command, as illustrated in Figure 5.
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Figure 5 Your first virtual Linux command!
The Linux command in Figure 5 displays the network interface settings for the virtual machine. There are two interfaces: the loopback interface, and an IP interface running on top of Ethernet.
Once you’re inside the virtual machine running Linux, you can run any of the usual Linux commands, such as vi, rpm, tar, file, man, grep, which, etc.