Has anyone got CentOS 4.0 to install with VMWare GSX 3.1 as a guest operating system? If so, can you please post on how you did it? Or is there anything
else I can do. Here is what I have, I have a Compaq DL580 Server that has Windows 2003 on it. I would like to run CentOS 4.0 as a Virtual Machine.

Thanks.

I've installed both centos 4.0 and 4.1 as guests under GSX 3.1 running on Win2003 Server as the host. I selected "Other 2.6 based kernel" for the OS/Linux type and chose the LSI scsi controller instead of the buslogic.

I've noticed that the clock has MAJOR issues and while the recommendation to set clock=pit in the lilo/grub config and have the vmware tools sync the time to the host has been helpful it can still get out of sync by over a minute in under 10 minutes, then it "syncs" and gets out of sync all over again. I've not tried the kernel changes as of yet since they require a recompile and while I don't have any problems recompiling I'm trying to keep the machines as "pure" as possible.

If I don't make the above changes it can get out of sync by over an hour in under a 12 hour period.

I've not had much luck with it either - as I cant get CENTOS 4.0 I386 on CD to install on vmware workstation 4.

It says it cant find any hard drives.

Try creating the machine as "custom", select Linux, do the normal stuff but when you get to "Select disk file" click the advanced option and select IDE instead of SCSI.

I think VMWare workstation defaults to a Buslogic controller and I don't think CentOS has a driver for it. On GSX I have to select LSI controller instead of Buslogic or I get a "no disk found" error. If you choose IDE for your drive type CentOS should install.

Has anyone figured out the Clock issue? I have tried VMWare Tools, clock=pit, clock=pmtmr and my clock is still running fast. I have not recompiled the kernel yet. I can not believe this should be that hard. Or does anyone else have a suggestion of running something else beside VMWare?

Thanks....

There was talk of putting a patch in the 2.6.13+ kernel to make the Hertz configurable at boot time. Does anybody know if this ever made it in to the current kernel version? If so, how can you enable 100hz?

From what I read modifying the code to make it a boot time options was alot of work.

I have been testing with CentOS 4.x under VMWare GSX and Workstation. On a AMD 64bix X2 3800 and a AMD 64bit 3200 processor based systems the clock seem to stay sync'ed with clock=pit and the VMWare tools set to sync time. I've only tested for a few hours but results look good. The exact same configuration on two different Athlon 2400 based systems yeild 10-50 seconds of drift per minute depending on how busy the host processor is. If the host is at 100% cpu the drift can be 50 seconds or more in one minute. Though the ASUS based system seems to drift a bit more than the SOYO. Annoying.

I try to stay with prepackaged RPM's for maintance and lazyness facotrs... But I'm afraid that on the 2400 based systems I will need to recompile the kernel. I'll try and do it this week. If a recompiled kernel with hertz=100 keeps time on a 100% cpu loaded host I'll get the kernel packaged and available for d/l from my site in both src rpm and binary.

fj

Hey,

THIS IS ONLY A TEMP FIX:

login as root.
crontab -e
and add an entry for ntpdate time.windows.com and set it for every 5 minutes.

It's about the best you can do.

BELIEVE ME, I HAVE TRIED :(

FYI

We're running CentOS 3 & 4 (LSI SCSI) guests on CentOS 4 host VMware Workstation and CentOS 4 host VMware Player (FREE)
as well as CentOS 3 (LSI SCSI) guests on Red Hat 7.2 VMware ESX 2.5

PS Can't wait for ESX 3 so we can run CentOS 4 guests

I was running VM WARE Player, and the Browser Appiance until I got the kernel upgrade; now VM WARE Player will not launch.

unfortunately yum up2date breaks vmware see http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?forum=27&topic_id=2804 for instructions on how to go back to your old kernel

I've compiled the latest Centos Kernel with a fully updated CentOS 4.2 box used only for kernel compiles.

Only changes made to the CentOS source is: (patch kernel to fix clock drift)
=======================================================
--- linux-2.6.9/include/asm-i386/param.h
+++ linux-2.6.9/include/asm-i386/param.h
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
#define _ASMi386_PARAM_H

#ifdef __KERNEL__
-# define HZ 1000 /* Internal kernel timer frequency */
+# define HZ 100 /* Internal kernel timer frequency */
# define USER_HZ 100 /* .. some user interfaces are in "ticks" */
# define CLOCKS_PER_SEC (USER_HZ) /* like times() */
#endif
=======================================================

and modified the spec file to apply the above patch.

Compiled kernel, spec file, and patch can be found at: http://www.fjc.net/linux

I've got this kernel running at 2 sites, but there is no warranty expressed or implied so use at your own risk. As usual, make a backup first, test on a devel box, etc.

I'm can try and setup a page and keep it updated if there is nterest as I've got clients running VMWare GSX and CentOS 4.x

Any feedback would be appreciated as this is the first time I've packaged anything for anyone else's use.

Regards,

fj

I had major issues with this as well. What I ended up doing was creating a new virtual machine and starting it with an ISO image of another operating system such as Windows Vista (Beta 2) and using diskpart to create the parition and format it, then us shut down the vm, repointed it to start with the CentOS iso and was able to go from there. Was a bit of a hack but it got me whree I needed to go