How to get VMware Player going on Debian 12 bookworm

[Rick Thomas]

The title says it all, I hope. I've tried installing vmware player on my Bookworm according to the instructions from
https://techviewleo.com/install-vmware-on-debian/

But I can't seem to get vmware player to start up. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better location to look for instruction?

Thanks,
Rick

PS: My motivation is that I have a young friend (he is mid 20s; I myself am mid 70s) who wants to learn Linux, and in particular, how to set up and use virtual machines. I have a Dell machine that I'm not using that would be ideal for his learning experiences and I would like to make it available to him. I'm a Debian user for over 20 years, so I'd like to base his study on Debian because that's what I know best and would be best able to mentor.

PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM supervisor I could use? If so, can you point me to a set of instructions for it?

[Andreas Haumer]

Hi!

Am 05.11.23 um 10:04 schrieb Rick Thomas:
[...]

>
> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM supervisor I could use? If so, can you point me to a set of instructions for it?
>

To answer just these questions only: take a look at kvm/qemu and
the virt-manager GUI.

See https://wiki.debian.org/KVM

"better" very much is a function of personal preferences
on an arbitrary scale, though... ;-)

HTH

- andreas

--
Andreas Haumer
*x Software + Systeme | mailto:and...@xss.co.at
Karmarschgasse 51/2/20 | https://www.xss.co.at/
A-1100 Vienna, Austria | Tel: +43-1-6060114-0

[Marco M.]

Am 05.11.2023 um 01:04:27 Uhr schrieb Rick Thomas:

> But I can't seem to get vmware player to start up. What am I doing
> wrong?

Start it in a terminal and look for error messages.

[Michael Kjörling]

On 5 Nov 2023 10:56 +0100, from and...@xss.co.at (Andreas Haumer):

>> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice, would there be a better VM
>> supervisor I could use? If so, can you point me to a set of
>> instructions for it?
>
> To answer just these questions only: take a look at kvm/qemu and
> the virt-manager GUI.

Yes, definitely look at KVM/QEMU. "Better" is subjective but certainly
one huge advantage of KVM over almost anything else is that it's
already there in the kernel, and you pretty much just need to install
the tools to manage it. VirtualBox, VMWare and others require adding
third-party software, which can easily break with a kernel upgrade.

--
Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

[Rick Thomas]

Can anyone recommend good documentation on KVM/QEMU that would allow me to get up to speed on it quickly?

Thanks!
Rick

[జిందం వాఐి]

> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice,
> would there be a better VM supervisor
> I could use? If so, can you point me
> to a set of instructions for it?

* these are MY personal opnions from
experience [ almost decade ago ]
[ may not be correct or relevant ]
* my laptop with amd processor [ low
end model ]
* installation of qemu was impossible
because virtualization [ svm ] is not
enabled in BIOS, only high end models
have it enabled [ blame on bios vendors
for poor implementation, eventhough
it is enabled by amd ] [ kernel 6.7
commit [ 1 ] fixed incorrect data ]

* so do you have amd or intel?
* how much ram [ is relevant due to
recent security incidents affecting
intel [ little bit more ], amd

* virtualbox [ 2 ], but it is available
in unstable? [ 3 ] why?
* it was working flawlessly
* even if you have intel, installation
of debian [ minimal installation ]
+ twm is more than enough ;)

[ 1 ]
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20231027170151.GOZTvs%2FwR%2F47ib4+qe@fat_crate.local/T/#u
[ 2 ] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation
[ 3 ] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/virtualbox

--
regards,
జిందం వాఐి [ jindam, vani ]
[matrix]_ @jindam.vani:oikei.net

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 1:36 AM Rick Thomas <rick....@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Can anyone recommend good documentation on KVM/QEMU that would allow me to get up to speed on it quickly?

I don't know if or where good documentation exists. Sorry about that.

QEMU/KVM is mostly like Virtual Box. If you know Virtual Box, then you
have most of what you need for QEMU/KVM.

You can create a desktop shortcut for QEMU/KVM by issuing:

cd ~/Desktop
cp -p /usr/share/applications/virt-manager.desktop
chmod +x virt-manager.desktop

Then you can easily launch the UI.

The other trick with QEMU/KVM is, the screen button shows the guest as
expected. And the button with the letter "i" shows the guest
configuration. See the red boxes highlighting the buttons at
<https://ibb.co/1ZzDwht> and <https://ibb.co/8rqtZw3>.

The one problem I have encountered is related to networking. I want a
bridged connection so the VM guest gets an IP address from my DHCP
server. But the network adapter seems to be stuck in NAT mode, even
after switching to bridged mode. So the VM guest always gets a
192.168.0.0/16 address, and never gets an IP address from my DHCP
server. That means I cannot SSH to the guest because I use
172.16.0.0/12 behind my firewall to avoid address and routing problems
from my ISP's router.

Jeff

[Michael Kjörling]

On 6 Nov 2023 01:58 -0500, from nolo...@gmail.com (Jeffrey Walton):

> QEMU/KVM is mostly like Virtual Box. If you know Virtual Box, then you
> have most of what you need for QEMU/KVM.

I agree. Although _some_ terminology differs, and naturally things are
organized somewhat differently in the UI, the concepts are very
similar, since they solve very similar problems. So you may need to
look around a little within the UI to find the particular setting
you're looking for, but that should be about it.

The three biggest differences I have run across (I used VirtualBox
before):

1. Storage pools for disk images. With VirtualBox, you can put a disk
image file anywhere. With KVM, they go into one of a defined set of
pools, which in turn map to file system directories. Depending on what
kind of setup you prefer, this can be anything from actually
beneficial through a non-issue to a nuisance.

2. User versus system QEMU sessions. This isn't a problem, it's just
something you'll need to keep in mind when setting up and using VMs.

3. KVM virtualized NAT networking doesn't play nice with nftables on
the host with a restrictive policy. Took me a while to find a solution
but I eventually came up with this, which has worked reliably for me:
https://michael.kjorling.se/blog/2022/linux-kvm-host-nftables-guest-networking/

And another thing to keep in mind:

4. With SPICE, clipboard sharing is ENABLED by default between the
guest and the host; and by consequence, between guests! This one
really tripped me up. Fortunately it's not too hard to disable once
you learn how; I put a recipe at
https://michael.kjorling.se/blog/2023/disable-clipboard-sharing-clipboard-integration-with-qemu-kvm-and-spice/
but the short version of that one is that on the node
domain/devices/graphics/clipboard in the VM XML definition to set the
attribute copypaste="no". That will constrain that guest's OS
clipboard functionality to within that guest.

[Rick Thomas]

Thanks for the very useful information!

If I understand you correctly:
1) The box I'm thinking of using has a CPU that is an Intel core i5-7500. It has 4 cores running at 3.4GHz, and It has 24GB RAM. The OS is Debian 6.1.55-1 (2023-09-29) -- stable/bookworm.
2) The Virtualbox documentation (but not virtualbox itself?) is available in Debian Sid (but only Sid?)
3) Does the documentation (either from Virtualbox.org, or from Debian Sid) cover installation and use of Virtualbox under Debian?
4) How do I find out if it has virtualization/svm enabled in the firmware? If it does, would I be better off with KVM/QEMU, or Virtualbox?

Thanks very much!
Rick

[Stanislav Vlasov]

2023-11-06 12:45 GMT+05:00, Michael Kjörling <2695bd...@ewoof.net>:
> The three biggest differences I have run across (I used VirtualBox
> before):
>
> 1. Storage pools for disk images. With VirtualBox, you can put a disk
> image file anywhere. With KVM, they go into one of a defined set of
> pools, which in turn map to file system directories. Depending on what
> kind of setup you prefer, this can be anything from actually
> beneficial through a non-issue to a nuisance.

I run qemu binary with parameters and place disk image in any place
and can use any physical disk as qemu image, if need.
In old scripts it was something like:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 1024M -hda /path/disk.img -cdrom
/another/path/image.iso -boot cdrom

So, it is not qemu, only your gui wrapper/interface limitation.

> 3. KVM virtualized NAT networking doesn't play nice with nftables on
> the host with a restrictive policy. Took me a while to find a solution
> but I eventually came up with this, which has worked reliably for me:
> https://michael.kjorling.se/blog/2022/linux-kvm-host-nftables-guest-networking/

this is not qemu/kvm thing, only libvirt, which is not part of qemu,
but only wrapper on it. Sometimes useful, good for beginning, bad, if
you need something non-standard.

qemu as virtual machine does not create/use firewall rules at all and
can use user mode net, which work without firewall rules — see man
qemu for -net parameter (use -net nic -net user if you need only
output network requests).

--
Stanislav

[Hans]

Maybe the op wqould like to test aqemu, which is a graphical frontend for qemu
and it might be easier for him to configure.

In the comparision of aqemu (with using kvm) and VirtualkBox and Virt-Manager
my feeling was, Virtualbox the slowest and both Aqemu and VirtManager faster.
The latter two are were looking both even fast.

However, virt-manger IMHO still is not very user friendly, especially for
beginners, and also its documentation is not much at the moment. But please
be respectfull (or is considerately the correct idiom?): virtmanager is rather
new and has not many people involved, so it might become better in the future.

Virt-manager has great potential.

Best regards

Hans

[Timothy M Butterworth]

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 4:16 AM జిందం వాఐి <jinda...@disroot.org> wrote:

> PPS: If VMware isn't a good choice,
> would there be a better VM supervisor
> I could use? If so, can you point me
> to a set of instructions for it?

* these are MY personal opnions from
experience [ almost decade ago ]
[ may not be correct or relevant ]
  * my laptop with amd processor [ low
end model ]
  * installation of qemu was impossible
because virtualization [ svm ] is not
enabled in BIOS, only high end models
have it enabled [ blame on bios vendors
for poor implementation, eventhough
it is enabled by amd ] [ kernel 6.7
commit [ 1 ] fixed incorrect data ]

* so do you have amd or intel?
* how much ram [ is relevant due to
recent security incidents affecting
intel [ little bit more ], amd

* virtualbox [ 2 ], but it is available
in unstable? [ 3 ] why?

VirtualBox is not available in any Debian Repo. It requires a proprietary compiler to build the VirtualBox Bios. Also there are licensing issues. Oracle has a Debian stable build and repo for VirtualBox which I personally use which works well. I am planning on moving to KVM/QEMU personally. I like VirtualBox but I want a Free Software Open Source solution.

 

  * it was working flawlessly
  * even if you have intel, installation
of debian [ minimal installation ]
+ twm is more than enough ;)

[ 1 ]
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20231027170151.GOZTvs%2FwR%2F47ib4+qe@fat_crate.local/T/#u
[ 2 ] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation
[ 3 ] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/virtualbox

--
regards,
జిందం వాఐి [ jindam, vani ]
[matrix]_ @jindam.vani:oikei.net

--

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org/
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀

[Marco M.]

Am 06.11.2023 um 06:52:39 Uhr schrieb Timothy M Butterworth:

> VirtualBox is not available in any Debian Repo.

It is available in sid, but not in stable.

[The Wanderer]

And the reason it isn't available in testing is that there's no viable
way to provide security support for it in stable, and testing is
supposed to only contain things that are candidates to become part of
the next stable release. Once upon a time it was made available in each
new testing and then removed before the stable release (and that's how I
was running it, for a fairly long while), but I remember a discussion
which led to the decision that that was not an appropriate practice
given relevant policy.

I don't remember with confidence offhand exactly *why* it was decided
that it isn't viable to provide security support for VirtualBox in
stable. I remember it had something to do with how upstream provides
patches for security fixes, but I don't remember whether it was
"upstream doesn't provide split-out patches per fix, but only one
massive patch when they make a new VirtualBox release" or something more
to the effect of "the license upstream releases its code under does not
permit taking changes out separately like that".

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

[Anders Andersson]

Wait what, new? It's from 2006 and doesn't seem to have received many feature updates since the first time I used it 10 years ago, mostly upkeep to make it work with newer python/qemu.

"still is not very user friendly", "its documentation is not much at the moment". I'm not holding my breath!