VMWare running as a windows service?

[John McAlin]

Bit of an intro on this one so please bear with me.

Back in a previous life, I was a systems programmer for IBM's VM operating
system. Absolutely loved it. Even worked for one of the initial designers in
Cambridge for a number of years. Once I heard of VMware, it was impossible
not to order it.

IBM's VM ran what they called "disconnected service machines" which
fulfilled the functions of daemons for mail, networking, housekeeping, etc.
You might also think of them as Windows services. "Disconnected" means they
had no consoles. I'm borrowing a concept here from those days.

Is it possible to start up a Linux VMware guest as a Console-less Windows
2000 service before the first login? The reason I want to do this is that I
have enough horsepower to run a small mail/network server in a corner of my
machine, but I'd like the ability to logoff one Windows account and logon to
another without having to shut down the Linux server between Windows logons.
I'd like to start this Linux system as a Windows service at boot time.

Has anyone ever done this. If so, can you share a few tips/tricks?

Thanks.

- John McAlin

[KATO Kenji]

John McAlin wrote on Wed, 30 Apr 2003 20:45:52 -0400
in article <b8pqev$tgm$1...@london.vmware.com>:

>Is it possible to start up a Linux VMware guest as a Console-less Windows
>2000 service before the first login? The reason I want to do this is that I
>have enough horsepower to run a small mail/network server in a corner of my
>machine, but I'd like the ability to logoff one Windows account and logon to
>another without having to shut down the Linux server between Windows logons.
>I'd like to start this Linux system as a Windows service at boot time.
>
>Has anyone ever done this. If so, can you share a few tips/tricks?

Running without display (they call it headless by the way) is a
feature provided with GSX server and is not supported with
VMware Workstation.

Some people have reported that they have succeeded to run
VMware Workstation as a service with -g command line option,
but it's undocumented and unsupported and unguaranteed to
work also for you. (I've never tried it myself).

--
Ken