In order to get an install of windows working on my remote server (just for testing purposes) I tried putting vmware ontop of a XEN guest OS (domU). Here is what I done:

1. Download vmware at http://www.vmware.com/download/server/
2. Gunzip it and extract it.
3. run vmware-install.pl to install it.
4. It will go through a series of questions - choose the defaults. I put most of the files in /opt/
5. It will ask for the Serial you obtained after Registering with vmware.

Now onto the Tricky part:

1. While finishing the last step of installing, vmware tries to locate a suitable Kernel. If it cant find a usable one, it will try and compile its own vmware kernel using the source files of your current running kernel.
2. So - you need to install “make” and “gcc” to allow the script to compile a vmware kernel from the source of your existing one.

apt-get install make gcc

1. After the install finds make, - it will search for the source code of your current running kernel (domU). It looks for kernel source files in /usr/src/linux/

The easiest way to get kernel-header source files is to add in an entry in /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ sarge-backports main apt-get update apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.16-1-xen-k7

This installs into /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.16-1-xen-k7

For the vmware install it must be in the format /usr/src/linux/ mv /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.16-1-xen-k7 /usr/src/linux/

The install may still give out - about missing a Module → QM_MODULES apt-get install module-init-tools update-modules

Restart the last step in vmware install /opt/bin/vmware-config.pl

The vmware installer also couldnt find/configure perl correctly - so it skipped the vmware-config.pl step saying that this config couldnt be used. Vmware should install fine. In order to get vmware up and running quickly - in KDE - browse to /opt/bin/vmware and open the executable vmware. It should open up and allow you to connect. You can configure a machine in the GUI.

It wont boot a bios. Just gives out errors in syslog.

More Info at:

http://www.vandekamer.com/linux/vmware.php

http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_vmware_server_p2

http://www.unixshell.com/forum/showthread.php?s=057946b7593c8fe34550e71007cf118d&p=5453#post5453