This guest operating system is supported on the following VMware products:
The easiest method of installing Red Hat Linux 9.0 in a virtual machine is to use the standard Red Hat distribution CD. The notes below describe an installation using the standard distribution CD; however, installing Red Hat Linux 9.0 via the boot floppy/network method is supported as well.
Before installing the operating system, be sure that you have already created and configured a new virtual machine.
Note: You should not run the X server that is installed when you set up Red Hat Linux 9.0. Instead, to get an accelerated SVGA X server running inside the virtual machine, you should install the VMware Tools package immediately after installing Red Hat Linux 9.0.
You need to install Red Hat Linux 9.0 using the text mode installer, which you may choose when you first boot the installer. At the Red Hat Linux 9.0 CD boot prompt, you are offered the following choices:
To choose the text mode installer, type linux text and press Enter.
Note: If you attempt to use the graphical installer, it fails and launches the text mode installer.
This completes basic installation of the Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system.
Be sure to install VMware Tools in your guest operating system. For details, see the manual for your VMware product. Do not start the X server in the guest operating system until you install VMware Tools.
VMware Workstation: On a Linux host with an XFree86 3.x X server, it is best not to run a screen saver in the guest operating system. Guest screen savers that demand a lot of processing power can cause the X server on the host to freeze.
VMware Workstation: VMware recommends you do not migrate a Red Hat Linux 9.0 virtual machine between hosts when one host is running on an AMD processor and the other is running on an Intel processor.
During the Red Hat Linux 9.0 installation, Red Hat 9.0 chooses a kernel that is optimized for the specific processor on which it is running. The kernel may contain instructions that are only available for that processor. These instructions can have adverse effects when run on a host with the wrong type of processor.
Thus, a Red Hat Linux 9.0 virtual machine created on a host with an AMD processor may not work if migrated to a host with an Intel processor. The reverse is also true: a Red Hat Linux 9.0 virtual machine created on a host with an Intel processor may not work if migrated to a host with an AMD processor.
This problem is not specific to virtual machines and would also occur on physical computers. For example, if you moved a hard drive with a Red Hat Linux 9.0 installation from an AMD machine to an Intel machine, you would experience problems trying to boot from that drive.
When a Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system tries to get a DHCP address, the attempt may fail with an error message that states the link is down. On ESX Server, this happens only if you are using the vlance driver for your network connection.
To work around this problem, become root (su -) and use a text editor to edit the following files in the guest operating system. If only one of these files exist, make the change for that file only.
In both cases, [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter - for example, eth0.
Add the following section to each of these two files:
Then run the command ifup eth[n] (where [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter) or restart the guest operating system.
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