Testing with VMWare

If you have VMWare Workstation installed on your machine you can try LinuxMCE without the need for any additional hardware.

No need to burn CDs or anything either, we'll just use the images directly. Download them first, you can put them in your vmware directory so they are easier to find.

VMware Workstation

You can download VMware Workstation and try it 30 days for free, installing it and getting it to work however is beyond the scope of this document.

Getting started

First we need to set up a Virtual Machine for our core (or hybrid).

Create a new Virtual Machine

1. Typical
2. Linux
3. Ubuntu
4. <name> (use default or for example: LMCE-1.1B2 Core)
5. <location> (a directroy on a drive with enough room)
6. Use NAT (eth0 for outside line)
7. Disk size: plenty (AKA. I don't know what you'll need, default should be good to get you started). The LinxMCE 0710 install DVD created a 9.4GiB root filesystem, and use the remainder of my 20GB disk for an 2 extended partitions: 2GiB swap, and 9.9GiB recovery. (The default 8GB root disk for Server 2.0 did not work, so I bumped it to 20GB and this was the result.)

Configure the new Virtual Machine

1. Edit virtual machine settings
2. + Add
3. Ethernet Adapter
4. Host-only
5. CDROM 1
6. Use ISO Image
7. The name and path of the Kubuntu installation CD image (*.iso) you downloaded earlier.

DHCP

To avoid conflict with vmware's internal DHCP server disable the service as per your running version of the VMware product as described here, in this KnowledgeBase article at www.vmware.com:

Disabling the VMware DHCP Service on the Host Computer

Kubuntu-7.04 i386

Just start the virtual machine and the install process should start, it might require a bit of patience depending on the hardware you're running VMWare on. Check the bios by pressing [F2] during boot if there is a problem booting from the ISO image. Follow the instructions on screen, install Kubuntu and reboot when done.

LinuxMCE-1.1 Beta2

This version is currently outdated and obsolete, try the latest one below instead

Change the ISO used for the CDROM drive to the LMCE packages ISO. And follow the usual instructions. You'll probably have to switch once or twice again for the LMCE cache ISO. Set up eth0 with dhcp, and eth1 for the 192.168.80.1 internal network. As an alternative you can copy the 2 ISOs over (to the guest) and use them directly from the installer.

LinuxMCE-1.1 RC1

This version is currently outdated and obsolete, try the latest one below instead

Change the ISO used for the CDROM drive to the LMCE packages ISO. And follow the usual instructions. You'll probably have to switch once or twice again for the LMCE cache ISO and Kubuntu desktop ISO. Set up eth0 with dhcp, and eth1 for the 192.168.80.1 internal network. As an alternative you can copy the 3 ISOs over (to the guest) and use them directly from the installer.

LinuxMCE 0704

Untested by me, feel free to add aditional notes, see the instructions for RC1 until then. --Zaerc 10:31, 6 November 2007 (MST)

Kubuntu-7.10

The base for the upcoming next version of linuxMCE. Update tested with VMware Server 1.x worked good was able to get the Core/hybrid working (no video capture card)

LinuxMCE 0710

The upcoming next version, which hasn't been released yet.

What's next?

Now you can configure it with the web interface, even from the machine running the virtual machine (requires modification of LMCEs firewall rules first). If you have done a core only install you'd want to enable the Web Orbiter first as well. Then you can add extra virtual machines that can boot on the "Host-only" network, as Media Directors, provided that you have dealt with VMWare's internal DHCP server.

You can build up an entire network of virtual machines to test and experiment with LMCE and add virtual machines running other operating systems as well.

Or you could even reconfigure the network so that the second virtual network card is connected to a physical adapter and hook up real devices.

Another neat thing is that VMWare should be able to hook LMCE up directly with USB devices, but that has not been tested yet (at least not by me, Zaerc).