Setup a bitnami Ubuntu VM after install

Once you download and start a Bitnami VM (say, to run a redmine or drupal server), you may want to install VMWare Tools and other applicaitons. If the VM is Windows, easy.

But on Ubuntu, it is not so easy: I use Linux rarely nowadays, though I used to use it lots many years ago, I’ve forgotten many command names and how to do various basic tasks which would be trivial to someone familiar with Ubuntu. Here is what I have to do everytime I download a new bitnami Ubuntu VM:

Update apt-get

First update apt-get, the application that gets packages for Ubuntu. If you don’t do that, you will likely get an error when using apt-get, as it won’t be able to find certain packages. It appears the VMWare Tools installation procedure requires headers to be installed, which requires apt-get.

The following will update the apt-get database so it has the latest database of repositories and packages available:

sudo apt-get update

Install VMWare Tools

With the VM started, from the Player’s VM settings, select “Install VMWare Tools”. It looks like this creates or downloads an ISO onto your host and changes the VM setting for CDROM so the CD ROM points to that ISO.

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

dir

You should see the .tar.gz for the tools.

cd

tar xvfz /mnt/cdrom/vmw[press TAB key to autocomplete name or type exactly as listed by dir command]

This creates the vmware-tools-distrib folder in your home folder

uname -a

provides the Linux kernel VERSION, then

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-VERSION

Finally, execute the installer:

cd vmware-tools-distrib

ysudo ./vmware-install.pl