Installing FreeBSD 9.0 on vSphere 5

So, FreeBSD9 was released recently. While it’s not on the VMware HCL, the prior release 8.x is, so keep in mind while it works, support may get interesting if something goes sideways.

Installing FreeBSD 9.0

Getting the bits

I pulled the 2.1GB DVD ISO from here: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/

Choose the ISO that suits what your requirements. For me, the DVD image provided the best all around choice.

Set up the VM container

New VM Wizard, Typical
Other, FreeBSD, x64
Boot the ISO

Next, Next, Done

Unless you’ve got some custom requirements, the defaults will generally work. Which is what I did:

Installing VMware Tools

This here, took some doing as my FreeBSD-Fu is rusty:

In the vSphere Client, mount the tools ISO
Install Perl

cd /usr/ports/lang/perl5.12
make
make install

Install the tools:

mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cd0 -t cd9660 -e /mnt/cdrom
cp /mnt/cdrom/vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz /tmp
umount /mnt/cdrom
cd /tmp
tar -zxf ./vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmware-install.pl –default (two dashes)

Done!

Tagged as: freebsd, VM, vSphere

jaimy
Hi
How much RAM and disk space did you give it?
http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware
So, I went with the VMware defaults as I was doing this in the lab. Those are:
vCPU: 1
Ram: 1GB
Disk: 8GB (of which it uses a tad over 2GB)
-C
jaimy
Thanks
http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware
No worries. Let me know if you’ve any questions, and a bit about
your experience.
jaimy
Sure thing.
Right now I am downloading the ISO file ( internet a little bit slow here .. )
Will post back
Vasia911
Hmmm.
This post is fake ?
I’m tried on esxi 5.0.0 515841 and 504890, result on the screen
http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware
Interesting, looks installed to me.
Jack
If you see that error, just cd to vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source, then tar -zxvf vmmemctl.tar; cd vmmemctl-only; make; make install
works for me, installed the module This was after an upgrade from freebsd 8.2-STABLE to 9.0-STABLE.
Vasia911
Thanks,
It’s really worked.
http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware
Cool! Thanks for the update.
Wobla
A HUGE Thank You! I was installing VMWare tools in FreeBSD9 guest in VMWare Workstation (whatever the latest version is), and was running into the same problem. This fixed it.