CentOS 5

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CentOS 5 documentation covers information on how to install the operating system in a virtual machine. For additional information about the operating system, refer to the instructions included in the installation media.

CentOS 5 documentation includes the following topics:

• Installation Instructions
• VMware Tools in a CentOS 5 Guest
• Knowledge Base Articles for CentOS 5
• VMware Compatibility Guide

Installation Instructions

The easiest method of installing CentOS 5 in a virtual machine is to use the standard CentOS distribution CD. Installing CentOS5 via the boot floppy/network method is also supported.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, verify that the following tasks are complete:

• Read General Installation Instructions for All VMware Products.
• If available, select CentOS 4/5 (32-bit) or CentOS 4/5 (64-bit) option for the guest operating system when creating the virtual machine, otherwise select Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (32-bit) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (64-bit).
• Use the LSI Logic SCSI adapter. CentOS 5 does not include a driver for the BusLogic SCSI adapter.
• On a Linux host with an XFree86 3.x X server, do not 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.

Installation Steps

1. Insert the CentOS 5 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive.
2. Power on the virtual machine to start installing CentOS 5.
3. Follow the prompts to complete the installation.
4. Do not select the Virtualization Option during the installation.
5. Select Automatic Partitioning, or partition the virtual disk manually if you do not want to use the CentOS defaults.
   You might see a warning that begins "The partition table on device <devicename> was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on the drive."
   This does not mean that anything is wrong with the hard drive on your physical computer. It means that the virtual hard drive in your virtual machine needs to be partitioned and formatted.
6. Click Yes to partition the drive.
7. Install VMware Tools.

VMware Tools in an CentOS 5 Guest

For information on VMware Tools, see Knowledge base article 1014294, General VMware Tools installation instructions, at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1014294.

Knowledge Base Articles for CentOS 5

The following links refer to knowledge base articles on operating system specific issues.

• See knowledge base article 9134325 at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/9134325 for more information on unsupported Xen Linux kernels.
• See VMware Knowledge Base for a list of known issues about the operating system.

VMware Compatibility Guide

The VMware Compatibility Guide Web site lists supported guest and host operating systems and provides related support information.