Installation guide

C H A P T E R 2 Creating and Configuring Virtual Machines

scsi0:1.mode = "persistent"

machine.id = "the_id_for_my_first_vm"

<config_file_2>.vmx contains:

scsi0:1.present = TRUE

scsi0:1.name = "my_common_virtual_hard_drive.dsk"

scsi0:1.mode = "persistent"

machine.id = "the_id_for_my_second_vm"

Using machine.id, you may pass such strings as the Windows system ID (SID), a

machine name or an IP address. In the guest operating system startup script, you may

then have the guest service retrieve this string, which can then be used by your script

to set your virtual machine's system ID, machine name or IP address.

In the following example, we use a Linux guest to illustrate how you can use the guest

service to retrieve a string containing what becomes the virtual machine’s machine

name and IP address. We use RedHat62VM as the machine name and 148.30.16.24 as

the IP address.

1. Define the machine.id string. Define the following option in your virtual

machine’s configuration file (as described in Modifying the Configuration File

Directly (Advanced Users Only) on page 141):

machine.id = "RedHat62VM 148.30.16.24"

Then launch a virtual machine using this configuration file.

2. Retrieve the machine.id string in the virtual machine. In your system startup

script, before the network startup section, add the following command:

/etc/vmware/vmware-guestd --cmd 'machine.id.get'

Note: in a Windows guest, the command to retrieve the string is

VMwareService --cmd machine.id.get

You need to further customize this startup script so it uses the string the guest

service retrieved during startup to set the virtual machine’s network name to

RedHat62VM and its IP address to 148.30.16.24. This should be located in the

script before the network services are started. If you’re using a Windows 2000

guest operating system, for example, you can call the NetShell utility (netsh)

and pass it the contents of the string, which it can then use appropriately (that is,

it can set a new IP address for the virtual machine, if that is what was passed in

the string originally).

From the service console, you can prevent the service console from passing a string to

the guest operating system via the guest service. To do this, set the following line in

your virtual machine’s configuration file.