Linux on Windows dream setup with VMware. My goal was to have the benefits of Linux distributions like their command line with Windows. It should also include a shared folder so you can share files seamlessly between Windows and Linux. In this guide I will walk you through how you can build your own one-click portal to the world of Linux and close it as easily as you open it.
(These versions of the software were used at the time of writing this guide.)
- Windows (Windows 10 19045.3636)
- VMware Workstaion (17.5.0 build-22583795)
- Linux ISO (ubuntu-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso)
Hint: You can also use VMware Player after you installed VMware Workstation. We only need some componets of VMware Workstation. Once you have clicked on "File->New Virtual Machine..." (Make sure you have updated your RAM and CPU cores to the appropriate levels for your system. For example 25% of your PC's RAM and 75% of your PC's CPU cores. Also give your VM about 50GB of disk space if you can. This space will only be used if needed, so no worries) and boot your Linux image. Next you are going to install your VMware Tools this can sometimes happen automatically, just resize your VMware window and check if the Linux window resizes too, if it does you are good to go.
Right-click on your newly created VM and press "Settings..." and add a second Network Adapter. Check Host-only as Network connection.
We need this adapter to have a static IP address for our SSH connection.
We can install install the SSH sever with the following command:
sudo apt install ssh and check its status with systemctl status sshd.service.
If it does not show active (running), type in the following command sudo systemctl enable sshd && sudo systemctl start sshd.
To configure the SSH server we need to edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file. There should be several lines starting with #, remove the # from the following lines and set PasswordAuthentication to no:
PermitRootLogin prohibit-password
PubkeyAuthentication yes
PasswordAuthentication no
Now we need to generate or copy our SSH public key. If you don't have one, generate one by typing ssh-keygen. Now copy <youruser Directory>/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the Virtual Machine. Restart the SSH server to apply these changes sudo systemctl reload ssh.
Install ifconfig by typing sudo apt install net-tools and run ifconfig. In most cases, your VM's IP address for your host-only network adapter should start with 192.168.42.X. If you find this inet address make a note of it and try to connect to the VM on your Windows PC by typing ssh <username of VM>@<192.168.42.X>, accept the fingerprint and you should be connect to your VM via SSH.
Shut down your VM, go to the Settings->Options and change Folder sharing to Always enabled. Add a new Shared Folder and note down the Name of the folder.
Boot your VM and create an empty folder where you want to mount your share. Edit /etc/fstab to mount the shared folder. Add the following line and adjust the paths:
.host:/ubuntuDemo /home/ubuntudemo/share fuse.vmhgfs-fuse allow_other,defaults 0 0 . After changing fstab run sudo mount -a to try attempt to mount the filesystem.
You should now be able to copy files into this folder and the files should appear on both your Windows PC and your Linux VM.
VMware Workstation comes with a command line tool called vmwrun.exe. We can use this and some basic batch scripting to create a one-click solution to start our VM, connect to it via SSH and suspend it on exit.
@echo off
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmrun.exe" -T player start "C:\Ubuntu 22.04\Ubuntu 22.04.vmx" nogui
timeout /t 7 /nobreak
ssh [email protected]
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmrun.exe" -T player suspend "C:\Ubuntu 22.04\Ubuntu 22.04.vmx" nogui
We can also change suspend to stop to shut down the VM after we exit it. The timout gives the VM time to be fully booted when we try to connect to it via SSH.