My Ideas/Thoughts/Experiences

Tested both the 32 bit version as well as the 64 bit version of the VMware server 2.0.2. It seems none of them works out of the box in Debian. One need to apply patches but there are instances wherein even after applying the patches, the server fails to start up. Even the VMware Server forums were clueless about it. There are a lot of if’s and but’s to the solution.

Before starting the installation, you need to install the following packages:
apt-get install build-essential psmisc linux-headers-`uname -r`

Installing the 32 bit version.

1. Download the 32 bit VMware server .tgz file from VMware.com
2. Extract the .tgz file.
3. Download the patch vmware-sever-2-0-2-32bit.tgz. Change the DIR in patch-vmware_2.6.3x.sh accordingly to your location of the VMware Server .tgz file.
4. ./patch-vmware_2.6.3x.sh / /vmware-server-distrib/lib/modules/source
5. cd / /vmware-server-distrib
6. ./vmware-install.pl

Installing the 64 bit version.

1. Download the 64 bit VMware server .tgz file from VMware.com
2. Extract the .tgz file.
3. Download the patch vmware-sever-2-0-2-64bit.tgz. Change the DIR in patch-vmware_2.6.3x.sh and the path in install-vmware-2.0.2.sh accordingly.
4. Patch is applied and the script will start the installation.

There might still be issues with SSL error being shown up. You can try doing the following,

1. mv /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8-unused
2. /etc/init.d/vmware restart

Firefox version 3.6 will not show up the management interface. It will show up a blank screen. You need to have version lower then this.

References:

1. VMware Server on 32 bit Debian Squeeze
2. VMware Server on 64 bit Debian Squeeze

Note: Refer to the links mentioned above for more information.