However, since a while my VMWare install had some issues I decided to re-install it. I'm on Debian unstable with kernel 2.6.32 and on this platform the VMWare 2.0.2 distribution has issues with compiling the VMWare kernel modules during the vmware-config.pl stage.

In order to address this, I had to do the things below. Please note that I've installed VMWare into /usr/local instead of the default /usr, so adjust the paths accordingly. The steps are (as root):

cd /tmp
wget http://derickrethans.nl/files/vmware-server.2.0.1_x64-modules-2.6.30.4-fix.patch
wget http://derickrethans.nl/files/vmware-7.0-2.6.32.patch
mkdir tmp-vmware-modules
cd tmp-vmware-modules
cp /usr/local/lib/vmware/modules/source/*.tar .
for i in *tar; do tar xvf $i; done
for i in *tar; do mv $i old-$i; done
patch -p0 < /tmp/vmware-server.2.0.1_x64-modules-2.6.30.4-fix.patch
patch -p1 < /tmp/vmware-7.0-2.6.32.patch
for i in *only; do j=`echo $i | sed 's/-only//'`; tar cvf $j.tar $i; done
cp *.tar /usr/local/lib/vmware/modules/source
vmware-config.pl

The first patch I found on the VMWare communities site (do not use the vmware-server.2.0.1_x64-modules-2.6.30-fix.sh file that's listed there!). The second patch I found at http://communities.vmware.com/message/1401588 (again, do not use the patch-modules.sh script).

With this, I could get VMWare started, but unfortunately the web access interface through http://192.168.42.34:8333 gave as error "503 Service Unavailable Error". After a bit looking around, I found out that this is caused by IPv4/IPv6 compatibility issues. Drixter posted a very simple solution to this issue. Simply add -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true in /etc/init.d/vmware-mgmt to the line (line 678 for me) starting with webAccessOpts="-client. I've added it just before -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager so that the full line now reads:

webAccessOpts="-client -Xmx64m -XX:MinHeapFreeRatio=30 -XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio=30 -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Djava.endorsed.dirs=$CATALINA_HOME/common/endorsed -classpath $CATALINA_HOME/bin/bootstrap.jar:$CATALINA_HOME/bin/commons-logging-api.jar -Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_HOME -Dcatalina.home=$CATALINA_HOME -Djava.io.tmpdir=$CATALINA_HOME/temp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap"

With this sorted out, I created a new VMWare image to install Linux. Unfortunately while trying to do so, I noticed that my arrow keys weren't working (which makes it rather difficult to select options). Through http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=967530 I found out that you need to make some changes in /etc/vmware/config for this. It is important that you do this on the client side, and not on the server side where your VMWare Server instance is running. You need to add the following lines (or create the file if it doesn't exist yet) to /etc/vmware/config:

xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu
xkeymap.keycode.107 = 0x137 # Print Scrn

Don't forget to restart the client though!

With all those three things sorted out, it's time to see if I can reproduce the original MongoDB PHP Driver issue...