Virtualization on Low-End Hardware

I have a few really old laptops that I've rescued for use in the TaoSecurity labs. One is a Thinkpad 600e PII 366 MHz with 128 MB RAM, and the other is a Thinkpad 1400 Pentium MMX 300 MHz with 256 MB RAM. Recently I wondered if I could use them as VMware Player running on them. First I needed a supported operating system. I first tried Ubuntu, since it looked like the most recent free OS with which I was familiar. Unfortunately, Ubuntu's live CD and installation CD hung on the two laptops I tried.

I turned next to Red Hat Linux 9, intending to use the Fedora Legacy project to update the OS once installed. RH 9 and Fedora Legacy worked perfectly. I don't need to repeat what I did because the Using Fedora Legacy's yum 2.x for Red Hat Linux 9 documentation is so excellent. I checked the FAQ and used Yum to update the kernel after the userland apps were updated. Impressive all around.

Next came the moment of truth. Would VMware Player run on these old systems? The newer PII ThinkPad installed the Linux .rpm with no problems. When I ran vmware-config.pl, however, I had to let VMware compile the kernel modules it needed. It needed kernel-source-2.4.20-43.9.legacy.i386.rpm installed, and I had to point the installer to /usr/src/include/linux-2.4 instead of /usr/src/include/linux. When the process was done I was able to run VMware Player as root. Awesome.

Then I tried the older Thinkpad. After installing the .rpm, I tried running vmware-config.pl. I encountered this error:

[root@rh9tp1400 root]# vmware-config.pl 
Your processor does not support the cmov instruction. VMware Player will not run
on this system.

Your /proc/cpuinfo is:

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 5
model           : 8
model name      : Mobile Pentium MMX
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 299.950
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : yes
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mmx
bogomips        : 598.01

Execution aborted.

Darn. No VMware Player on the Pentium MMX 300 MHz! Well, if VMware Player wouldn't run, what about QEMU? I found a QEMU .rpm at the DAG repository. When I tried installing it, the .rpm complained it needed SDL-1.2.5-3.i386.rpm.

(Note: When I installed RH 9 on these laptops, I did a Workstation install, automatic partitioning, no firewall, and I customized the packages to remove GNOME, Graphical Internet, Office/Productivity, Sound and Video, Graphics, Games and Entertainment, X Software Development, GNOME Software Development, and Printing Support; I added System Tools and Kernel Development. Total package size: 1311 MB.)

I installed the SDL package, and sure enough QEMU ran on the P-MMX! I booted a Linux image to test it. I did not try networking. This was more proof-of-concept, since I do not have QEMU images ready for use as I do VMs.

One of the main reasons I conducted this test was to provide a baseline of hardware I could expect to use when I teach my classes. I plan to suggest a PII with 256 MB RAM running RH 9 as the absolute free-OS minimum for supporting VMware Player.