Today I’ve been struggling to remember how I once built a DSL guest in VMWare Fusion / ESXi.  DSL is a darn small Linux distribution that can run in 100 MB of storage.  Here are the tricks that I’ve relearned in order to make this work.

• DSL v 4.4.10 requires VMWare hardware version 7.  Higher versions somewhat work, with the primary symptom being no mouse support.
• To access root functions, enter a terminal session and then run sudo su.  There is no password, simply the command.
• The virtual hard disk drive must be IDE (not SCSI).  DSL doesn’t seem to have other drivers.
• Having booted from the ISO on CDROM, you must prepare the virtual hard drive using cfdisk /dev/hda. Begin with a zero table, and partition as follows:
  • Select New
  • Select Primary
  • Accept the available space, unless there is reason not to.
  • Highlight Bootable
  • Highlight Type, then choose 83 (Linux)
  • Choose Write, then follow the prompts.
  • Quit, then reboot.
• Boot from the ISO; launch a terminal window and execute dsl-hdinstall
  • Use the target partition hda1
  • Do NOT support multi-user logins or the journalized file system
• You may want to reboot one more time without the ISO available to verify that all is well.
• If you want to make the swap space on a second partition, follow these steps:
  • Using cfdisk /dev/hda create the partition, same as above only type 82
  • swapoff -a
  • mkswap /dev/hda2
  • swapon /dev/hda2