To install VMware server on Debian Etch (4.0) you first need to have Etch installed on you host PC, you can achieve this by using the netinst CD available at:

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Once you have it installed you can proceed with this How To install VMware server on Debian Etch

1.- First install some software needed (as root)

apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxtst6 xinetd wget

apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential

apt-get install binutils-doc make manpages-dev autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison gdb libc6-dev-amd64 lib64gcc1 gcc-2.95-doc

apt-get install gcc

2.- Get the Software

You can get the vmware server here: http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

and do not forget to obtain the serial number by registering here: http://register.vmware.com/content/registration.html

3.- Installation

You can use wget, to get the appropiate code, or any mean you prefer, once you have the .tar.gz file

tar xvzf [package_downloaded]

cd vmware-server-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

here you just need to press enter, enter, enter to all questions, unless you want a more presonalized configuration, i.e. if you have two NICs and want both of the bridged to vmnet0 and vmnet2 as in my case, just follow the instructions in the script.

4.- Patching the software

As Etch has a newer version of Kernel the VMware server needs to be patched, here is how.

-- Get the code

Download from here: http://jaws.go2linux.org/archivos/vmware-any-any-update109.tar.gz

-- Unpack it

tar xvzf vwmare-any-any-update108.tar.gz

-- Change to its directory

cd vwmare-any-any-update108

-- Run the script that is going to patch the VMWare.

./runme.pl

5.- Automatic start vmware at start

update-rc.d vmware defaults 20

Enjoy your vmware server installed on your Debian 4.0 Etch