VMware Server on Debian Etch 64 bit

Once I got Debian installed it was time to install VMware Server on the box. There’s two gotchas however.

1. While the application is fully 64 bit, the installer isn’t quite, and the error it throws isn’t the most illuminating.  You need to install 32 bit support by running “apt-get install ia32-utils”
2. You can’t connect to your freshly minted VMware server with the VMware Server Console. You get the error “There was a problem connecting: Cannot connect to host X.X.X.X: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it”. It’s because VMware-mui hooks into inetd, which doesn’t get installed in a bare-bones Debian Etch 64 bit system. “apt-get install inetutils-inetd” is the quick fix.