The Asus Eee PC comes with most of the basic tools the average sysadmin needs for remote console access to his/her servers: krdc (for VNC and Remote Desktop), xterm (command line for ssh or telnet; press ctrl+alt+t), but it's missing VMware server console. Unfortunately for Xandros Eee PC users it's distributed as an RPM. However, with a quick apt-get of alien (and some dependencies), converting it to a compatible .deb is easy! Don't forget to read my previous post about adding comunity repositories (and pinning your system).
1. download the RPM from VMware's site: http://vmware.com/download/server/. You want the Linux client package only. Don't worry about registering. No serial number is required for the client package.
2. sudo apt-get install alien
This will prompt for the installation of dependencies (about 13). Answer 'Yes' to install them.
3. sudo alien --scripts VMware-server-console-1.0.4-5629.i386.rpm
This will result in a .deb file of the same name.
4. sudo dpkg --install vmware-server-console_1.0.4-56529_i386.deb
Once the pacakge is installed, I went back and uninstalled alien and its dependencies. You can leave them around if you like (at a cost of 25MB of storage).
5. sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config-server-console.pl
This will do a quick config for the server console. You can now run /usr/bin/vmware-server-console and access your VMware server intances!
The same method would probably work for the full server installation. You'll need to register for your free serial number. I didn't due to the small storage capacity and limited hardware (base Eee PC 701 only has 512MB of RAM). The Eee would need a slightly better CPU before I'd run virtualized OSes on it, but it makes for a great remote console to a more powerful system. Enjoy.
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