This is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to move a physical linux server to vmware.

1. Boot to the Acronis server cd.
2. Create a backup image of the entire disk.
3. Create an Ubuntu virtual machine in VMware workstation using drive size equivalent to the source server. You do not need to allocate space.
4. Boot to the Acronis iso and pull down the image you just created to the virtual machine.
5. When finished try to boot. If it works, skip to step 10.
6. Download Knoppix and boot to the iso in the destination virtual machine.
7. Mount your imaged filesystem.
"sudo -i" to get root.
"mkdir /tmp/hda" "mount /dev/hda /tmp/hda"
8. CD into the boot directory and change the kernel pointer to the correctlocation.
"cd /tmp/hda/boot/grub"
"nano menu.lst"
Change the following:
"kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.x.x root=/dev/sda1 ro"
to "kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.x.x root=/dev/hda1 ro"
9. Reboot. It should take you into the OS with a few errors.
10. Install VMWare tools. Click VM, Install VMWare tools.

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

cd /tmp

tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-5.0.0-.tar.gz

umount /dev/cdrom

cd vmware-tools-distrib

./vmware-install.pl

Follow the instructions and do a "modprobe vmxnet" to get the networking driver installed.

11. I had to tweak the network card settings to auto start.
"nano /etc/network/interfaces"
add "auto eth0" ,change the main to eth0. Then do a
"/etc/init.d/networking restart" to restart networking.

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