VMware Workstation 5.5

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Sharing Virtual Machines with Other Users

If other users access your virtual machines, you should consider the following points:

On Windows hosts, the virtual machine files should be relocated to a directory that is accessible to all appropriate users. The default location for a Windows host is not typically accessible to other users:

C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\My Documents\My Virtual Machines

When you configure the virtual machine in the New Virtual Machine Wizard, you can specify a location for the virtual machine elsewhere on your system or on a network volume.

On Linux hosts, permissions for the virtual machine files — especially the configuration file (.vmx) and virtual disks (.vmdk) — should be set for other users according to how you want them to use the virtual machine.

For example, if you want users to run a virtual machine but not be able to modify its configuration, do not make the configuration file writable.

Other users can also share a virtual machine by making a linked clone of it— a copy that uses the same virtual disks as the parent virtual machine it was copied from. See Cloning a Virtual Machine

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