I should be sleeping, but instead I created a Damn Small Linux VM. At first I downloaded a VMware image, but I eventually created a virtual disk and installed on it. I followed the directions at both HD Install :: How to Install DSL in VMware 6 and Installing to the Hard Disk.

Make sure that when you create the virtual disk, you select IDE and not SCSI! This means changing away from the default. If you do chose SCSI, cfdisk will not see the disk. You can fix that by:

• Halting the VM, you can do that from the VMware console.
• That gets you to the Summary View.
• Select 'Edit Virtual Machine settings'.
• Click on the 'Hard Disk' and then select 'Remove'.
• Then click on 'Add' and select 'Hard Disk'->'Next'->'Create a new virtual disk'.
• Switch 'Virtual Disk Type' to be 'IDE' instead of 'SCSI'.
• And follow the normal steps to finish it off.
• Restart the VM and now cfdisk should work.

After the dsl-hdinstall script reboots the VM, it will ask you to configure your X server. Do not accept the default value of USB mouse. You need to instead select IMPS/2 as the mouse. If you select the USB mouse, your mouse will not do anything. Follow these steps to fix it:

• Hit CTRL-ALT-BKSP to get you out of the window manager.
• This drops you back into your login terminal.
• Run /usr/sbin/xsetup.sh, which will redo the setup.
• You can run startx to get back into the window manager, but it didn't come up for me all the way.
• Instead I rebooted - hey it comes back really quick.

You shouldn't have to worry about permissions just then, after all, you just gave new passwords for root and dsl. If needed, you can use sudo to get access.

I also followed the steps to rename my VM (Changing the Hostname) and to set it to use static IP (How can I enter and save my static IP settings?). And that is it for now...