After cloning a working Debian virtual machine, the new system would not bring up its Ethernet interface. This is because I checked VirtualBox's dialog, "Reset MAC address for network card" and got a new hardware Ethernet address.

Trying "ifup eth0" didn't work. I did an "ip addr" and saw that the only configured interface was now called eth1.

This is simple to solve. Edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and move the new MAC address (like "00-0F-35-01..." and so on) from the eth1 line back to eth0, erasing the previous address in the eth0 line. Then delete the remainder of the eth1 line, save, and reboot.

You should now have your eth0 back.

So today when I tried to start my XP machine, I'm greeted with VMware 2 telling me that it has expired.

Frustration: Why should I use a program that's going to decide to quit working for no reason? I'm moving off this as soon as I can find a viable alternative. I wouldn't use it at all but Quicken contains my business data for the past 10+ years and transitioning that to something else would be a pain. Why I can't buy Quicken Linux for Business is incredibly frustrating.

Anyway, next frustration:

yum upgrade vmware

does nothing. Indeed, yum doesn't know there is a package called "vmware" installed though of course it's running. After much hair-pulling, this command works and tells us what's really going on:

rpm -qa | grep -i vmware VMware-server-2.0.0-110949 #

Aaaagh... it's mixed-case, then a dash, then "server" -- but don't give yum anything past the second dash or it will get all confused again. Just as brain-damaged as 'man' telling you:

SEE ALSO apropos(1), whatis(1), less(1), groff(1), man.config(5).

but when you try to ask for one of those pages you are greeted with the obnoxious:

$ man less(1) bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

and you actually would have to type:

$ man 1 less

which is NOT what the manpage told you at all. It should have said: See also: 1 man, 1 less, ...etc...

Anyway back to the issue... after downloading the new .rpm, do an rpm -Uvh on it... then

/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware stop /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware stop

Yes, you must reconfigure the vmware server... things may have changed, let it do its magic.

Finally as to the problem of arrow keys not working: see this post: VMWare and the fubar keyboard effect

Basically, vmware gets confused by trying to remap the X keyboard. In your /etc/vmware/config, add the line:

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

and that should restore the arrow keys. If not, you can always turn NumLock off and use the arrow keys on the numeric pad. (A bit of a pain when using accounting software!)