Um, maybe you should read this:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/bavm_getting_started_100.pdf

Like [code]$sudo passwd root[/code]

This appliance shows the opportunities and difficulties of maintaining appliances. Firefox is up to 1.5.0.3. Useful appliances need a regular update cycle (e.g the KDE 3.5 appliance is now out of date with Suse 10.1 released).

For server applications that do not always need to be the latest (Samba, Squid, Ipcop for instance) updates are less critical as long as the appliance works properly.

Download does indeed not work (redirects to the same page), found a torrent at: http://www.torrentportal.com/details/520978/Browser-Appliance-1.0.0.zip.html

No, I haven't done any subsequent releases of the Browser Appliance VM beyond BAVM 1.0.0 (Dec 12, 2005).

I am working with several folks internally to flesh out both the future release schedules, and documentation on maintenance of the 1.0.0 release for those who have already performed some customization and wish to continue using it.

Yes, but it takes a bit of fiddly-work because Firefox 1.5.0 went GA (General Availability) about the same time as the BAVM 1.0.0 did, and there was no Ubuntu 5.10 package for it. The mainstream Ubuntu 5.10 feeds remained on Firefox 1.0.x, Ubuntu 6.06 on the other hand debuted with Firefox 1.5.0.x.

I happen to have documented the latter part of the process (adjusting the default-spawned browser) earlier this evening for someone else, see this thread:

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=430636

Earlier in the thread there is mention of how to upgrade from Firefox 1.5.0 GA to 1.5.0.4 (current release) using the inbuilt Firefox upgrader engine.

Is the browser appliance immune from root kits? How about key stroke loggers?

The HTTP download is not working. I have downloaded the zip file 2 different times tonight and the transfer appears to finish cleanly.

When I try to open the zip file I am given a corrupted file error. The most recent file, "Browser-Appliance-1.0.0.zip", is only 2 MB, not the 258 MB specified.