VMware and packaging

[Christopher Vance]

I would like to install VMware 4.5.2 to run on my amd64.  I already
have the tar file used by portage to install on Gentoo (where it
works, both on i686 and amd64 kernels), but would like to 'do it
right' for Ubuntu/amd64.  (Ubuntu would be the host OS, the guest OSs
will mostly be OpenBSD and maybe whatever e-smith is called these
days.)

I could just unpack the tarball somewhere and hope it works, but I'd
like to know

1) is there a .deb somewhere (for amd64) I can install, that puts
things in the 'normal' places?

2) if not, is there a way of telling the packaging system I've
installed some files, and that I want it (the packaging system) to
keep track of them?

3) in future, how do I go about finding what packages are available in
which standard and non-standard locations (other than something like
google)?

Ta muchly.

-- 
Christopher Vance