Vmware 6.5.3 on Karmic Koala

Installing: At least these instructions worked for me:

#sudo bash
#chmod +x VMware-Workstation-6.5.3-185404.x86_64.bundle
# export VMWARE_SKIP_MODULES=true
#./VMware-Workstation-6.5.3-185404.x86_64.bundle
# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

Voilá, installed Vmware without any issue. I’ve compiled the modules after installation because there are reports that it may hang by using the installer. Not sure, because I didn’t tried it. All VM Machines appear to be working.
Now for the other issues:

After upgrading from Kubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, I needed to upgrade to Vmware Workstation 6.5.3 as is the subject of this post… My previous version was 6.5.0. With this upgrade some older issues where back and new issues appeared…

- Keyboard mapping where again all wrong, with my Portuguese keyboard wrongly configured and some keys wouldn’t just work.

- The other annoying issue was the grab/ungrab mouse cursor problem. Kubuntu task bar area and the floating vmware toolbar area where unusable when the VM machines are in full screen. So for example the Windows task bar is, when the machine is full screen, at the same screen area than the KDE taskbar. The cursor on this area just flickered away like mad, and it was pretty difficult to do anything on this area. This also mean that Windows taskbar and systray where almost unusable and unacessible, and just couldn’t do anything on this area. The temporary workaround was to use machines not in full screen…
The solutions:
For the keyboard problem, on my home directory, just went to .vmware hidden directory (create one if it doesn’t exist) and add the following to the file named config:

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true
xkeymap.keycode.61 = 0x035
xkeymap.keycode.61 = 0x5f
xkeymap.keycode.47 = 0x027
xkeymap.keycode.47 = 0xc7
xkeymap.keycode.48 = 0x028
xkeymap.keycode.48 = 0xaa
xkeymap.keycode.51 = 0x02b
xkeymap.keycode.51 = 0xfe52
xkeymap.keycode.34 = 0x01a # +
xkeymap.keycode.34 = 0x2a # *
xkeymap.keycode.35 = 0x01b # ´
xkeymap.keycode.35 = 0xfe50 # `
xkeymap.keycode.20 = 0x00c # ‘
xkeymap.keycode.20 = 0x3f # ?
xkeymap.keycode.21 = 0xab # «
xkeymap.keycode.21 = 0xbb # »
xkeymap.keycode.49 = 0x029 # \
xkeymap.keycode.49 = 0x056 # |

xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

Now if you copy and past the above content, just make sure that x is an ‘x’ letter, because WordPress may change it to something else that looks like an x but it isn’t. If you don’t due this, when you press a mapped key on VMware, you will get a popup window with an error complaining about a key code.
For the mouse issue, it looks like that the solution is this:
Temporary fix (solution from http://communities.vmware.com/thread/240766):

Open a shell window and start vmware from it with as follow:

#export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes

#export LD_PRELOAD=/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0

#vmware

It seems that to make the first two lines permanent, you just, as root, edit the following file: /etc/vmware/bootstrap and add the first to lines to the end of the file.
I hope that all issues are covered now….

NTFS-3G, Vmware and 100% CPU

NTFS-3G can consume 100%CPU when a virtual machine is running on an NTFS partition and/or external disk (my case).

With this issue, using Vmware and using a VM machine can be a slow experience when doing high IO operations inside the VM machine. For example trying to uncompress a large zip file on the VM machine, just makes the host 100% CPU on the NTFS-3g process.

To solve this issue, just shutdown the VM machine and add the following line to the vmx file with your favorite text editor:

mainMem.useNamedFile = “FALSE”

Problem solved.

VMware machines – Extending disk size and boot to bios

To extend a virtual machine disk size, you have to follow this simple steps:

1) Make sure that all snapshots are deleted.

2) Take note of the filename which the disk you want to extend is using

3) Got to a command session (DOS or BASH), and execute the command: vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10Gb diskfile.vmdk where 10Gb is the new disk size. change it to the value that you want.

4) Let it run.

At the end you need to extend the partition so the operating system knows about the new space. If you don’t do this you need to create a new drive/mount point on the operating system.

Just donwload the latest ISO for Gparted live image, and make sure that the Vmware machine CD-Drive boots with this ISO.

Now you need to boot the VMware machine, but using the CD. The problem is normally the BIOS boot screen is too fast to stop and select the CD-ROM as the boot device.

You can do it in two different ways:

1) Add the following line to the machine VMX file at the end, so you can delete it later:  bios.bootDelay = “5000″ This will delay the boot long enough so you can press ESCape and choose the CD as the boot device

2) Second you can boot directly to bios by adding the key:  bios.forceSetupOnce = "TRUE"

On this last option after booting the key will revert to false, and so the next boot will be normal.

After booting into Gparted, just increase the size of the partition, and don’t forget to choose apply.

[K]Ubuntu kernel upgrade breaks vmware

When after a kernel update from the repositories or pushed by the adepter updater, vmware refuses to start, you have to run the vmware-config.pl script again.

[K]Ubuntu – Vmware server console only starts as root

If Vmware console seems to die if running as the normal [K]Ubuntu user it might be a permission issue on the vmware preferences file.

Just open a shell on your home directory and change directory to .vmware (note there is a . at the beginning).

Check the owner and group of the preferences file. If it’s not belong to your user, just run the command sudo chown user:group preferences where user and group is your user and group.

Running VMWare machines from NTFS filesystems on KUbuntu

I’ve tried to start a virtual machine using VMWare Server from an attached external disk that was formatted with NTFS.

Well it didn’t work. The Vmware server console just tried to start the machine and almost right away went back again to the original status. The machines didn’t start.

Looking at the vmware logs at /var/logs/vmware, it seems that the vmware server was complaining from the following error: VMware Server unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0) Failed to allocate page for guest RAM!

After a quick Google search, I hit this: http://www.desktop-virtualization.com/2008/03/31/failed-to-allocate-page-for-guest-ram/

So all you need to do is to go to your virtual machine directory and edit the .vmx file. Add the following line to end of it: mainmem.UseNamedFile = “FALSE”

Save the file, and it should work. This is only needed if you’re running your virtual machines in KUbuntu from a NTFS file system