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Frequently Asked Questions about VMware Fusion

etung — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:52:49 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

This document is intended to address common questions not already covered by various other sources, such as the official Fusion FAQ, the latest release notes and documentation, or anything else in the Fusion forum documents category. It may also answer questions in more depth than is appropriate for a normal forum post. The document assumes familiarity with common terms such as guest or host; see A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion for an explanation. For guest-specific questions, see Frequently Asked Questions about Guest OSes.

If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. Please use the comments below only for things specific to this document; general questions are better off in the discussion section.

Quick Answers

Postflight script failed

When upgrading Fusion, in some cases the networking kernel extensions don't get unloaded properly. The easiest way to work around the problem is to reboot OS X.

Failed to connect to peer process

This indicates that some kernel extensions were not correctly loaded. One common cause is that an installation was incomplete (sometimes kexts don't unload properly). The following steps should solve this problem:

Reboot the Mac. This should make sure that kexts aren't stuck.
Uninstall Fusion using /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Uninstall VMware Fusion.app (this won't affect your virtual machines). This should make sure that problematic kexts are gone.
Reboot the Mac. This should make really sure they're gone
Install Fusion

VMware Fusion cannot connect to the virtual machine. Make sure you have rights to run the program and access all directories it uses and rights to access all directories for temporary files.

This indicates one of two problems.

The first is a permissions problem. The following steps should solve this problem:

Uninstall Fusion (this won't affect your virtual machines)
Reboot the Mac
Repair disk permissions using Disk Utility
Install Fusion

If you're technically inclined, one likely problem is that some of our helper programs in /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion must have the setuid bit set. These include vmware-authd, vmware-rawdiskCreator, vmware-vmx, vmware-vmx-debug, and VMDKMounter.app/Contents/MacOS/vmware-vmdkMounter. If you copied your installation from another Mac or used image deployment software incorrectly, these permissions might have been lost.

The second is if our kernel extensions (kexts) did not properly load. You can check if they are by running the following command in a terminal:

kextstat | grep vmware

There should be four kexts loaded. If not, please start a thread, mention the error and other information from HOWTO: Ask (and Answer) Questions, and include the support information generated by Fusion (Help > Collect Support Information).

Can't find CD/DVD a.k.a. What's this PXE thing?

If the BIOS is unable to find any bootable media, by default it will fall back to attempting to PXE boot (i.e. boot off the network). If possible, verify that your installation media is good (have you used it successfully before?). If you're using a physical CD/DVD to install from, it should disappear from the desktop when the virtual machine starts, which indicates that the virtual machine managed to get ownership of the drive.

Ctrl-click

Ctrl-click is a Mac shortcut for right click, and many users expect it to work that way. However, some guest applications may actually want to receive ctrl-click events. To disable this mapping, look under Fusion's Preferences and uncheck the Mac OS mouse shortcuts option.

If you still need right-click, you can get this on Mac laptops by enabling two-finger clicks, under System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad > "Place two fingers..."

Boot Camp virtual machine has a Blue Screen of Death with error code 0x0000007b

See Re: Bluescreen trying to run Fusion 1.1.2 from Boot Camp partition on MacBook Air.

Bluetooth stops working when Fusion runs

Apple's Bluetooth adapter is a USB device. As explained in Virtual Hardware later in this document, USB devices can only be controlled by one OS at a time. You've probably (accidentally) told Fusion to automatically connect the Bluetooth adapter to the virtual machine, which will cause OS X to lose track of it. The solution is to disconnect the Bluetooth adapter from the virtual machine (e.g. Virtual Machine > USB). If your mouse is Bluetooth, the easiest way to do this is to borrow a USB mouse.

USB sound devices connected directly to the guest produce garbled output on Snow Leopard hosts

This is an Apple bug in the full-speed isochronous USB support (WriteIsochPipeAsync) in 10.6. It impacts Fusion, Parallels, and VirtualBox alike. Apple is aware of the issue and is working on it.

Workaround: Keep the USB audio device connected to your Mac, and set it as the default audio output/input device in Mac OS X's System Preferences.

Function keys

By default, many Mac keyboards (laptop keyboards, the thin aluminum keyboard) have what appear to be "function keys" but are actually special media keys (sound, brightness, etc.). You can get normal function key behavior by pressing fn-F# (or in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys).

Other things to try are unchecking "Enable Mac OS keyboard shortcuts" in Fusion's Preferences and/or checking that other shortcuts (such as Spaces) don't conflict.

Number lock

On full Mac keyboards, try the "clear" button above numberpad 7. On laptop keypads, try numlck/F6 (you may also have to enable this elsewhere in the guest; for example in Window's on-screen keyboard).

Keyboard layout in the guest doesn't match the host

http://www.harbar.net/archive/2008/06/30/Apple-Keyboard-Layout-for-Virtual-Machines.aspx has a nice explanation and instructions to fix.

Force Quitting

As A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion notes, Fusion uses a frontend GUI process and a backend vmware-vmx process. If you force quit Fusion, you're only killing the GUI process; the vmware-vmx process continues to run. If you want to stop Fusion, you need to kill vmware-vmx as well.

If Fusion is still responding but the guest has crashed or become unusable, a better choice is to tell Fusion to stop or restart the virtual machine. Select the Virtual Machine menu and hold the option key - "Shut Down Guest" should change to "Shut Down", and "Restart Guest" should change to "Reset" (note: for certain virtual machine configurations, this may be reversed).

Upgrading or updating Fusion

Installing new version over an old version should work; another option is to uninstall the old version first. It shouldn't matter. You usually shouldn't have to restart afterwards, though it can't hurt - if you have network problems after updating, this would be a good thing to try.

You should avoid having a virtual machine suspended when you update Fusion - while it usually works, it's safer to shut down virtual machines before updating Fusion.

Firewire

It is not possible to use Firewire devices in a guest as Firewire devices, our virtual hardware doesn't support it. Depending on the device, though, you may be able to access it in other ways - for example, if it's a Firewire hard drive, you could use a shared folder (or for advanced users, a raw disk map). If it's an optical drive, you could use it as a physical drive.

See also FireWire and VMware Fusion FAQ

When is the next release coming out?

VMware policy is to not comment on unannounced things such as timelines, so we're not allowed to say. Although every product and release cycle is different, here is some historical information you might find interesting:

Date	Version	Notable changes
Dec 22, 2006	Public Beta	Already had 64-bit guest support, USB 2, and multiple virtual CPUs. There was a private beta before this.
Mar 1, 2007	Beta 2	Experimental DirectX 8.1 support. Single snapshot. Vista as a normal guest.
Apr 5, 2007	Beta 3	Boot Camp support. Easy Install. Newly created virtual machines are bundles instead of folders.
Jun 7, 2007	Beta 4	Unity. Customizable toolbar.
Jun 21, 2007	Beta 4.1	Refresh to have experimental support for Leopard as a host, fix USB bug in 10.4.10 and Santa Rosa MBPs.
Jul 3, 2007	Release Candidate 1	Minor changes, ability to optimize for guest disk or host application performance.
Aug 6, 2007	1.0	Whew!
Sep 27, 2007	1.1 Beta 1	Experimental DirectX 9.0 support. iPhone fix.
Oct 25, 2007	1.1 Release Candidate 1	Leopard compatibility improvements (GA of Leopard is Oct 26, we don't have it yet). Vista in Boot Camp.
Nov 12, 2007	1.1	Localization in French, German, and Japanese (this may have been in 1.1b1 or 1.1rc1). Leopard compatibility. Importer Beta 1 was also released at the same time.
Jan 29, 2008	1.1.1	(optional) key combo (cmd-z/c/v/p/a/f to ctrl-z/c/v/p/a/f) remapping in all modes, not just Unity.
Apr 23, 2008	1.1.2	Localization in Simplified Chinese. MacBook Air Superdrive fix.
May 5, 2008	2.0 Beta 1	Multiple monitors. Experimental DirectX 9.0 with shaders. Easier printer sharing. Redesigned UI. Integrated Importer.
May 30, 2008	1.1.3	Boot Camp Vista SP1 support. Fixed prebuilt HGFS modules for Linux guests.
July 30, 2008	2.0 Beta 2	Multiple snapshots, AutoProtect. Cross-platform file associations. Linux Unity, Linux Easy Install (select distros only). Leopard Server guest. Improved DirectX support. Customizable key remapping. 4 vCPUs. vmrun.
August 29, 2008	2.0 Release Candidate	Bundled antivirus. Localization in Italian and Spanish. Various stabilization fixes.
September 15, 2008	2.0	Whew!
November 14, 2008	2.0.1	Performance fixes, nested shared folder fix, numerous other minor fixes.
February 11, 2009	2.0.2	Import Parallels Desktop 4 virtual machines, Ubuntu 8.10 support, fix a number of Tools-related problems, numerous other minor fixes.
April 2, 2009	2.0.3	Printing passthrough fix for breakage caused by Apple Security Update 2009-001. Snow Leopard guest (experimental) support improved.
April 10, 2009	2.0.4	Security fix for CVE-2009-1244, no other changes
June 23, 2009	2.0.5	Ubuntu 9.04 support, experimental Snow Leopard host and guest support (32-bit only)
October 1, 2009	2.0.6	Snow Leopard 32-bit host support, security fixes for CVE-2009-3281 and CVE-2009-3282
October 27, 2009	3.0	Whew! There were a few private betas before this.
???	???	???

The timeline may be off by a few days - I don't have official sources at hand so am going by what the internet tells me. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

If we're in the middle of a beta cycle, you can get some idea of the next update by checking when the current beta expires. There should be an update before then.

On a oct-core 2009 Nehalem Mac Pro (16 logical processors), Fusion crashes when you power on or resume a virtual machine

Fusion 2.0.2 fixes this issue, update.

Detailed Answers

High CPU Usage

Description

A virtual machine that's not doing anything consumes an abnormally high amount of CPU (exact numbers depend on the guest, but most should idle at below 10%, usually around 5%).

There are many possible causes, this section will point out some known issues.

Explanation

Is the guest really idle?

Even though you might not be doing anything in the guest, this doesn't mean the guest is idle. For example, some OSes automatically index the contents of the hard disk. There might be a runaway process in the guest, or you may have forgotten about that helper program you installed months ago.

You can check whether the guest is really idle by using guest-specific tools (e.g. Task Manager in Windows, top in Linux, etc.)

This is the only cause which should provoke 100% CPU usage, all the others produce elevated CPU usage but would not individually go all the way to 100%.

Host CPU throttling

On laptops, depending on your power settings, OS X might throttle the CPU speed. The CPU usage reported by Activity Monitor doesn't adjust for this (or does, depending on your point of view), so for example 24% of a core that is throttled 6x slower would be the same as 4% of an unthrottled core.

You can check this by doing something that causes the CPU to run at full speed (for example, run while true; do true; done in a Terminal window, use ctrl-C to break it when you're finished). If the CPU usage of the guest drops, this was the issue. As long as the laptop isn't actually running hotter, host CPU throttling isn't a problem.

Guest timer interrupts

Especially in Fusion 1.x, it is more expensive to take an interrupt in a guest than it is in native hardware. Some programs, such as QuickTime and iTunes, can raise the timer interrupt rate. Some guests, especially certain Linux distros, have a high (1 kHz as opposed to 100 Hz) timer interrupt rate compiled in to the kernel.

Devices

Having USB devices connected to the virtual machine can cause additional CPU usage, even if they're not doing anything. USB is a host-driven protocol; in physical machines, the USB controller must periodically poll all devices to see if they have any new data. In a virtual machine, the CPU has to do this work.

Multiple virtual processors

There is overhead in synchronizing virtual CPUs, since we have to wait for the host to schedule us properly, for a slightly more detailed explanation see Choosing the Right Virtual Machine Settings. As a wild guess, I would expect an idle vSMP guest to use perhaps 30% more CPU than an idle single vCPU guest.

Unity

In Unity mode, Fusion must do additional work to keep track of each guest window and see whether they have moved, changed size, etc.

Full vs Light versions

Description

When you download Fusion 2 or 3, there are two choices: full and light. What's the difference, and which do you want?

Explanation

In Fusion 2, the difference was that the full version came with McAfee VirusScan Plus, while the light version did not.

In Fusion 3, the difference is what packages are installed by default. If you do something which requires a package you don't have, Fusion will ask and then download the required package, so you don't lose any functionality by using the light version.

	Full	Light
Windows (2k and later) Tools
Mac OS X Tools
MacFUSE*
Linux Tools
McAfee VirusScan Plus
Windows (9x) Tools
Solaris Tools
Netware Tools
FreeBSD Tools

* Not a default install on 10.6 due to a bug which can cause the installer to spin forever; you can choose to select it anyway though

IMHO, the only reason to use the full installer is if you'll need the other packages and won't have internet (or a few other corner case scenarios). For the majority of users, the light version is better.

Color Printing

Description

You can print in color from OS X, but printing from the guest is only in grayscale. You are printing using Fusion's printing passthrough, a.k.a. driverless printing, a.k.a. ThinPrint.

Explanation

In order for the guest to know what it can print (in terms of capabilities, such as color, page size, and so on), it must learn this from Fusion (or to be more specific, ThinPrint). This information comes from ppd files that come with OS X, which outline what each printer can do. However, some ppd files incorrectly say that a printer cannot print in color - therefore the guest restricts itself to grayscale.

The solution is to edit the ppd file to correctly claim color printing capability. See for example Fusion 2.0 - Thinprint drivers and color printing.

Sound

Description

In some cases sound does not work.

A related problem is the built-in microphone not working.

An unrelated problem is sound being delayed or garbled.

An unrelated problem is that old guests which use a SoundBlaster16 card don't have audio in Fusion. This is (unfortunately) expected behavior. Unlike our other products, Fusion doesn't support SB16 as noted in the release notes.

Explanation

There are a few known causes, and you need to check each one.

If you used Converter to convert a virtual machine, the virtual sound device might have been configured in a way that Fusion doesn't understand. The simplest way to solve this is (with the virtual machine shut down) to go to Virtual Machine > Settings > Sound and select Remove Sound Device, then Add Sound Device. This should clear out the settings.

If you're using 32-bit Vista and have not updated, you need to run Windows Update to get the sound driver as noted in the release notes.

Make sure the guest sees the sound device and it's not showing errors (e.g. misconfigured driver).

Try disabling any audio filters that may have been installed on the host. We've seen some (such as an older version of SRS iWow or Digidesign CoreAudio) which will cause audio to not work. Check /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/ and /Users/${USER}/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/, as well as anywhere else audio plugins may have gotten installed. There are probably some which we aren't aware of that cause this problem - if you find one where disabling it fixes the sound, please let us know.

Disk Space

Description

The on-disk space (i.e. the space that OS X sees as used) doesn't always match what the guest thinks the size of the disk is. On-disk space may exceed the maximum size of the virtual disk, and is frequently less.

A related question is why deleting a file in the virtual machine does not reduce the on-disk size.

A related question is why deleting a virtual machine does not free as much space as the maximum size of the virtual disk.

Explanation

A virtual disk is only one part of a virtual machine, although it's usually the largest. The notable exception is a snapshot - a snapshot can potentially expand the required on-disk size by as much as the maximum size of all virtual disks in the virtual machine. As a thought experiment, consider what happens if you fill up your virtual disk, take a snapshot, then fill up the virtual disk with completely new data. Since a snapshot should let you revert to the state at the time of the snapshot, in this situation we could need to use (at least) twice the maximum capacity of the disk on the host. Remember that snapshots can increase the size of a virtual machine beyond the maximum disk size you chose when setting up the VM.

The default disk settings are set to use sparse disks. As A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion explains, sparse disks start out small and grow as needed, but an important thing to be aware of is that virtual disks don't shrink automatically. The reason is because Fusion has a very low-level view of the world - it doesn't know what files are to the guest, just that a guest wants to write some data to a particular block. For efficiency, most (all?) filesystems not only store data (e.g. the contents of that document you've been working on) but also metadata (e.g. the name, path, date modified, size, and so on). When you delete a file, most of the time you're deleting the metadata, not the actual data - this is why a giant file doesn't take long to delete, and is key for how data recovery software works (they try to guess/reconstruct the metadata). However, from Fusion's point of view, it doesn't know what the data means, so deleting metadata doesn't look any different from writing a small amount of data - Fusion has no idea that the data the file referred to isn't important anymore.

Enter Tools and the shrink process. Tools can use the guest operating system to tell what's actually a file (and thus contains valuable data) vs. what's wasted space (and can thus be gotten rid of and save space). Remember that the shrink process is necessary to free up unused space, and that it cannot be used if you have a snapshot or are using a preallocated disk.

Sparse disks confuse some people - if they tell Fusion to use 20 GB for a guest, then delete it and only recover 5 GB of space, some people get confused and wonder what happened to the other 15 GB. The answer is simple - Fusion never used that space in the first place, because sparse disks grow as needed.

If you use a sparse disk, one thing to watch out for is any program which constantly reads and writes data to the virtual disk - for example, defragmenters. These programs can cause the virtual disk to constantly grow (remember how it doesn't shrink automatically?), even though you're not actually doing anything. Either periodically shrink the disk (this doesn't work if you have a snapshot), avoid such programs, or accept that the virtual disk will grow (and perhaps use a preallocated disk, since at least then the size will be constant and you won't be surprised).

Virtual Hardware

Description

Virtual machines see a very different set of virtual hardware than is actually on the host. The most commonly asked-about one is the video card; other examples include (but are not limited to) the network card, keyboard/mouse, drives, and more.

A related question is why a device (such as an optical drive or a USB device) can only be used by one OS at a time.

A related question is why you can't dedicate a PCI cards to a guest.

Explanation

One of the key concepts of virtualization is resource control (along with equivalence and efficiency). In other words, a guest should not be able to affect things that the virtualization software does not allow it to affect. This was one of the major challenges to x86 virtualization - there are certain x86 instructions that cannot be easily handled, and was why VMware's Binary Translation technique was a big deal when it was new - it made x86 virtualization possible.

Many, if not all, devices assume they are controlled by exactly one OS - that is, whoever is talking to them is the one they should listen to. If two or more OSes were to give conflicting commands, devices would get confused, and then so would the OSes as they started to get unexpected errors. In these cases, we must either dedicate, or passthrough, the device to one OS, or emulate a similar device. Passthrough devices must be safe in the sense that anything a guest can do to a passed-though device must maintain the resource control criteria. As a concrete example, passthrough devices include USB devices, emulated devices include the default keyboard/mouse and sound.

Note that even Fusion goes through the host's drivers (again, only one OS controls the hardware, so that means everything funnels through the host drivers) - this means we're subject to any bugs or limitations of the host drivers.

Video cards are an example of a device which assumes it is controlled by exactly one OS. If a guest were to be able to access a graphics card directly, it could draw anywhere on screen it wanted, affect host textures, etc. Even a well-intentioned guest would cause problems, because it wouldn't be aware of what the host is doing ("Hey, what's this texture? I don't recognize it, must not be important!" and then your windows/icon/desktop/menus/etc. disappear). It's not possible to dedicate an entire graphics card to the guest either, since the underlying buses are also not safe to pass through - see for example Re: Guest able to directly access PCI cards for a good explanation.

Because of this, we take the emulation approach. The guest sees a VMware video card, and we do the work of converting guest commands into something that's safe and usable for the host video card. There's no point in installing drivers for the host video card in the guest (with the exception of Boot Camp virtual machines, where you might want to native boot) since the guest never gets to speak directly to the host video card.

One future possibility is the notion of virtualization-aware hardware, which does not make the assumption that it's only ever talking to one OS. Such hardware would have different contexts that the host can switch between for its own use or for guest use. Intel's Vanderpool and AMD's Pacifica are examples of virtualization-aware CPU technology. Other virtualization-aware hardware, such as for graphics, network, or storage, is theoretically possible but I don't think any currently exist, especially not for the consumer market. I'm am not sure when or even if they might become available.

Major Known Issues

vmdk files truncated at exactly 266240 bytes

Normally, even if you have to hard power off your Mac, your virtual disk files should be intact (though possibly inconsistent). However, if you have McAfee VirusScan 8.6.1 or McAfee Security 1.0 (other products or versions may also be affected) installed on the host, your vmdk files may be truncated at exactly 266240 bytes in some circumstances (such as when hard powering off your Mac). Truncations at other sizes may be the same issue, but the cases we've seen are at 266240.

This affects all versions of Fusion. We believe this is a bug in McAfee's kernel module com.mcafee.kext.Virex and have filed a bug with them about this.

As a workaround, exclude your virtual machines (or at least the .vmdk files) from being scanned. The exact instructions vary depending on what McAfee product you are using, but look under Preferences and either Anti-malware > Exclusions or More Options > Excluded File or Folder.

Updating from 2.0.5 Tools

There is a known problem with the 2.0.5 Tools for Windows where the updater does not work. You won't see this until you attempt to upgrade from 2.0.5 Tools (e.g. to 2.0.6 Tools) - nothing will happen. To work around this updater problem, uninstall VMware Tools, reboot the guest if necessary, and install VMware Tools.

HOWTO: Run ESXi in Fusion

etung — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:55:47 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome. People who are experienced with ESX(i), especially in a virtual machine, are encouraged to update this document.

If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. Please use the comments below only for things specific to this document; general questions are better off in the discussion section.

Introduction

VMware recently released ESXi as a free product. Think of ESXi as an operating system designed and optimized to do exactly one thing: run virtual machines. Unlike VMware Fusion, which is a hosted product, ESXi is a bare-metal hypervisor. ESXi is more restrictive about what hardware it can install on, but offers higher performance than our hosted products.

While it's not a good idea to run nested virtual machines, running ESXi in Fusion can be useful for learning or demonstrations. Be sure that you come into this with the right expectations, though - running in Fusion is not going to be anywhere near as fast as running on native hardware. Also keep in mind that I'm not an ESX expert, so some explanations might be off. Although this guide is written for Fusion, it should be applicable to other VMware products as well.

Note: Fusion 3.0 makes it easier to run ESXi. Choosing the VMware ESX/ESX Server 4.0 guest type sets all the necessary defaults.

Note: This document is currently a barebones sketch, intended to get people up and running quickly. I tested with Fusion 2.0b1 (89933) and ESXi 3.5U2 (103909).

Difficulty Level

Advanced: You should be familiar with editing .vmx files and be experienced with creating and using virtual machines, and preferably other VMware products. Additionally, the group of people interested in doing this in the first place is expected to be power users.

Requirements

ESXi iso image
64-bit dual-core Mac (or better)
2 GB RAM (ESXi seems to want at least 1 GB)
Windows (for VI Client)

Prepare

Create a new virtual machine for ESXi using the iso image. ESXi isn't based on any other operating system (it's our own proprietary kernel), so select Other/Other 64-bit as the Guest OS type. Unfortunately, ESXi's hardware requirements are stricter than the default Other/Other 64-bit virtual hardware, so we need to make some changes before we can power it on.

Disable 3D acceleration and printing passthrough. I don't know if they hurt, but they're certainly not going to help.
Change to 2 vCPUs and (at least) 1 GB RAM.
Delete the default IDE vmdk.
Quit Fusion, we need to edit the .vmx file
Create an LSIlogic .vmdk in the .vmwarevm bundle, e.g. `/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmware-vdiskmanager -c -s 10GB -a lsilogic -t 1 ESXi.vmdk`
Add the following to the .vmx file:

scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "ESXi.vmdk"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "TRUE"
monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware"

You can also do some cleanup, such as deleting the IDE disk.

Note: For older versions of VMware products, monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware" used to be monitor_control.vt32 = "TRUE"

TODO: cover other setup, e.g. host-only network for VIClient

Install

Install should be straightforward at this point. ESXi will attempt to put the network adapter in promiscuous mode, which will cause Fusion to prompt you for admin access. TODO: add more details

When it's done, you can customize the setup (e.g. select a root password).

Install VMware Infrastructure Client

From a Windows computer (possibly a virtual machine), use your web browser of choice to connect to the IP shown on the ESXi console. This will download the VMware Infrastructure Client, which is used to manage ESX servers. Run the setup.

TODO: Check if VIClient works in WINE, I hear it does.
TODO: Instructions to enter license
TODO: Write up how to create a virtual machine using VICllient.
TODO: Point out some features, such as resource allocation

Further Resources

TODO: put in some stuff about ESX, Virtual Center, etc.

A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion

etung — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:19:33 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback, suggestions, and edits are welcome.

This document is intended for someone new to Fusion, and possibly someone who is new to Macs in general. It describes basic terminology/concepts, where to find things, and notes on using virtual machines.

If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. People can't seem to stop using the comments section inappropriately, so I've locked it. For any concerns about this document, please PM me instead.

Another good resource for beginners is the free eBook Take Control of VMware Fusion 3 (oriented towards Fusion 3, obviously).

More advanced users may be interested in A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion.

Terminology

Virtualization software lets you run multiple operating systems at once. A hosted product (such as Fusion, Workstation, Server, and Player) runs on top of another OS, called the host. In the case of Fusion, the host is OS X. The OS (such as Windows XP, Ubuntu 7.04, or most x86 OSes) that you run inside the virtualization software is called the guest.

As a side note and comparison, bare metal virtualization (such as ESX) gets rid of the host OS to improve performance and reduce security vulnerabilities.

See Glossary of Virtualization (and Computing) Terms for a more complete list.

Where to Find Things

Fusion and vmware-vmx Processes

When Fusion runs a virtual machine, there are actually two processes involved: the Fusion GUI and vmware-vmx. The GUI takes care of things like accepting input and drawing to the screen, while the vmware-vmx process does the heavy work of actually running the guest. If you ever want to see how much CPU Fusion is taking up, remember that you need to consider both processes. vmware-vmx is a root-owned process, so to see it in Activity Monitor you have to choose to view All Processes.

If you force quit Fusion, this only kills the GUI process; the vmware-vmx process continues running. If you really want to force quit all of Fusion, you need to kill vmware-vmx as well. Note: If it's just the guest that's not responding, you can tell Fusion to shut down or restart it by holding option and selecting Virtual Machine > Power Off or Virtual Machine > Reset. This is similar to pulling the power cord on a physical computer.

Virtual Machine Files

For non-boot Camp virtual machines, Fusion puts virtual machines (VMs) in "/Users/yourusername/Documents/Virtual Machines/" by default. Boot Camp virtual machines are located in "/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/". You can also see the location of a virtual machine in the Virtual Machine Library by hovering the mouse over the listing - the location should pop up in a tooltip.

Another simple way to locate your VM while open is to Control-Click on the VM windows icon. This will bring up a pop-up box showing all of the enclosing folders to your virtual machine. Clicking on its proximal containing folder will open it in a new Finder window.

VMs are packaged up in bundles a.k.a. packages, which is OS X's way of showing things that really belong together. Other examples of bundles include most applications and installers. Fusion bundles have the extension ".vmwarevm" (OS X may hide this by default). You can examine the contents of a bundle by going to the bundle in the Finder, ctrl-clicking it, and choosing "Show Package Contents"

By default, bundles contain the files that describe a virtual machine. These files include:

A virtual disk file (*.vmdk)
- This can be a single large file or many 2GB chunks, depending on how you set up your disk. If you have a snapshot, there will also be more of these.
A configuration file (*.vmx)
- This is a plaintext file describing the virtual machine, such as which files it uses, how much RAM it gets, and various settings. Since it's a plaintext file, you can use your favorite text editor to modify it, but be sure that the virtual machine and Fusion is not running when you do this. Note that editing the .vmx file is not supported and can cause problems if you don't know what you're doing.
A BIOS file (*.nvram)
- This contains information such as the virtual machine's boot order
Log file(s) (vmware.log)
- This is a plaintext file that contains information on the most recent run of the virtual machine, and corresponds to the vmware-vmx process. The next-most-recent is called vmware-0.log, then vmware-1.log, and finally vmware-2.log. If you ever have a problem with Fusion, you may be asked to provide this file.

Other files are created when you run the virtual machine. These include:

Lock files (*.lck)
Memory file (*.vmem)

Other Files

Fusion UI log ("/Users/yourusername/Library/Logs/VMware Fusion/vmware-vmfusion.log")
- Just as the vmware-vmx process creates vmware.log, the Fusion UI process creates this log. Like vmware.log, this is a rotating log.
Tools images ("/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/isoimages/")
- You shouldn't normally have to deal with these, Fusion should automatically take care of connecting them to the guest when you choose Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools.
User-wide configuration, essentially .vmx defaults. Individual .vmx files override this. ("/Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config")
User-wide preferences, mostly UI controls. Individual .vmx settings do not override this because these settings do not apply to individual VMs. ("/Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/preferences")
- Note the difference between the config and preferences files is mostly by convention, it's possible (but bad practice) to mix entries between them. This doesn't always work, though.

Working With Virtual Machines

With the exception of Boot Camp virtual machines, VMs are just files (albeit very large ones that happens to be able to run other programs). Because of this, you can back them up by simply making a copy to external media (Warning: FAT32 has filesize limitations) and restore them by copying back. You delete them from your computer by deleting them in the Finder (you can remove them from the Virtual Machine Library by selecting the entry and pressing Delete).

Boot Camp virtual machines are a little different, because instead of having a virtual hard disk, the VM uses the Boot Camp partition. Thus you can't simply copy the virtual machine to make a backup.

Fusion (the application) is distinct from virtual machines. Updating or uninstalling Fusion does not affect any virtual machines you have, just as updating iTunes does not affect your mp3s and updating Word doesn't affect your documents. When changing the version of Fusion (or any VMware product), it's good practice to shut your virtual machines down first (e.g. don't suspend a virtual machine then open it with a different version of Fusion). While it'll probably work, we don't guarantee it.

Important: Whenever you do file operations (move, copy, edit, delete, etc.) to a VM, make sure it is powered down and Fusion isn't running. You don't want to change the data out from under Fusion.

Virtual Machine Settings

Disk Size

When selecting disk size, there are two big considerations. The first is how much space the operating system needs. Some guest OSes need lots of space -- I believe Vista wants 7 GB -- while at the other end of the spectrum, Linux Live CDs don't need any. The other concern is how much space you need. If you're just surfing the web and downloading the occasional file, you might not need much extra space. On the other hand, if you're going to be doing things like working with databases, editing video, compiling large programs, etc., you might want lots more space.

I's OK if you selected a size that's too small - unlike a normal physical disk, it's possible to expand a virtual disk. This is a slightly involved process, and Pat Lee has written a good step-by-step guide Resizing Virtual Disks With Step by Step Instructions (a similar procedure works for other guest OSes). You can also add additional virtual disks later, which is an easier way of increasing space. However, the easiest of all is to get it right from the beginning.

Disk Type

Virtual disks can be monolithic or split, and sparse or preallocated. These options can be found under the Advanced disk options triangle in the Virtual Hard Disk step. It is possible to convert between these options later using vmware-vdiskmanager, but it may require a lot of extra space. The default type is monolithic-sparse. My personal recommendation is split-sparse.

Monolithic disks means the virtual disk is one file, while a split disk means the virtual disk is broken up into chunks of at most 2GB each. The split type should be used any time you want to keep the VM on a limited filesystem (such as FAT32) that does not understand large files. The split type also makes certain operations easier - for example, compacting a monolithic disk requires as much additional space as the entire virtual disk, but compacting a split disk only requires an additional 2GB. In some cases, split disks are also easier to repair (i.e. fewer steps) if something goes wrong.

Sparse disks start off small and grow as needed to the maximum size you specified. Preallocated disks are always the maximum size that you specified. Sparse disks are nice because they don't take up space until they need it, while preallocated disks may avoid fragmentation problems on the host. Sparse disks can also be compacted (say you start off with 4 GB of data, write 6 GB more, then delete 5 GB - you could compact a sparse disk back down to 5 GB) by using VMware Tools in the guest. One caveat is that you can't compact a sparse disk if you have a snapshot.

RAM Size

It's important for the guest to have enough RAM to be able to do whatever it needs to, and also important for the host to have enough RAM to be able to do whatever it needs to. It's a bad idea to allocate too much or too little RAM to the guest. As with choosing virtual disk size, the correct choice depends on the guest OS and what you want to do with the VM. The choice of guest determines the minimum RAM you should give it, and the amount of RAM your computer has determines the maximum RAM you should give the guest. Other considerations include what you plan on doing in the host - if you're going to be running Photoshop, iTunes, Mail, VLC, etc. all at the same time, you might want to consider leaving more RAM for OS X. When the virtual machine is off, you can change the RAM allocation under Virtual Machine > Settings > Memory.

Virtual machines love RAM - once you've tweaked settings, the most cost-effective way to improve virtual machine performance is usually to install more RAM on the host. This has two advantages - you can give more RAM to the guest or OS X. If you give it to the guest, your guest applications can use it. If you give it to OS X, OS X can use the RAM as a cache to improve disk performance in the guest.

If you experience stuttering in iTunes or pauses when switching back and forth between the guest and OS X, try disabling disk caching by choosing VMware Fusion > Preferences > Optimize for Mac OS application performance.

VMware Tools

By itself, Fusion has a very low-level view of the world - it sees CPU instructions, not programs; disk blocks, not filesystems; etc. This keeps things simple ("all" we have to do is correctly virtualize hardware without worrying about what's the guest is trying to do), but it makes it hard to do certain things that require higher level knowledge. Some examples include copying files directly into or out of a guest, being more efficient than regular drivers, and being able to tell when the mouse enters or exits the guest. To get around this, Fusion uses a helper in the guest called VMware Tools. Tools gives Fusion the high-level knowledge to take shortcuts and do things it otherwise couldn't.

Installing Tools

The general way to install Tools is as follows:

Make sure the guest has an optical drive. If you cannot add one, it may still be possible to install Tools by getting the files in some other way, perhaps over the network, but that is beyond the scope of this document.
Make sure the virtual machine is running and logged in; you will need administrator privileges in the guest.
Connect the appropriate Tools image by selecting Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools. The Tools CD should appear in the guest.
The next step varies depending on the guest and your setup, but some general guidelines are:

Windows: Tools should install automatically unless you've disabled autorun, in which case you'll have to run D:\setup.exe (or wherever your optical drive is) yourself.
Linux: Installing is a two step process: Unpack and install the tools, then configure them. If you're using a RPM-based distro (e.g. Red Hat), use the .rpm, otherwise use the .tgz by unpacking it and running vmware-install.pl as root. To configure tools, run vmware-config-tools.pl.

More detailed instructions (including instructions for Solaris/Netware/FreeBSD) can be found at http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/

Determining Which Version of Tools You Have

On Windows, open the VMware Toolbox by clicking on the VMware-three-boxes logo ( ) in the taskbar. On Linux, run vmware-toolbox (some options require running as root). In either case, go to the About tab and look for "Version X.y.z, build-NNNNN"

How To Shrink

Note: You cannot shrink a disk if it has snapshots.

Open the Toolbox as in the previous section, select the Shrink tab, select the partition(s) you want to shrink, then press the Shrink button. Fusion will think for a while as it figures out which parts of the disk are actual data and marks parts which aren't needed anymore, then ask you for a confirmation. Accept and Fusion will finish shrinking the disk. The entire process may take some time (on the order of an hour), especially if you have a large, empty disk. Other running programs on the host may also slow down the process.

Starting a VM...

...in One Click

You probably already know you can open an application by opening a document that is associated with the application. Remembering that a virtual machine is still a document (just a very large one that's capable of running other programs), you can do things like putting the VM on the right side of the Dock and launch it in one click.

...in Unity or Fullscreen mode

In 2.0, when you suspend, Fusion remembers the last view mode you used and changes back to it when you resume. So instead of powering off your virtual machine, you can suspend it and next time you come back, it will be in the proper view mode.

In 1.x, things were a little different.
Once you've run a VM in Unity, the .vmwarevm bundle should have a folder named "Applications" that has small helper applications representing guest apps. If you open one of these, it should start the guest program (after powering on the VM and switching to Unity, if these have not already been done). You can also put them in the Dock. So to start in Unity, just start the VM via the helper app you want to use.

An alternative that also allows starting up in fullscreen is to use AppleScript: AppleScript to Run Virtual Machine and switch to Full Screen View or Unity View at Login.

...at Login

If you go to System Preferences > Accounts > yourusername > Login Items, you can select applications or documents to open at login time. You can of course put a virtual machine here, too.

...at Boot Time

See HOWTO: Run a Virtual Machine at Boot

Sharing Virtual Machines Between Users

First, the caveats: Only one person can be using the virtual machine at a time (and Fast User Switching doesn't count). Suspending (and possibly snapshotting) the VM will probably cause other people to not be able to use the VM.

Important: Whenever you do file operations (move, copy, edit, delete, etc.) to a VM, make sure it is powered down and Fusion isn't running. You don't want to change the data out from under Fusion.

To do this, the main things you need to do are:

Move the virtual machine to a shared location so other users can access it
- An example of this is /Users/Shared/
Change permissions so that any user can access the virtual machine
- For OS X 10.4 In the Finder, select the virtual machine and select Get Info. Then change "Ownership & Permissions > Others" to "Read & Write". (I'm not sure if you need to do this for Group Access also). You also need to do this to the contents of the VM - remember the bit earlier about how to get inside a bundle? Do that and repeat the Get Info correction on everything in the bundle.
- For OS X 10.5 In the Finder, select the virtual machine and select Get Info. Click the disclosure triangle beside "Sharing & Permissions". Then click on the lock on the bottom right and authenticate with your password. Click the + sign on the left side of the window, click on the user you want to access the virtual machine and click "select". Once the user is added give that user Read & Write permissions. The changes are usually applied to the items in the virtual machine package but you should Ctrl+Click the virtual machine and show package contents then verify the files have the same change applied.

Fusion doesn't scan your hard drive for virtual machines, it just remembers ones it's seen before. So in order for the shared VM to appear in another user's Virtual Machine Library, you need to either open the shared VM in Fusion as that user or drag-and-drop it to that user's Library.

Remember that if you've moved the virtual machine from it's original location then you'll need to re-add it to your own Virtual Machine Library so that the new location is taken into account.

Sharing Virtual Machines Between Platforms

Fusion uses the same virtual machine format as Workstation 6 and Player 2. Generally speaking, you should be able to move a virtual machine between these programs.

The fine print is that there's the usual cross-platform caveats (i.e. OS X uses "/Users/yourusername/", Windows uses "C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\My Documents\", Linux might use "/home/yourusername/"), so absolute paths in the .vmx need to be corrected. Not all features are in all products (e.g. Fusion lacks Record/Replay, Workstation lacks Unity, etc.), and hardware may be a problem too (e.g. Macs don't have a parallel port).

Older virtual machines, such as those created in Workstation 5, should also work in Fusion (and the other current versions), they'll just be missing newer features such as USB 2. You can upgrade older VMs by choosing Virtual Machine > Upgrade Virtual Machine. If you need to use a Fusion-created VM with an older VMware product such as Workstation 5 or Server 1, you need to downgrade the VM. Fusion doesn't have this capability, but Workstation 6 does.

Fusion doesn't scan your hard drive for virtual machines, it just remembers those that it has seen before. If you have an existing VM you'd like to use, you need to open it in Fusion or drag-and-drop it to the Virtual Machine Library window before it will show up there.

Working With Multiple Displays

Fusion supports spanning the full screen view over multiple displays in guest OSes with a compatible display model. Guests OSes known to work include Windows XP and Vista, Ubuntu 8.04 and above (and presumably any Linux distribution using an Xorg version supporting the same display model). Windows 2000 is known not to work.

Multiple display support is not a VM hardware setting. It is enabled at run-time via the View / Use All Displays in Full Screen menu option.

Choosing the Right Virtual Machine Settings

etung — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:31:43 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback, suggestions, and edits are welcome.

This document is intended for someone new to Fusion, and possibly someone who is new to virtualization in general. It describes some choices a new user faces when setting up a virtual machine. This guide is written for VMware Fusion 2.0.x; earlier versions have slightly different wording in some places. New users may also be interested in A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion.

If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. Please use the comments below only for things specific to this document; general questions are better off in the discussion section.

To Boot Camp or Not To Boot Camp?

Fusion can use existing Boot Camp partitions or use a virtual disk stored in a large binary file. There are advantages to each, but my general advice is that unless you need a specific trait of a Boot Camp virtual machine, it is better to use a file-based (normal) virtual machine.

Advantages of a Boot Camp virtual machine

Can boot natively into the guest OS for full access to hardware - useful if you need full 3D support, Firewire, ExpressCard, or absolute maximum CPU/network/RAM.
Useful if you already have a Boot Camp partition set up and don't want to reinstall programs
Converting to a normal virtual machine is relatively easy
No fragmentation problems from OS X's point of view (the guest filesystem may still become fragmented)

Advantages of a normal virtual machine

Portable between disks/computers
Suspend/Snapshot (this is disabled by default for Boot Camp virtual machines because doing either and then booting natively could cause disk corruption)
Fewer/no reactivation problems (while this should also be fine for Boot Camp virtual machines, it's one less thing that can go wrong and some people report problems)
Probably faster guest disk performance (because OS X can cache things, and because OS X's raw disk path is not optimized)
Virtual disk can be sparse (starts off small and grows as necessary)
No need for an administrator password (especially important if the user is not an administrator)

Which Guest OS?

If you already have a license or requirement for a particular OS, your choice may be easy - just use what you have. On the other hand, if you're thinking of buying a license, or want to try out other OSes, this might be worth some thought. Which OS is "better" is a personal thing and the subject of many a geek flame war, but here are some of my thoughts:

Windows Vista has a pretty large set of system requirements: about 8 GB disk just for the Windows install, and 1 GB RAM is preferable. XP has a much lighter set of requirements: 2 GB disk just for the Windows install and 256 MB RAM is fine. Windows 7 is supposedly lighter than Vista and closer to XP in terms of system requirements. Of course, your experience will depend on which programs you need.
Fusion does not have a 3D WDDM driver, which is a requirement to run Vista's (or 7's) Aero interface.
If you're not tied to Windows, consider Linux. Most Linux distributions are free, and are more than good enough for everyday tasks like web browsing and email. They also come with a bunch of free software, such as OpenOffice and the GIMP. If you decide you don't like it, you can always go back to Windows.
Fusion also supports (and has Tools for) Solaris, Novell Netware, and FreeBSD. These are probably not of as much interest for a beginner, but if you decide you like playing with OSes, you can try them out too.

How Much Disk Space?

Although it's possible to change the size a normal virtual disk, this can be difficult for beginners, so it's better to get the size right from the start. Consider how you plan to use the guest - what programs and what data. For example, a fresh install of XP (with all patches) will run about 2 GB, but a fresh install of Vista will be more like 8 GB. Office, Photoshop, and other large programs have their own footprint to account for. Regular files are small, but things like digital video can be large (about 10 GB/hour). Finally, you want some breathing room in case your needs change a little bit and for other things like swap space.

Another concern is how much space you have available. Shrinking a disk may require as much free space as the partition to be shrunk (this is usually the size of the virtual disk). Thus it's a bad idea to make the virtual disk as large as the free space.

Remember that snapshots can cause the virtual machine to be larger than the maximum size of the disk - in the worst case, a snapshot can be as large as the maximum size. Thus a virtual machine with a 10 GB disk might need as much as 20 GB space if it has one snapshot, up to 30 GB if it has two, and so on. Also keep in mind that Autoprotect is based on snapshots, so if you're keeping 10 autoprotect snapshots, you might need 110 GB for the disk (10 GB for the base disk + 10 snapshots at 10 GB each).

What Type of Disk?

Under the advanced disk options of the Virtual Hard Disk step, you have the option of using a preallocated or sparse disk, and also monolithic or split. These options are briefly described in A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion. My personal recommendation is sparse-split (e.g. leave "Allocate all disk space now" unchecked, but check "Split disk into 2GB files"), but if you have a large virtual disk (e.g. on the order of 100 GB) and use snapshots or Autoprotect, you may be better off with sparse-monolithic in order to avoid running out of file descriptors.

Remember that although sparse disks grow as necessary, they don't shrink automatically. If you have a sparse disk with 5 GB, write 5 more GB and then delete 2 GB, you'll still have 10 GB used, not the 8 GB you might expect. The reason for this is that on most OSes, when you delete a file, you're just changing a small amount of metadata for a file to say "nope, nothing here" (this is how disk recovery programs work - they reconstruct what the metadata probably was). However, Fusion operates at too low a level to know the difference between a deleted file that's just wasting space and actual valuable data. When you delete a file, from Fusion's point of view very little has changed. To shrink a disk, Fusion needs help from something that does know about this difference. During the shrink process, VMware Tools tells the guest OS to identify stuff that's unnecessary so that Fusion can compress the disk. However, this can be a somewhat slow process, and Fusion doesn't start the process until you tell it to.

To Share or Not To Share?

If you use the Easy Install, one of the options is about making your home folder available to the guest. Your choice controls whether the guest can read or write to your home folder (and in the case of Windows Easy Install, whether special folders are mirrored). This option is not necessary to install or run the guest, and you may wish to disable it for better guest isolation. Leaving it enabled may make it more convenient to access your files.

How Much RAM?

Software, especially modern OSes, like to gobble RAM. While it might seem like a good idea to give the guest as much RAM as possible, remember that OS X needs some too. A good split depends on how much RAM you have total and what you're doing in the host/guest - if you're doing more work in the host, give more to the host; if you're doing more in the guest, give more to the guest.

You can change the amount of RAM while the guest is powered off (suspended doesn't count) by choosing Virtual Machine > Settings > Memory. If you want to change this before installing the guest, uncheck "Start virtual machine and install operating system now" on the final setup page of the New Virtual Machine Assistant.

After you've installed the guest OS and your programs, gbullman has a good post on how to experimentally determine how much RAM the guest wants: Re: What's the sweet spot (memory-wise) for my Macbook?.

How Many Virtual Processors?

At first glance, it might seem that enabling multiple virtual processors is always a good thing, but in many cases it's not. To use an analogy, let's say that physical processing units are seats at a restaurant (granted, a very small restaurant - for the sake of this example, let's say it has 4 seats, e.g. a 2x2 core Mac Pro). Processes are people who want to eat, and sometimes you get a group of people who all want to be seated together. It's easier for the restaurant (i.e. host OS scheduler) to handle seating (i.e. running) 4 single people than a single group of 4 people, especially when you remember that a normal system will easily have tens or hundreds of processes at a time.

To turn this analogy back to a technical explanation, a common problem is synchronization, where a program decides it needs to make sure it's at the same point across different threads or processors -- in other words, a group of people who want to be seated together. On a physical computer, it's not a big deal because the other CPU isn't doing anything else but catching up (e.g. if one person is a little late for the reservation, it's not a big deal). However, on a virtual machine, the guest is potentially competing with other programs for CPU time - this is more of a problem on Macs with only two cores to begin with (i.e. there aren't as many seats to go around in the first place), which is every currently shipping model except Mac Pros. While the guest is trying to synchronize, even if Fusion has time on one core, it may not be able to make progress and "spins" doing nothing, since it needs both cores at the same time. To make matters worse, OS X is the one to decide when and where programs get to run, and last I heard, there were no way to ask OS X for the necessary scheduling (i.e. there's no way to make group reservations; the best we can do is to sit down and hope that everyone manages to show up before the restaurant kicks us out and moves on to the next set of people). Exact numbers of course vary by the exact setup, but a rough numbers I've heard of additional idle CPU overhead is in the ballpark of 30%.

This is not to say that using multiple virtual processors is always bad. If you have a workload that actually can make use of multiple cores, you can definitely get a boost. Another useful case (though probably rarer) is if a developer needs to test a program on multiple processors. In general, though, my advice for this area is like Boot Camp - use it if you know you need it, but otherwise leave it alone.

You can change the number of virtual processors while the guest is powered off (suspended doesn't count) by choosing Virtual Machine > Settings > Processors. If you want to change this before installing the guest, uncheck "Start virtual machine and install operating system now" on the final setup page of the New Virtual Machine Assistant.

Note: Many operating systems have different kernels or hardware abstraction layers (HALs) depending on how many cores they detect at runtime. Changing the number of virtual processors after installation may not trigger a change of the kernel/HAL. One notable example of this is Windows XP, and Microsoft does not support changing the HAL without a complete reinstall (it's unofficially possible). Therefore, it's better to choose the appropriate number of virtual processors before installing the guest.

NAT, Bridged, or Host-only?

The default network type, NAT, allows multiple computers (e.g. the guest, in addition to the host) to share one connection. This is good for situations where you can only get one IP address (such as when you're directly connected to a cable modem), as well as preventing external computers (perhaps with viruses) from initiating connections to the guest. On the other hand, some useful things, such as Bonjour networking, require Bridged networking. A more detailed explanation of these modes is in Understanding Networking in VMware Fusion.

If one type of networking isn't working for you, try the other. If you change the networking type, remember to get a new IP address for the guest if necessary (if you don't know whether it's necessary, it probably is) - exact instructions vary depending on the guest, but for Windows disabling/enabling the network adapter or restarting the guest should do it.

If your guest requires internet access, my suggestion is NAT if possible and bridged if necessary. Host-only (or even no network at all) is more secure, but is suitable for only some use cases.

Viruses and Other Malware

You should treat a guest the same way as you would treat a physical computer with regards to security. This means that if you connect it to the internet (which is the default), you should have a firewall, antivirus, and regular updates. If you have shared folders enabled, this may provide a path for malware to read your personal data or (if the guest is able to write to the folder) infect files. While infected files probably won't affect OS X (I've not heard of cross-platform viruses yet), they could infect other guests that access the files.

Glossary of Virtualization (and Computing) Terms

etung — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:34:27 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback, suggestions, and edits are welcome.

This document is intended for someone new to virtualization or who needs to understand the terminology used when discussing virtualization. Other links of interest include A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion and Frequently Asked Questions about VMware Fusion. Note: This glossary of virtualization is aimed towards x86, VMware, and specifically Fusion.

If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. Please use the comments below only for things specific to this document; general questions are better off in the discussion section.

Term	Meaning
ACE	A VMware product that provides a way to secure and manage virtual machines, for example in the workplace. The proper name is "VMware ACE".
AMD-V	AMD's implementation of virtualization hardware assist
Binary Translation	A virtualization technique pioneered by VMware in the late '90s for the x86 architecture where the instruction stream is inspected and non-virtualizable machine instructions are replaced with "safe" code. Contrast with hardware assist.
Boot Camp virtual machine	Using an existing Boot Camp installation as a virtual machine. Contrast with normal virtual machine.
console window	The window on the host which allows you to interact with the guest. Note: Not really applicable to a Unity situation, this is mainly single-window mode.
Converter	A VMware product that converts a physical (or virtual) Windows machine to a virtual machine. The proper name is "VMware Converter".
core	Computational unit. There may be multiple cores in a socket. Note this is a generic term, not to be confused with Intel's Core (Solo, Duo, etc.) product line.
COW disk	Copy-On-Write disk. Part of a snapshot, and keeps track of disk changes since the snapshot was taken.
CPU	Central Processing Unit. Depending on context, might refer to a core or a socket.
ESXi	A free VMware virtualization software product aimed at businesses and enterprise. Unlike Player/Fusion/Workstation/Server, does not run on top of another OS. The proper name is "VMware ESXi".
file-based disk	A virtual disk where the contents are stored in a file (or multiple files, for split disks). Contrast with raw disk.
Fusion	A VMware hosted virtualization software product. Runs on Mac OS X hosts. The proper name is "VMware Fusion".
fullscreen	A view mode where the guest display takes up an entire physical monitor (or more). Contrast with single-window and Unity.
guest	The operating system that runs in a virtual machine. There can be multiple guests per physical machine, but only one per virtual machine. Contrast with host.
grab	To direct input (i.e. keyboard and mouse) to a virtual machine, for example by clicking in a console window. Contrast with ungrab.
hard ungrab	Forced ungrab, such as by pressing ctrl-cmd (by default) in Fusion.
hardware assist	A virtualization technique where the CPU allows software to specify instructions (e.g. non-virtualizable ones) to cause traps (thus making them virtualizable). Examples on the x86 architecture include VT-x and AMD-V. Contrast with Binary Translation.
host	The OS that has direct control of the hardware. There is only one host per physical machine. What the virtualization software runs on; e.g. for Fusion, the host is OS X. Contrast with guest.
HGFS	Abbreviation for "Host-Guest File System". VMware's name for the guest-visible aspect of a Shared Folder.
hypervisor	Software that controls virtual machines, managing resources and ensuring that guests are properly isolated.
Importer	A companion program for Fusion 1.x that translates third-party virtual machines (e.g. Parallels, VirtualPC) to a format that Fusion understands. As of Fusion 2, this functionality is built in to Fusion. The proper name is "VMware Importer".
NIC	Network Interface Card. What a computer uses to talk to the network; can be wired or wireless.
Player	A free VMware hosted virtualization software product aimed at end users. Has fewer features than Workstation or Fusion. Runs on Windows and Linux hosts. The proper name is "VMware Player".
pNIC	Physical NIC; what the host uses to talk to the network.
vNIC	Virtual NIC; what we present to a guest. Our vNICs always appear as wired devices to the guest, even if the pNIC is a wireless device.
network share	A method for accessing one computer's filesystem from another computer; not restricted to virtualization. Well-known examples include NFS and SMB/CIFS. Does not require VMware Tools, but does require a network connection. Contrast with Shared Folder.
normal virtual machine	For example, what you get when you create a new virtual machine with all defaults. A normal virtual machine is portable between computers. A normal virtual machine does not have things such as raw disks.
Operating System	Software that controls the hardware and runs other programs. Well-known examples include Windows and OS X.
OS	Abbreviation for operating system.
partition	noun: A self-contained region of a hard disk that usually contains a filesystem. verb: to create a partition A partition is not the same as a virtual machine, nor do you have to partition your Mac's hard drive to create a virtual machine.
physical machine	A computer that (for example) you could touch or throw out a window. Contrast with virtual machine.
raw disk	A virtual disk where the contents are stored directly on a partition on the physical machine. Not safe to use with snapshots or suspending. For example, a Boot Camp virtual machine uses a raw disk. Contrast with file-based disk.
Shared Folder	In the context of VMware, a specific method for accessing the host filesystem from the guest using VMware Tools. Does not require a network connection. Contrast with network share.
single window	A view mode where the guest's display appears in a single host window. This is the default view in Fusion. Contrast with Unity and fullscreen.
SMP	Symmetric MultiProcessing. Using multiple cores at once.
vSMP	Virtual Symmetric MultiProcessing. Using multiple cores in one virtual machine.
snapshot	A way to save all state (disk, RAM, CPU) of a virtual machine (note this does not include network, since that is external). As long as you don't delete the snapshot (or underlying base disks), you can return to this state. Useful for testing purposes or for remembering a known-good setup.
socket	A (physical) computational unit, e.g. something you would plug a CPU into. A computer may have multiple sockets, a socket may have multiple cores. Can also refer to a particular type of communication method between programs.
soft ungrab	Automatic ungrab, such as when your mouse leaves the console window.
Tools	Optional software installed in the guest that improves performance and usability. The proper name is "VMware Tools".
ungrab	To direct input (i.e. keyboard and mouse) away from a virtual machine. See also soft ungrab and hard ungrab. Contrast with grab.
Unity	A view mode where guest windows appear to be on the host, e.g. you can interleave them with host windows. Requires VMware Tools; not available for all guests. Contrast with single-window and fullscreen.
virtual machine	A "computer" that exists only in software. Contrast with physical machine.
virtual machine monitor	Another name for a hypervisor.
VM	Common abbreviation for virtual machine.
VMware	Company that makes virtualization (and related) software.
VT-x	Intel's implementation of virtualization hardware assist for x86. All Intel Macs have this.
Workstation	A VMware hosted virtualization software product aimed at developers and testers, with a number of features that Fusion does not have. Runs on Windows and Linux hosts. The proper name is "VMware Workstation".

Poor (wo)Man's Remote Control

njpomeroy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:09:34 GMT

yes, "open vnc://<server:port>" will open Mac OS X Leopard's Screen Sharing viewer be default (even if Apple Remote Desktop is installed). Ot should be the same in 10.6 Snow Leopard as well.

VMX Extras

josephlew1s — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:28:16 GMT

Hi, what exactly did you do to get VMWare to recognize your Universal Remote MX-900?

I'm also using XP on OS X.

Thanks

Long usernames

etung — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:36:51 GMT

Formatting in How to disable Windows Program shortcuts (and any top-level page listing that thread) is a bit off because WhyDontYouUseAjaxToCheckIfTheUsernameIsInUse is too long, though I'm not sure what a good solution would be. I think that user may also have a gripe about the username selection process.

Automator Actions

Aldupon — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:58:09 GMT

I tried it and the VM is pausing. But.....
Now VW Ware is consuming 90% of the processing power in telling that its "not responding".

What can be done about this?

Bug Hunt: Lost DNS

etung — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:10:16 GMT

I don't really understand the intricacies of the bug, but reading the internal comments, I think it would affect all connections in the guest, not just those to the host. Plus, it should be fixed in Fusion 2.0.5, so if you're using that and still seeing this behavior, it's probably different.

Third-party utilities/scripts for VMware Fusion

etung — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:11:47 GMT

This is a list of links to third-party utilities and scripts that may be useful to VMware Fusion users. This does not imply endorsement or support by VMware, it's strictly informational. Feel free to add others.

PMRC

Remotely control virtual machines running on another Mac via the magic of ssh+vmrun+VNC. Requires Fusion 2.0 or later (on the remote Mac) and some setup before using.

Network Settings

Script to manage Fusion's network settings. See also How to modify Fusion network settings whitepaper.

Automator Actions

These Automator Actions are wrappers around vmrun, a command-line interface to Fusion. Requires Fusion 2.0 or later.

VMX Extras

A GUI way to change semi-common settings that don't show up in Fusion's UI.

vdiskmanager GUI

A GUI wrapper around vmware-vdiskmanager, allowing you to work with .vmdk files. It is not as needed in Fusion 2.0, where many of the capabilities are now built in to Fusion.

RemoteDisplay.vnc.key

Compute a hashed version of a password for use in a .vmx file.

vmsd-grapher

Shows a tree view of snapshots. Useful if you have a large number of snapshots in a complex arrangement.

Information Gathering for VMware Fusion

etung — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:40:49 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome. Feel free to extend.

This document contains step-by-step instructions for common information-gathering tasks. It is intended to help novice users who may not already be familiar with these techniques. If you've been directed to this document, someone probably needs information from you in order to help with a problem.

Note If you're asked to provide multiple pieces of information, you can zip them all together, rather than doing each one separately.

Locate your virtual machine

In Fusion's Virtual Machine Library (Window > Virtual Machine Library), ctrl-click the virtual machine and select "Show in Finder". A Finder window should open showing the virtual machine.

Note: Some people get confused about this, so it's worth mentioning: a virtual machine is not the same thing as the VMware Fusion application (just like an .mp3 is not the same as iTunes, a .doc is not the same as Microsoft Word, etc.).

Get inside a .vmwarevm bundle

Locate your virtual machine (see prior section).
In the Finder, ctrl-click the .vmwarevm bundle and select "Show Package Contents". A Finder window should open showing the contents of the .vmwarevm bundle.

Note: Virtual machines created by Fusion will be in bundles, but virtual machines from other platforms might not be (it's also possible to unbundle a virtual machine). In this case, the second step is not needed.

Note: Some people get confused about this, so it's worth mentioning: a virtual machine is not the same thing as the VMware Fusion application (just like an .mp3 is not the same as iTunes, a .doc is not the same as Microsoft Word, etc.).

Edit a .vmx config file

Get inside the .vmwarevm bundle (see prior section).
Locate the file with the .vmx extension - you should not have to go anywhere, it should be in this bundle.
Make sure the virtual machine and Fusion are not running. Never edit a file from under Fusion!
Open this file in your text editor of choice (such as TextEdit).
Make the edit.
Save and close.

Note: There must only be a single value per key. If you're supposed to add a key that's already present, replace the existing key instead.

Note: Editing .vmx files lets you do useful things not exposed in the UI, but is officially unsupported and doing this incorrectly can cause your virtual machine to not work. Unless you know what you're doing or have been instructed to do something, it's probably best to leave this file alone.

An alternate method is to use VMX Extras.

Collect vmware.log files

Get inside the .vmwarevm bundle (see prior section).
Locate the vmware.log files - there will be up to four, names vmware.log, vmware-0.log, vmware-1.log, and vmware-2.log. You should not have to go anywhere, they should be in this bundle.
Select them, ctrl-click and select "Create Archive of # items" (Tiger) or "Compress # Items" (Leopard) to zip them.
Post the zip file as an attachment.

These logs record what happened from vmware-vmx's point of view during a run. The log files rotate - vmware.log is the most recent, followed by -0, then -1, and finally -2.

Collect vmware-vmfusion.log files

In the Finder, go to /Users/${USER}/Library/Logs/VMware Fusion/
There should be up to four vmware-vmfusion logs in this directory.
Select them, ctrl-click and select "Create Archive of # items" (Tiger) or "Compress # Items" (Leopard) to zip them.
Post the zip file as an attachment.

These logs record what happened from the Fusion UI's point of view during a run. The log files rotate - vmware-vmfusion.log is the most recent, followed by -0, then -1, and finally -2.

Get a file listing of the .vmwarevm bundle

In a Terminal window, type the following without quotes, including the trailing space, but don't press enter yet. Note these are lowercase 'L's, not ones: "ls -lAF "
In Fusion's Virtual Machine Library (Window > Virtual Machine Library), ctrl-click the virtual machine and select "Show in Finder".
Drag and drop the virtual machine to the Terminal window. This will enter the full, escaped path to the virtual machine.
Type the following without quotes, including leading space, then press enter: " > ~/Desktop/filelist.txt"

This image is what you should see during step 3.

This will create a file on your desktop with important information about the contents of the .vmwarevm bundle, such as file sizes, names, and permissions. Post it as an attachment.

Collect Tools installation logs

For Windows guests

Tools installation logs are located in %TEMP%\vmmsi.log and %TEMP%\vminst.log in the guest. Zip and attach them.

Collect Tools logs

For Windows guests

The Tools config file location depends on the version of Windows you're running. It may be one of the following:

C:\Users\All Users\VMware\VMware Tools\tools.conf (Vista)
C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Tools\tools.conf (XP, Vista)
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Tools\tools.conf (XP)

After locating the config file, skip to the "For all guests" section.

For Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and OS X guests

The Tools config file is /etc/vmware-tools/tools.conf in the guest.
After locating the config file, continue to the "For all guests" section.

For all guests

In the config file you just found, set the following:

log = "TRUE"
log.file = "%PATHNAME%"

where %PATHNAME% is something like "c:\vmtools.log" or "/tmp/vmtools.log", depending on the guest. You'll end up with two files - one the name you specified, and one with a number appended (e.g. c:\vmtools.log.289) -- the number corresponds to the pid of vmwareuser.exe. Whatever location you pick needs to have full permission for all accounts. Reboot the guest.

Reproduce the problem, zip and attach the log. You probably want to undo the Tools config file edits after you're done so that you don't keep generating log files.

Enable USB debugging

Edit the .vmx config file (see prior section) to include the line usb.analyzer.enable = "TRUE"
In Fusion's Preferences, make sure "Diagnostics: Enable debugging checks" is enabled
Start the virtual machine and reproduce the USB problem. Try to minimize other activity so the log is easier to read.
Shut down the virtual machine and collect vmware.log files (see prior section).
Optional: Remove the usb.analyzer.enable line from your .vmx file and disable debugging checks, since the combination will make your logs large.

USB debug logs record a bit of information about each USB packet that gets sent to or from the device, which is invaluable in tracking down USB problems.

An alternate method is to use the USB debug preset in VMX Extras

The form has already been processed or no token was supplied, please try again.

RDellimmagine — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:13:28 GMT

This issue is resolved. All VMware Communities participants should be able to update documents and save their changes without errors.

As mentioned before, the problem was caused by our use of Akamai Dynamic Site Accelerator (DSA), which we resolved yesterday. Akamai DSA improves network performance by re-routing traffic via faster network connections, but in our initial configuration, this caused jsessionids to change. The VMware Communities platform requires these to stay the same across the session so that requests from an individual user route to the same server in our back-end application cluster. We've now changed the configuration to preserve jsessionids, which solves the problem and allows us to continue to get the performance improvement from Akamai DSA.

Thanks all for your patience as we worked through this issue.

Regards, Robert

Robert Dell'Immagine, Director of VMware Communities

Missing document diff option

etung — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:40:50 GMT

OK. I'll miss the diff functionality, it was especially useful figuring out what was changed in DirectX 3D Applications Compatibility List. Was there a post or other notification about this anywhere? Is there other functionality which you've had to turn off?

FreeMarker template error

jeanchen — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:43:12 GMT

test upload using Firefox

Congratulations to our newest Guru, WoodyZ

benma — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:05:09 GMT

Congrats!!!

Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

pgflmac — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:47:25 GMT

I converted this VM from Fusion v 1.1.2 to Fusion v.2.0.1. As part of
the upgrade to Fusion v.2.0.1 instructions. It has never been a
Parallels or Boot Camp VM.

HOWTO: Use Fusion with a Guest Account for Improved Nonpersistance

etung — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:29:34 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.
Note: This is very unsupported (since an important technique it depends on, manual linked cloning, is also very unsupported).

Motivation and Use Case

One use case for Fusion is where untrusted users need temporary access to virtual machines, such as a grade school computer lab. This HOWTO will show how to set up an environment that's relatively safe and appropriate - guest users will not be able to make persistent changes to the virtual machine, but login time will not be adversely affected.

Another use case is if you want to quickly provide a sandbox - for example, I might want to loan my laptop to a friend and allow them to install any software in the guest(s), but leave the host alone.

Difficulty Level and Requirements

Very Advanced: You should be familiar with editing .vmx files and be experienced with creating and using virtual machines, and preferably other VMware products. You will need administrator account because we will be editing system files. You should be familiar with general OS X usage and security, as well as know how to use the command line.

This builds off the technique in HOWTO: Manual Linked Cloning in Fusion. You should read that first, understand the principles of what's going on, and be able to do it.

You must be using Leopard, which introduced Guest accounts. You might be able to script the equivalent in Tiger, but I'm not sure where to begin looking for that.

I assume good host security, i.e. unprivileged users cannot access stuff they're not supposed to.

Background

In an untrusted environment, one user must not be allowed to affect others (e.g. student A should not be able to leave malware around to impact student B). A less paranoid use case would be that you might want to guarantee a fresh working environment. A Guest account in Leopard will get us partway there - changes are discarded when the user logs out. An administrator can modify the default user template, which allows us to put arbitrary files in the Guest account.

The problem with the naive approach of simply dumping a virtual machine in the default user template is that virtual machines are large. Each time a user account is created (which happens each time the Guest logs in), the user account is copied. This isn't a problem for the default set of files, but add in a multi-gigabyte virtual machine (or two, or three...) and login times will be unacceptably long.

We could keep the virtual machine in a shared location as described in A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion, but this would violate the security motivation - if anyone can write to the virtual machine, and the virtual machine is persistent, than they can affect later users. Fusion requires virtual machines to be writable, so you can't clear the write bits and still have the virtual machine run.

We can solve both problems by using a linked clone as described in HOWTO: Manual Linked Cloning in Fusion. A nice property of a linked clone is that it starts off very small - on the order of a few megabytes at most, as opposed to many gigabytes. Due to the small size, the template will still copy quickly. At the same time, a linked clone doesn't care if the parent is writable (and in fact it's better if it's not), so we can keep the base disk read-only and therefore safe.

Limitations and Notes

This is not a method to lock down Fusion or a virtual machine. Users will still be able to create new virtual machines, bring in their own, or copy out the one they're working with (though this last task requires some Fusion knowledge).

While this can be used to make a virtual machine that resets to a known-good configuration, using a nonpersistent disk is a simpler solution for non-malicious users. Note that a malicious user can circumvent a nonpersistent disk if given full access to all the virtual machine files, so a nonpersistent disk by itself is not sufficient for all cases.

These changes will affect not only the guest user, but any newly created user. This might or might not be a problem for you.

Instructions

Create the Virtual Machine

Follow the instructions in the Prepare the Guest section of HOWTO: Manual Linked Cloning in Fusion. If only the guest user will be using this virtual machine, you don't need to sysprep it (if you choose not to, you may have to make sure the MAC address remains constant). I will assume the shared virtual disk is placed in /Users/Shared/. Unlike HOWTO: Manual Linked Cloning in Fusion, let's use absolute paths for this one (not strictly a requirement, but I tend to like relative paths when dealing with my own files and absolute paths when dealing with other users).

Make sure that none of the .vmdk files or the folders containing them (all the way up to /Users/Shared/) are writable. The .vmdk files not being writable is obvious - you don't want a user modifying these files, that would defeat the security point. A slightly less obvious constraint is that the folders must not be writable - if they were, even though users couldn't modify the .vmdk files themselves, they could replace them with other files (thus effectively modifying them).

Create a linked clone as in HOWTO: Manual Linked Cloning in Fusion and make sure it works as expected. Remember to take a snapshot before powering on, and if you did power on, remove any uuid entries from the .vmx file so the guest user isn't prompted about them.

Copy to Default User Template

Once you're happy with the virtual machine, we need to put it in the default user template so that the guest user will see it. On Leopard, the default user templates are located in /System/Library/User Template/. Unfortunately, they're root owned, so even with sudo it's a little bit of a pain to deal with (for example, you can't cd into them). You can enable root access (I wouldn't recommend this) or just live with it for the little while it takes to do this step (which is what I did and will assume for the rest of this document). You might also want to create a backup copy of the default user template.

Open a terminal window and cd to /System/Library/ (I will assume you're there for the rest of this document). We can't go further, since User Template is root owned. At this point, every time we reach into the User Template folder we'll need sudo. Lets first take a look around. Assuming your default language is English (adjust appropriately if not), the command would be

sudo ls -lAF User\ Template/English.lproj/

which on my system returns

-rw-------   1 root  wheel    3 Jul 24  2007 .CFUserTextEncoding
drwx------+  3 root  wheel  102 Mar 31  2008 Desktop/
drwx------+  4 root  wheel  136 Dec 15 21:21 Documents/
drwx------+  4 root  wheel  136 Dec 15 21:21 Downloads/
drwx------+ 20 root  wheel  680 Mar 31  2008 Library/
drwx------+  3 root  wheel  102 Mar 31  2008 Movies/
drwx------+  3 root  wheel  102 Mar 31  2008 Music/
drwx------+  4 root  wheel  136 Dec 15 20:26 Pictures/
drwxr-xr-x+  4 root  wheel  136 Mar 31  2008 Public/
drwxr-xr-x+  5 root  wheel  170 Dec 15 20:26 Sites/

It's what you would expect a blank user template to look like. Anything you copy in here will automatically be copied to a new user's account (this is true not only of guest users, but any newly created user).

Let's assume you want to put the virtual machine in the guest's Documents directory (other good choices might be on the Desktop or just in their home folder). If the prepared clone is located at /Users/etung/Virtual Machines/Default.vmwarevm, the command would be:

sudo cp -r /Users/etung/Default.vmwarevm User\ Template/English.lproj/Documents/

If you log in as a guest now, you should see the virtual machine and the login process should be fast (since the added virtual machine should not have been very large).

Copy Other Support Files

We could stop here, but if you were to run the virtual machine in the guest account, you'd see Fusion's first-run windows (since the guest has not run Fusion before, and remember that when the guest logs out all the guest's files are erased, so having run Fusion doesn't persist). We can get around this by making Fusion think it's already been run once. We need two preference files: com.vmware.fusion.plist and VMware Fusion/preferences.

com.vmware.fusion.plist

com.vmware.fusion.plist is located in /Users/${USER}/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist. If you've run Fusion, it probably has a bunch of entries, but we're only interested in the boolean VMWelcomeScreenViewed_2.0. If you have the developer tools installed, you can make a copy and work on it using Property List Editor (which will allow you to selectively keep other entries you want, though I suggest getting rid of anything in the favorites list); if not, you can use the following command to create a dummy file:

defaults write com.vmware.fusion-copy VMWelcomeScreenViewed_2.0 -bool yes

Now copy this to the User Template folder (modify path as appropriate for your user):

sudo cp /Users/etung/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion-copy.plist User\ Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist

preferences

The preferences file is located in /Users/${USER}/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/preferences. If you've run Fusion, it probably has a bunch of entries, but we're only interested in the value of pref.registrationViewed. You can create a copy and edit it to your liking, or paste the following into a text file (watch out for line endings, some browser/text editor combinations mangle them. You can work around this by deleting the newline and typing it yourself) - make sure to save it as a plain text file with no extension.

.encoding = "UTF-8"
pref.registrationViewed = "TRUE"

Now copy this to the User Template folder (modify path as appropriate for your user):

sudo cp /Users/etung/Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/preferences-copy User\ Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/preferences

At this point, if you log into the guest and start Fusion, you should not see the first-run windows.

Further Extensions

You might want to further customize the default user template - for example, you might be able to get the cloned virtual machine to automatically start (look in com.apple.loginitems.plist, though I'm not sure about syntax). You could add other virtual machines to the guest account. You could copy over other parts of the support files (perhaps populate the Virtual Machine Library).

HOWTO: Manual Linked Cloning in Fusion

etung — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:28:30 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.
Note: This is very unsupported. Normally you'd do this through the UI or vmrun, but Fusion does not currently support cloning.

Introduction

A large number of virtual machines usually means a large amount of space needed to store them. However, if you happen to be running similar setups on multiple virtual machines, you may be able to save space by reducing duplication of common files between identical virtual machines via a combination of snapshot and cloning. Note this is not deduplication - you can't smoosh two existing virtual machines together, the technique only works when creating new ones. Workstation users may recognize this as being very similar to Linked Clones.

This is a fairly advanced technique that is only useful in a few situations and has some drawbacks. While it's always a good idea to read things through fully before trying them, it is especially true here so you know what to expect. I assume you are comfortable getting inside .vmwarevm bundles and are familiar with the concepts in A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion.

Difficulty Level

Motivation and Use Case

I like sandboxing applications not only in virtual machines, but having a separate virtual machine for each task -- this way if there's some problem with program A, not only will it not spill over to the host, but it also won't affect program B (which is in a different virtual machine). Each virtual machine is clean for that application (no build up of cruft from incomplete uninstalls of unrelated programs). Sometimes application upgrades require guest OS upgrades or vice versa; if everything were on one virtual machine I would have to make sure all my programs worked in the new setup before moving. With per-application virtual machines I can upgrade piece by piece as I want. This isn't something I suspect a lot of people do, and is definitely not something a normal Fusion user would ever need, but for me it's useful.

One thing I do to get this is to keep a clean copy of my commonly-used guest OSes - to create a new virtual machine all I have to do is copy the master template. It's way better than sitting through a new install, and even Easy Install takes a while. However, creating copies takes space, and with a limited amount on my laptop, this isn't a great solution.

Another possible approach would be to have a snapshot branch per application. This would achieve the space savings by not duplicating the base install, but has the drawback that you can't run multiple branches at the same time.

Enter Linked Clones, which get you space savings while also allowing you to run multiple versions simultaneously.

Limitations

You must be running the same guest at the same patch level across multiple virtual machines. This won't help if you have one XP virtual machine, one Vista, one OS X, and so on - but it will help if you have 8 Ubuntu 8.10 virtual machines.

This is not appropriate if you have a single copy of Windows or other non-free OS (from a technical point of view it works, but we're basically creating multiple installs, which is probably against the EULA). For volume-licensed versions or free OSes, this technique is fine.

You will not be able to shrink these guests or expand the disk (since a snapshot is involved). I don't think this is much of a drawback as each virtual machine has a pretty specific purpose, so should not grow that much. Also, the space savings from eliminating duplication should outweigh not being able to shrink.

The cloned virtual machines will have external references to the base disk. If you want to move such virtual machines around, you need to copy the base disk too.

Along the same lines, if anything happens to the base disk, all the dependent virtual machines will be unusable. I get around this in two ways - I keep a backup of the base disk which I can restore, and I don't keep data I care about in the guest (so if anything does go wrong and I can't restore the base disk, my data is still safe).

To head off possible confusion, you will not be able to update the base disk (say to include a new system update) and have all the children pick up the changes, but will instead have to apply the change to each clone individually. Over time, this will cause the clones to get bigger. This is also true of snapshots - you can't update the base snapshot and have all the child snapshots pick up the change (that defeats the point of a snapshot), so this disadvantage is not unique to this technique.

Instructions

Overview

When you take a snapshot, the original virtual disk becomes read-only and a new COW disk is created. We're going to set up a virtual machine, then create new ones using that as the base disk and snapshot so they never try to modify the base disk. I will use Ubuntu 8.10 as an example.

Prepare the guest

Install the guest as you normally would, getting all updates, installing Tools, and so on (I also like to install any commonly used software or plugins). For the sake of example, I keep my virtual machines in /Users/etung/Virtual Machines/. Let's call the base virtual machine "8.10 Core".

Important: if you plan to run multiple versions simultaneously, the system must be set up so that it can be easily cloned, e.g. there are no unique identifiers lurking in the system. For example, Windows has a SID and you must sysprep the guest. The specifics of doing this are beyond the scope of this document, consult the documentation for your guest OS. In our example of Ubuntu 8.10, no additional setup is needed (as far as I know).

Another good thing to do at this point is to shrink the guest.

Shut down the virtual machine and Fusion. You may wish to verify your setup by making two copies of the base virtual machine and running them simultaneously. Tell Fusion you copied them. If set up properly, both should work at the same time (e.g. access the internet). After verification, shut down the virtual machines and quit Fusion - you can delete the copies made for verification.

I highly recommend backing up the base virtual machine at this point. As noted in the Limitations section, if anything happens to the base virtual disk, all the clones will stop working (bad!). Having a backup will work around this problem.

Since we only care about the virtual disk, not the virtual machine, I would also highly recommend moving the virtual disks out of the .vmwarevm bundle and deleting the bundle -- this makes it harder to accidentally modify the base virtual disk. I created a new folder, /Users/etung/Virtual Machines/8.10 Core/, and moved the vmdk files there.

Fix paths

Open the plaintext metadata file "8.10 Core.vmdk" in your favorite text editor. This file contains paths to the actual data files, and we need to fix them up.

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
encoding="UTF-8"
CID=242293ca
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="twoGbMaxExtentSparse"

# Extent description
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s001.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s002.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s003.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s004.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s005.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s006.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s007.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s008.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s009.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s010.vmdk"
RW 20480 SPARSE "8.10 Core-s011.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base 
#DDB

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"
ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 99 ab ce aa 92-d3 3e 55 a9 30 e7 c6 dd"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "2610"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.toolsVersion = "7460"

We want to change the paths so they'll work from other locations. Since I keep all my virtual machines in /Users/etung/Virtual Machines/, I can do something like the following:

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
encoding="UTF-8"
CID=242293ca
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="twoGbMaxExtentSparse"

# Extent description
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s001.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s002.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s003.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s004.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s005.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s006.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s007.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s008.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s009.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s010.vmdk"
RW 20480 SPARSE "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s011.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base 
#DDB

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "2610"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.toolsVersion = "7460"

Another option would be to use an absolute path instead (e.g. instead of "../8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s001.vmdk", use "/Users/etung/Virtual Machines/8.10 Core/8.10 Core-s001.vmdk", etc.). I'm not sure if it's necessary, but I also took out the ddb.uuid line to be safe against duplicate uuids.

Write Protect

Finally, make sure the .vmdk files are not writable - this provides another layer of defense against accidental changes. You could do this by doing a Get Info on each file, or by running the following Terminal command:

chmod a-w /Users/${USER}/Virtual\ Machines/8.10\ Core/*.vmdk

Of course, replace the path as appropriate for your setup.

Create a Clone

We're now ready to clone. Create a new virtual machine in Fusion. Continue without the disk, and create a custom virtual machine. Select the appropriate guest OS type (in this example, Linux/Ubuntu). Choose to customize the default settings. In this example, I'll call the new virtual machine "8.10 Leaf" and save it in my usual location, /Users/etung/Virtual Machines/.

In the Hard Disk settings pane, delete the existing virtual disk by pressing the minus button. Go inside the 8.10 Leaf.vmwarevm bundle and delete the .vmdk files (optional). Copy the small plaintext metadata file from /Users/etung/Virtual Machines/8.10 Core/8.10 Core.vmdk to the 8.10 Leaf.vmwarevm bundle. Back in the Hard Disk settings pane, press the + button, then selecting "Choose existing disk..." for the file name. Choose the copied metadata file (the one in 8.10 Leaf.vmwarevm, not the one in the 8.10 Core folder) and uncheck the checkbox - we're happy with the file where it is, we don't want to copy or move it.

The reason we copied the metadata file ourselves instead of letting Fusion do it is that Fusion would have also copied all the slices, defeating the space saving point of this technique. The reason we made a copy of the metadata file instead of leaving it where it is because the lock file is created in the same place as the metadata file - if we left it in the 8.10 Core folder, all the clones would be trying to use the same lock file, which would defeat the simultaneous point of this technique.

Snapshot

Take a snapshot of the virtual machine, which will tell Fusion not to try to write to the original disk. I named mine "Base" with the comment "Don't delete!". Even if you run without the snapshot, because of the read-only permissions on the .vmdk files you shouldn't be able to change the original vmdk, but the leaf virtual machine will not be happy.

You should now be able to run the clone. For more clones, repeat the Create a Clone section.

vdiskmanager GUI

etung — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:55:31 GMT

How much more free space do I need for the conversion

It depends on how much data has been written in the guest; it's potentially as much as 36 GB.

Frequently Asked Questions about Guest OSes

etung — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:05:32 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

This document is intended to address common questions about common guest OSes, and is a complement to Frequently Asked Questions about VMware Fusion. You may also be interested in the official Fusion FAQ, the official Fusion support FAQ, the release notes, or anything else in the Fusion forum documents category. It may also answer questions in more depth than is appropriate for a normal forum post. The document assumes familiarity with common terms such as guest or host; see A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion for an explanation.

In addition to this document, be sure to check out the documentation for your guest OS. If a problem affects real hardware, there's a good chance it affects a virtual machine as well.

If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. Do NOT ask questions in the comments - use the discussion section of the forums instead.

Windows

Booting XP from CD

If you used Easy Install and need to boot from the XP install CD for some reason (e.g. to repair your installation), there's a good chance the CD will not recognize the virtual disk.

Explanation

This is because Easy Install causes Fusion to use a virtual SCSI disk (as opposed to a virtual IDE disk). XP doesn't come with the proper SCSI drivers; we can provide them during Easy Install, but if you need to boot from the XP CD yourself, you need to be ready to tell XP where to get them.

First, download (and unzip if necessary) the drivers. This is a .flp floppy image, similar to how an .iso is a CD image. With the virtual machine shut down (suspended doesn't count), go to the virtual machine's Settings and add a floppy drive if one doesn't already exist. Set the floppy drive to use the .flp image.

When booting from the XP CD, there should be a point at which it asks for drivers (I believe you're supposed to press F6; on some Mac keyboards you may need Fn-F6). Do so. Your virtual hard disk should now be recognized.

See also Re: How can I repair XP in VMware Fusion 2

PCI-to-PCI Bridge Loop When Upgrading Virtual Hardware

Upgrading a virtual machine's virtual hardware may trigger many notifications about PCI-to-PCI bridges being detected.

Explanation

Fusion 2.0 understands a newer virtual hardware version than Fusion 1.x does; you can keep the old virtual hardware version (probably a good idea for older guests might get confused by the new hardware and which won't benefit anyway) or upgrade. Upgrading a virtual machine's virtual hardware may trigger Windows to show many notifications about PCI-to-PCI bridges being detected. It's not a loop, there are just a lot of them (32 or so). There's not much we can do about this - Windows is the one providing the standard driver, and Windows is the one deciding to show the prompts. This should be a one-time event.

If this persists even after dismissing all the prompts (and/or the install fails), this may be due to a corrupted Windows driver database. You can clear out the cache by doing the following:

Start the virtual machine and log in. Immediately (before clicking on anything in new hardware wizard) go to Start > Run, and run cmd.exe. Run the following commands:

c:
cd \windows\inf
del infcache.1
exit

After that click on 'Next' in hardware wizard. It will take long time because the whole infcache needs to be regenerated, but after that it should install driver for first new device. After installing first device (when asked to click 'Finish') just restart guest. After you log in again, all your drivers should be installed without prompting.

BSoD in es1371mp.sys driver

es1371mp.sys is a Creative driver, provided by Microsoft. Version 6.0.0.0 is known to cause BSoDs.

Explanation

This is a bug in the driver and acknowledged by Microsoft, it also appears on physical hardware. Downgrade to the 5.1.2535.0 driver.

Additional Safely Remove Hardware Choices

Upgrading a virtual machine's virtual hardware may cause new devices to show under Safely Remove Hardware.

Explanation

Fusion 2.0 understands a newer virtual hardware version than Fusion 1.x does; you can keep the old virtual hardware version (probably a good idea for older guests might get confused by the new hardware and which won't benefit anyway) or upgrade. Certain version of Windows will show additional choices in the Safely Remove Hardware menu, including "VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter" and "Creative AudioPCI (ES1371,ES1373) (WDM)". These are expected, and it is actually possible to have removable devices like this - see for example hotplug.

Boot Camp virtual machine has a Blue Screen of Death with error code 0x0000007b

See Re: Bluescreen trying to run Fusion 1.1.2 from Boot Camp partition on MacBook Air.

All Linux

Can't Write to HGFS Shared Folders

Even if you have write permissions to a HGFS shared folder (e.g. it works in Windows guests) and the virtual machine's Settings allow writing, you still might not be able to write to a HGFS shared folder. This may affect all non-Windows guests.

Explanation

Although Fusion is letting you write to the folder, the guest OS may be looking at the UID/GIDs of the files and the guest user, finding they don't match, and preventing you from writing. The solution is to edit the guest's /etc/fstab and add uid/gid arguments. For example, if the line is currently

.host:/                 /mnt/hgfs               vmhgfs  defaults,ttl=5     0 0

and the guest uid/gid is 1000, you would change this to

.host:/                 /mnt/hgfs               vmhgfs  defaults,ttl=5,uid=1000,gid=1000     0 0

You will have to remount the HGFS mountpoint; if you're not sure how to do this, restarting the guest should work.

vSMP and Guest Hangs

Multiprocessor guests may occasionally become unresponsive and not recover. This is known to affect Ubuntu 7.04 (32-bit)/7.10 (32, 64-bit)/8.04 (32, 64-bit) and RHEL 5 (32-bit). Other distros are also affected.

Explanation

There is a known bug in the Linux kernel, introduced in 2.6.18 (32-bit)/2.6.21 (64-bit) and resolved in 2.6.26 where it can't deal with time going backwards. Each core has its own notion of the time, and these can drift out of sync. If the kernel switches from one that's fast to one that's slow, it will think time has gone backwards and panic. This drift can happen on physical hardware, but is more likely to happen in a virtual environment.

To work around this, set the clocksource=acpi_pm kernel option as described in KB 1007020 or update to a kernel past 2.6.26.

vsock Tools module fail to load on kernels 2.6.26 and above if CONFIG_MODVERSIONS is defined

We're working on this. Most people probably don't need the vsock module anyway, but if you do, a workaround is to copy the Modules.symvers from the build directory of the vmci module into the vsock build directory before building vsock. The kernel build system should then pick up that Modules.symvers file and use symbols with these versions. Another alternative is to use open-vm-tools, which has the fix.

Ubuntu

Mouse integration is not correct in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

On a completely stock Ubuntu 8.10 install with no updates, soft ungrab does not work, and mouse clicks may be displaced

Explanation

Soft ungrab not working and mouse clicks being displaced are known Ubuntu vmmouse bugs which have been fixed. Apply updates to get the fix.

Fedora

Mouse Offset in Fedora 9

The apparent mouse position doesn't match the actual mouse position, e.g. clicks select something somewhere else. This is position dependent, e.g. the further out you go, the more difference there is.

Explanation

This is a bug in Fedora 9, and documented in their release notes. As noted in the release notes, a workaround is to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add Option NoAutoAddDevices to the ServerFlags section. If you don't already have a ServerFlags section, add one as follows:

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option      "NoAutoAddDevices"
EndSection

OS X

10.5.6 guests

There are three main known problems with 2.0(.1) and 10.5.6 guests. If you have Tools installed, you will get only a gray window in the guest (as opposed to the normal UI). Keyboard does not work, nor does a guest reboot. All three will be fixed in the next release of Fusion; in the meantime, we recommend that if possible, 10.5 guests not be updated to 10.5.6.

Workarounds

10.5.6 guests do not successfully reboot in Fusion 2.0.1. The workaround is to shut down the virtual machine, then start again.

The keyboard might not work in 10.5.6 guests. This is due to a bug in our virtual USB device handling. You can work around it by editing the .vmx (when neither the virtual machine nor Fusion is running) and changing

usb:1.deviceType = "hub"

usb:1.deviceType = "keyboard"

Note that you will be unable to use any other USB devices in the virtual machine (since there is now virtual hub to plug into). Remember to undo this change when the next release of Fusion is available.

If you install Tools, the guest's window server will not start, which will make the guest show just a gray screen. There is a workaround, but you need to have MacFUSE (this is installed by default with Fusion):

Power off the virtual machine
Locate the virtual machine in the Finder (default location is /Users/${USER}/Documents/Virtual Machines/). Another way to get locate the virtual machine is that you can ctrl-click on the Virtual Machine Library entry and select Show in Finder.
Ctrl-click on the virtual machine and select More > Mount Virtual Disk > Mount All.
Browse to the mounted virtual machine volume in Finder, then go to the virtual machine's /Library/LaunchDaemons folder.
Open the file com.vmware.launchd.tools.plist and change the value of RunAtLoad to false. Save.
Unmount the virtual disk. Tools should now no longer start automatically in the guest.

Remember to undo this change when the next release of Fusion is available.

Can I run Tiger or the non-Server version of Leopard?

No. Apple's licensing explicitly allows only Leopard Server to be run in a virtual machine. Petition Apple.

Leopard Server won't install on my Core Duo MacBook/MacBook Pro/Mac mini

OS X guests are a bit different than other guests; we need a 64-bit Mac to handle them (even if you're running the 32-bit version of Leopard Server). This is documented in the release notes.

Minix

ASSERT vmcore/private/iospace_shared.h bugNr=64440

When you attempt to power on a Minix virtual machine, you might encounter this ASSERT, which will prevent you from using the virtual machine.

Explanation

This is due to the way that Minix detects devices and how we react to the guest doing so. While the virtual machine is powered off and Fusion isn't running, edit the .vmx config file (see A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion for help locating it) and remove the following line (and anything similar):

pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"

Rich text editor escaping too much

etung — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:05:07 GMT

DirectX 3D Applications Compatibility List has a table with a link in it. Sometimes after someone's edited it all the links will have a '\' at the end. Examining the markup and playing with the editor leads me to believe this:

The markup for a link in a table looks like: |[text|url]| where the outer pipes represent the column separators, the brackets are the link, and the middle pipe is the text vs URL delimiter. When I use this in the plain text editor and save, all is fine.

However, if someone then opens the document with the rich text editor, at first it looks alright - the RTE displays the table as expected. Previewing or saving, however, shows the markup now looks like |[text\|url]|, e.g. the RTE is trying to be smart and escape the pipe so it's not interpreted as a column separator (except it's not needed, since the link has higher priority over the table). Switching back to the RTE from the preview or saving shows the extra '\'s.

This would be fine if it were just me editing (I always use the plain text editor), but this document routinely gets edited by other people, some of who apparently like the rich text editor.

Missing posts

wila — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:53:57 GMT

Hmm.. not enough coffee in my blood yet.. You're actually seeing 2 bugs.. here's the other one and that is supposed to have been fixed already.
Re: 30 minutes until a post really gets displayed ????

Robert: If you are reading this.. haven't seen the Page Load Error anymore, only 2 times in a 15 minute slot.

--
Wil

HOWTO: Ask (and Answer) Questions

etung — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 05:08:20 GMT

Introduction

Hi! If someone has directed you at this document, chances are you've just asked a question, but have not supplied enough information for us to be able to help you. We'd like to help, but we can't see your computer so we're relying on you to provide all the information we need to figure out what the problem is. This document will give an overview of the sort of information we typically need. If you're not sure how to get some piece of information, ask.

Much of these suggestions apply (directly or indirectly) to other areas of life, too

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback, suggestions, and edits are welcome. Please use the comments below only for things specific to this document; general questions are better off in the discussion section.

So You Have a Question...

Do Some Research

Before you report a problem, be sure that you've read the release notes, the FAQ, the unofficial FAQ, searched the forums, and searched the internet. You might find the answer is readily available - searching first gets you the answer faster and keeps the forums less cluttered, making it easier to find things in the future. If you haven't taken the effort to look for a solution yourself (however briefly), why should we make the effort to help you?

People may assume you're familiar with A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion. While you're waiting for a reply, consider reading it (if you haven't done so already) - there's a lot of generally useful information.

Tell Us What's Going On

Once you've done some preliminary searching and determined that it's not an easily-available solution, it's question time. It's important that you give as much information as you can so others can diagnose what's wrong. Remember that what may be obvious to you, sitting in front of your computer, may not be obvious to someone far across the internet.

As an analogy, if you were to walk up to a stranger and say "I went to the store and bought a book but the red button doesn't work", they're probably going to stare at you blankly. Aside from the weirdness of being accosted by a stranger (okay, the analogy's not great), they're probably going to need to know which store you went to, what book you got, what the red button is, and why you think it doesn't work. And why a book has a button. If you can't or won't provide this context, it's doubtful you'll have much success (in our analogy, remember that the person you're asking can't see the book, the store, or anything else except what you're +saying+).

Or if you're into webcomics, Wellington Grey puts it this way: The Trouble With Tech Support

Also keep in mind that there are many (I'd estimate around 100-200) posts per day - it's important to convey your situation clearly and quickly, since this lessens the work that others have to do. Personally, if it takes 17 exchanges to extract necessary information, I'm going to be... less happy.. than if the information had been there upfront. A few exchanges is OK if you forgot some information or don't know how to get it, but please try.

It may also help to say what task you're trying to do in general, rather than what specifically isn't working - someone may be able to point out that you're overlooking a simple alternative.

Information to Include

This is not an exhaustive list of useful information - if you have more details that you think are relevant, be sure to include them too. These lists assume you have a specific question - obviously the ground rules are different if you have a general question.

Unless you have a good reason to believe something is not relevant, always include all of the following information with an initial request for help:

Build number. You can find this information under VMware Fusion > About
What sort of Mac you have (e.g. Mac Pro, MacBook, etc.)
What the problematic behavior is and what causes it
If there are any conditions where it does work
How often you see the problem (e.g. all the time, sometimes, rarely, etc.)
Has it previously worked in the same setup (e.g. same virtual machine, same computer), and if so, what has changed since then
How experienced with OS X you are, and comfortable you are with the command line (things can go a lot faster if you know what you're doing, but if you don't say, we have to assume you need lots of hand-holding)

If you're having problems with a guest, include:

Guest operating system e.g. "Windows XP Pro (German)" or "Ubuntu 7.04 64-bit". Be sure to include details (e.g. Home/Pro/Business/Ultimate/etc., 64-bit vs 32-bit, language, etc.) when applicable.
Whether you have installed VMware Tools, and if so, which version
Whether this is a Boot Camp virtual machine
Where the virtual machine came from (created in Fusion, created in some other VMware product and copied over, imported from some other format, etc.)

If you're having problems with an application in a guest, include:

The application name and version
If practical (e.g. freeware, shareware, demos), where others can download a copy to reproduce the problem

If you're having display problems (e.g. glitches in 3D), include:

What graphics card the Mac has
What version of OS X you're running

If you're seeing an error message, include:

Where the error message is coming from (e.g. an application in the guest, the guest itself, OS X, etc.)
The exact text of the error message. A transcription is preferred (to save space, and images aren't included in email notifications), but even a screenshot is better than "it said there was some problem with some file I don't remember"

If you're having network problems, include:

Network type (e.g. NAT, Bridged, or Host-only)
Guest network information (Windows: ipconfig /all in a command prompt, Linux/OS X: ifconfig -a in a terminal window)
Host network information (run ifconfig -a in a Terminal window)

If you're having trouble printing, include:

What printing method you're using (e.g. direct USB connection, network printing, Thinprint a.k.a. driverless passthrough)

If you're having problems with a USB device, after you make sure the device is connected to the virtual machine and the guest OS recognizes it, include:

USB debug log as described in Information Gathering for VMware Fusion

For a Fusion UI crash (e.g. if you restart Fusion, open your virtual machine and it comes up instantly), include:

/Users/${USER}/Library/Logs/VMware Fusion/vmware-vmfusion-0.log (and others, if there are any)

For OS X kernel panics, include:

/Library/Logs/panic.log

If you're having Boot Camp preprocessing errors, include:

/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Helper/naos-1.0.vmwarevm/vmware.log

If you're having VMware Importer errors, include:

/Users/${USER}/Library/Logs/VMware Importer/import.log
/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Helper/naos-1.0.vmwarevm/vmware.log

For a guest Blue Screen of Death, include:

The stop code (or possibly a screenshot). If it flashes by too quickly to see, you need to disable Window's automatic restart - for example, see Re: VMware Fusion 1.0 and sniffers = BSOD ... help? and Re: How to take a screen shot of virtual machines while in in OS X?.

Etiquette and General Notes

Do make the subject of a thread descriptive and concise. A good guideline is: If someone were to read just the subject, would they know roughly what your question is about? Also, since most posts are questions, it's redundant to say "HELP!!!" or similar in the subject (or really, anywhere).

Do be polite. As far as I know, nobody's being paid to hang out on these forums and answer questions - it's all fellow users volunteering their time and experience. (Not that being rude is OK even if this was someone's job...)

Do your best to make your questions easy to understand. Write in complete sentences, avoid 1337-5p34k, and generally use all those pesky things you learned in school. If you're not sure of terminology, say so. If you're a not fluent in English, note it (so that we can be understanding).

Do be generous in your assumptions. Most people are trying to help, and if they keep asking the same question (e.g. "How is your disk formatted") despite your answers, it's possible you're not actually answering the question. If you don't know how to do something, ask!

Don't use ALL CAPS or lots of punctuation!!!1! - this is annoying and makes posts harder to read. Personally, I prefer responding to questions which don't annoy me and are easy to understand.

Don't blindly chime in with just "Same for me!" Sometimes there are multiple causes with the same symptoms, so at best it's not helpful and at worst it confuses the issue. At the very least, specify any differences (for example, Fusion 1.0 vs. 1.1rc, Leopard vs. Tiger, mini vs. Mac Pro, etc.) and possibly do this even if you do have the same setup so that others know you haven't forgotten this. This is especially true if the original problem has been solved -- if you really are seeing the same problem, the same solution should work for you. If it doesn't, chances are you're not actually having the same problem.

Don't post the exact same question in a multiple places. If your question is answered in every place (unlikely), it creates unnecessary clutter and duplication. If it's not answered in every place (likely), it makes it very difficult for later users to determine if your question ever got answered. It also scatters effort of people who are trying to help.

Don't use terminology or abbreviations you're not completely sure of; even then, be aware that context matters. For example, BT might mean "BlueTooth" to you, but to someone else it might mean VMware's "Binary Translation" technique. "VRAM" might make sense to you as "Virtual RAM", but most people would think "Video RAM". Being explicit helps people understand what you're talking about, which is necessary for them to help you. If you're confused about terminology, see Glossary of Virtualization (and Computing) Terms.

Don't upload huge files unless absolutely necessary. For example, if you need to show the contents of a dialog box, take a picture of just the dialog box, not your entire desktop. If you must show the entire desktop, briefly check for smaller formats - for example, for large, complex images, jpg is usually smaller than the default png of Grab or Finder.

Don't say "the latest version" if someone asks you what version you're using. Imagine the confusion that would result if you (or the reader) was not aware that the latest version is 3.4 rather than 1.7! Do take the time to find out the exact version you're using. If you can't determine this (e.g. how do you check or specify the patch level of Windows?), say how you determined that you're using the latest version (e.g. "I went to windowsupdate.com and saw no updates").

After your question is completely answered (not just responded to), it's nice to recognize useful contribution with "correct" or "helpful" points (you can only give one per post). These points affect user rankings, which can be seen as a very rough guide to people who post a lot of answers to a lot of questions. Note this is not a perfect guide - some people with low rankings are very useful/knowledgeable and may contribute in ways that don't generate points, or just don't post as often.

Users with the VMware-three-boxes icon are VMware employees, and probably know what they're talking about

Answering Questions

These are some guidelines I go by, and are mostly common sense. They are of course not binding, just what I consider to be good practice.

People may have "silly" questions, but they may only be "silly" because you've done something a thousand times already and it's second nature to you. Remember that this may be someone's first time with virtualization, a Mac, or even computers in general. On the other hand, people may know exactly what they're doing (and/or know more than you) and may have found an obscure bug.

Some people get confused by the "~" abbreviation for the home directory. I've found that spelling out the entire path (i.e. "/Users/${USER}/") causes less confusion than using the abbreviation (i.e. "~/").

If you're repeatedly asking a question and the other person isn't answering (or is answering a different question), perhaps they don't understand the question. Try rephrasing it or giving directions for how to obtain the answer you need.

English is not every person's primary language. Try to be forgiving, especially if someone points out they're a non-native speaker. Corrections are good, though - they help clear up ambiguities and can help the other person learn.

If you can (and have time), explain why things work the way they do, rather than just jotting down a quick fix. Education sets proper expectations, demystifies computers/software, and just generally seems like a good idea. It may also help you understand things better - as the saying goes, you don't fully understand a thing until you teach it to someone else. That said, sometimes all someone wants is a quick answer. Also, a quick answer is probably better than no answer at all.

If you find yourself answering the same question again and again, consider turning the answer into a document (or adding to one of the existing ones). This will save you typing and hopefully make it easier for people to locate answers.

If someone posts the same question in multiple places, try to pick one place to answer it (preferably the place that makes sense, and where other people have answered). If necessary (e.g. it's been a while and this hasn't been fixed), let a moderator know about the duplicates so they can be deleted. The forum software allows moderators to delete threads, but not merge them - if everyone keeps the content in a single thread, the duplicates can be removed, but if useful content is scattered between duplicates, I (at least) would be more hesitant to delete them.

Simply posting a link to this document might be seen as unfriendly. Here's some boilerplate text you could use (modify as appropriate):

Hi, welcome to the forums! We'd like to answer your question, but there just isn't enough information in your post to be able to do this. Please take a look at [d-1070] and follow up with details about your situation.

Blank posts

wila — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:41:32 GMT

Hi,

Welcome to the forums.

With us joking around your post almost got drowned under our ummm... "let's say nothing" posts.
If I understand your post correctly then you just lost a post by using the rich text tab and then going into preview mode and this all before actually posting your first question.
What a disappointing experience for a new user!
.
Can you tell us (or better the forum developer team) a bit more on what happened?
Was that correctly described on what you saw happening?

Thank You!

--
Wil

Lost another post

continuum — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:29:09 GMT

I should not have to remember to make a copy of things before posting.

I agree - thats why the post message form should have a big warning in red letters:

Before you hit post message - copy your post to clipboard as it may get lost.

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

Disallow "div class" tag in posts

etung — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:36:56 GMT

Really? So someone could, say, put a </html> tag in their post? I assume they have at least some tag filtering; it's not clear that allowing raw HTML is desirable in the first place.

System Error, status code 500

etung — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:32:33 GMT

Other potential solutions are to have the error page contain the post, or have the back button work (not knowing how the backend works, some might not be possible). I don't actually run into this error too often, despite the number of posts I make, but of course it's on the long, well-researched and un-backed-up-ones

Fusion beta forum not actually locked?

Badsah — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:27:34 GMT

Regarding the first issue, it appears a permission inheritance issue reared its ugly head, and I corrected it through explicit permissions. Posting should no longer be possible. Regarding auto-formatting, we have to wait to see what release 2.5 brings us. They are redoing the entiring text editor then (finally). We will upgrade sometime in Q1.

---
Badsah Mukherji
VMware Web Communities Team

System error - parent key not found when adding child

Badsah — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:47:24 GMT

Eric, I had to do a lot of data manipulation by going direct to the DB in order to salvage the remnants of the original thread plus the branch that still existed. I combined them under the latter's thread ID and blew away the former. But you will see it listed under Discussions with the same heading (Kernel panic...). http://communities.vmware.com/thread/171599?tstart=0 . Better than nothing. BTW, I did clear all caches so this is the best I can do for you. I still don't know how or why this thread and its branching got corrupted.
Thanks.

---
Badsah Mukherji
VMware Web Communities Team

FreeMarker Template Error

Badsah — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:53:24 GMT

Great, looks like I fixed it when I reset the caches of all nodes on our cluster.

---
Badsah Mukherji
VMware Web Communities Team

OS X Server as a Guest

DiamondBill — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:32:58 GMT

The Parallels Server for Mac runs on Mac OSX Server and allows you to virtualize Mac OSX Server, just like Fusion 2 Beta 2. However it has been out since mid-June.

A salesperson at Parallels just told me that they have a bare-metal version in beta right now! Hello VMware! Get ESX to support a virtual Mac hardware profile and be done with it. Replace the virtual machine's BIOS with PCI so we can install OSX Server on our official Apple hardware like the EULA says we can.

The licensing thing doesn't hold water. Microsoft has had a restriction that software cannot be moved from physical machine to physical machine more often than every 90 days. Apparently I was violating the license every time VMotion moved my VM from one physical machine to another, though. Since the software always remained on the same VM, they were never the wiser. I never knew this was a violation until Microsoft recently lifted that restriction. My point is that VMware was enabling me to violate my Microsoft EULA for years now and never had a problem with it; why would they be so concerned about policing the Apple EULA?

HOWTO: Run a Virtual Machine at Boot

etung — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:42:56 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback, suggestions, and edits are welcome.

This document is intended for someone who wants to run a VMware Fusion virtual machine at boot, and assumes basic familiarity with both OS X and Fusion, as well as A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion.

If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. Please use the comments below only for things specific to this document (e.g. inaccuracies); general questions (including questions about getting this to work) are better off in the discussion section.

Motivation

Unlike Windows or Linux, where you can choose from Workstation/Server/Player/etc., on the Mac, Fusion is currently our only product. While Fusion is intended to be a consumer product, it shares the common VMware code base, and so gets a bunch of features for free. With a little bit of tweaking, you can run a virtual machine at boot and in the background. For example, you might want to do this on a server, or with a virtual machine that provides services to users on the Mac.

Prepare the Virtual Machine

This section is mostly optional, but makes it easier to interact with your virtual machine. Add the following lines to the .vmx config file:

msg.autoAnswer = "TRUE"
signal.suspendOnHUP = "TRUE"
signal.powerOffOnTERM = "TRUE"
RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = "TRUE"
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = "5902"

msg.autoAnswer is because sometimes Fusion wants to prompt you with some information (e.g. Tools aren't installed). Without this, the virtual machine will sit around waiting for an answer, but we don't want that since the idea is to run automatically.
signal.suspendOnHUP and signal.powerOffOnTERM give us ways to suspend or shut down the virtual machine by sending signals (via `kill`, e.g. `kill -HUP $PID` where $PID is the ID of the vmware-vmx process).
RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled and RemoteDisplay.vnc.port give us a way to connect to the virtual machine. Note that by default, Fusion virtual machines already come with RemoteDisplay.vnc.port; edit this rather than creating a duplicate entry.

Test your virtual machine by running it normally in Fusion, connecting via VNC, and suspending and/or powering off.

Run at Boot

You can have the virtual machine automatically restart when stopped (shuts down, suspends, crashes, etc.) or run (automatically) only once per boot. You will need administrator access for this part. A graphical editor for launchd scripts which you might find useful is Lingon.

I've tested this on a Mac mini running 10.5.4. 10.4.x has slightly different launchd syntax and defaults; you'll probably need to tweak the plists slightly. Note I'm not a launchd expert, this section is based on what I learned via Googling and playing with scripts. Improvements welcome.

With Fusion 2.0b2, you can use "vmrun start ..." instead of calling "vmware-vmx -x ..."; vmrun is meant for scripting and is probably the better way to go.

Run Continuously

This method will restart the virtual machine if it dies (shuts down, crashes, etc.). This makes the HUP signal not very useful, because immediately after the virtual machine suspends, launchd will respawn the virtual machine and it will resume again.

Create a plain text file in /Library/LaunchDaemons, let's call it com.example.fusion-as-server. Paste in the following:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.example.fusion-as-server</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmx/Contents/MacOS/vmware-vmx</string>
                <string>-x</string>
                <string>/Users/etung/Virtual Machines/Test.vmwarevm/Test.vmx</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>UserName</key>
        <string>etung</string>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Be sure to change the path in ProgramArguments to point at whatever virtual machine you want to run, and UserName to the owner of that virtual machine. You probably also want to give it a more descriptive name and Label.

In Re: running OSX Server with Fusion as a daemon and OSX server as host?, Dr. Wo suggests not using KeepAlive with 2.0b2 because vmware.vmsg may not be found, causing launchd to keep respawning (or something).

Run Once

This method runs the virtual machine once at boot, but if the virtual machine stops (shuts down, crashes, suspends, etc.) it won't get restarted.

Running once is slightly more tricky than running all the time. The problem is that in order to run a virtual machine, various Fusion kexts need to be loaded. If we run the virtual machine before the kexts are loaded, vmware-vmx looks around, doesn't see anything to talk to, and gives up and dies. We can get away with it in the continuous case because launchd will keep respawning the virtual machine, and eventually it will succeed (after the Fusion kexts come up). In the run-once case, the lack of kexts means that the virtual machine doesn't run. We want to make sure the kexts are loaded before trying to run the virtual machine.

Unfortunately, launchd provides no way to order tasks. Apple's recommendation is to use IPC. However, from an end-user's point of view, this is not a practical possibility. Instead, let's try a hack.

When the kexts are loaded by boot.sh, various files are created. We'll make a script that waits for the creation of one of these files before starting the virtual machine. Let's call it test.sh, located in your home directory.

Note: I don't think you can use the launchd WatchPaths or QueueDirectories parameters instead of a script. First, they appear to take precedence over the LaunchOnlyOnce parameter, so it wouldn't do the right thing. According to this blog post, WatchPaths only works if the file always exists (the files used by boot.sh don't, they're created and destroyed). QueueDirectories watches an entire directory; the vmnet-*-vmnet-*.pid files are in a directory with a bunch of other stuff, so are unsuitable; vmnet-dhcpd-vmnet*.leases changes whenever a DHCP client connects or disconnects (so stopping a virtual machine would trigger it to run again). If you wanted to use these, you could probably modify boot.sh to create a sentinel file you could watch for.

TODO: Should use kextstat to see if the Fusion kexts are loaded instead of the file test

#!/bin/bash
while [! -e /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid]; do
   sleep 1
done
 
"/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmx/Contents/MacOS/vmware-vmx" -x "/Users/etung/Virtual Machines/Test.vmwarevm/Test.vmx"

Be sure to change the path to wherever your virtual machine actually is. chmod the script to be executable (e.g. `chmod +x ~/test.sh`).

Create a plain text file in /Library/LaunchDaemons, let's call it com.example.fusion-as-server. Paste in the following:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.example.fusion-as-server</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/Users/etung/test.sh</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>ExitTimeOut</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
        <key>LaunchOnlyOnce</key>
        <true/>
        <key>UserName</key>
        <string>etung</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Be sure to change UserName to the owner of that virtual machine, and the path in ProgramArguments to point at wherever the script actually is (you probably don't actually want to have it in your home directory). You probably also want to give it a more descriptive name and Label.

Text doesn't wrap in some threads

Peter_vm — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:42:38 GMT

I know that we have invisible (almost) VMware support and invisible planning.
Invisible users? That is good idea!

Hide Sidebars

asatoran — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:47:22 GMT

Good job, Eric. Most of the forums would wrap correctly for me, except for the Converter forum. The right sidebar always overlapped the last user, replies and hours columns. Your script is working for me. Muchos gracias.

Node synchronization?

wila — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:36:03 GMT

Hear hear I FULLY agree!

This is supposed to be better as Usenet, but it doesn't even come close...
--
Wil

Missing update

etung — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:29:40 GMT

Ah, I thought someone had fiddled with it - I don't normally use that syntax. However, I don't think that's the answer by itself - I changed it back, and it shows up.

Spaces in usernames not escaped

RDellimmagine — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:49:39 GMT

This has been filed as a bug with Jive. - Robert

Offtopic: Fold an Origami VMware Fusion Icon

etung — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:57:18 GMT

Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Warning: Origami ahead.

Things To Know

This is a somewhat difficult model to get right because of the relative precision required to make the final result look good -- we are folding a very specific shape, with very specific ratios. While no individual step should be difficult, don't expect to get it really right the first time or without a bunch of tweaking. The majority of steps do not fold flat, so this is not a good candidate for making a few folds and sticking in your notebook, it's better to finish it in one sitting. The final model is flat.

Paper Requirements

There is a wide range of thicknesses in this model, so normal paper is not suitable. In fact, normal origami paper (that you might get at any craft store) is not suitable; it does not hold creases well enough across the thicknesses that occur in this model. I highly suggest using foil paper since it holds folds well. This is also a duo-colored model, and involves the ratio 1:15, so 15 cm (5 7/8 inch) duo foil paper like Yasutomo Fold'Ems is good and should be relatively easy to find. If you can't, then single-sided foil is preferable to normal duo paper - white is a bit of a boring secondary color, but strength is more important than having the right colors.

If you haven't used foil paper before, be warned that it is trickier than normal paper because every fold shows up permanently. Practice to avoid extraneous folds.

Time Estimate

Budget at least half an hour.

Instructions

Note the forum software scales down large images. A larger image (1000x2000) can be obtained by opening the image in a new window (or looking at the source and pulling out the URL). At the time of this writing, the link is http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/1822/Instructions.png (but this may not be permanent).

Warning: Origami geekery ahead.

About the Model

The Fusion icon is pretty simple, from an origami point of view - two long legs and two short ones, which suggests a thinned fish base. The color change was a happy coincidence that happened to work out. Since the short legs are very short relative to the long ones, a simpler model may be possible, though maintaining the color change may be hard. The 1:15 ratio in the second step was determined by first coming up with an appropriate design, then figuring out the necessary proportions.

This image is from the Library window, units are pixels. Considering just the blue half of the icon, the length:tip-to-halfway-point ratio is 31:447, or approximately 1:14.4. This measurement is of a different ratio than shown in in step 2, but it's easy to show that math works out such that the ratio is the same. Taking into account imperfect folding (some length will be lost due to paper thickness, it's not possible/practical to fold that precisely, etc.) and looking for an easy-to-use/remember number results in 1:15. However, I find erring on the thicker side (e.g. closer to 1:14 rather than 1:15) yields better results.

Crease Pattern

A crease pattern is what you get if you were to take the completed model and unfold it flat. Advanced folders can tell a lot by the crease pattern, and it is much more compact than writing out every step. In this image, I've added color (which is not part of crease patterns that I've seen) to show different parts of the model: black lines indicate the thinned fish base, red lines are used by the color change, blue lines are the final shaping, and yellow lines are the basic regions. Keep in mind this is a very rough pattern and does not take into account paper thickness; you couldn't laser cut it and expect it to fold.

Possible Improvements

If you look at the model the above instructions produce, you should notice that it's not symmetric - that is, if you flip it over, the color change on the long leg is not complete. This is because leaving it unchanged is necessary for the correct shape. It should be possible to make the model symmetric by widening the diagonal river, but I didn't think this benefit was worth the reduced finished model size:paper size ratio.

If you compare the origami Fusion icon to the actual one, you should immediately notice that the origami one is more angular since the outer corners are not rounded. One possible improvement is to change the ratio used in step 2 to produce thicker legs, then folding back the extra to shape the desired corners.

Of course, if you really look at the actual icon, the corners are not quite rounded in the way they are in this diagram - the center is pushed out from the inner corner, so the actual scaling factor would be approximately 1.6.

A more subtle difference is that some of the inner corners are rounded. I have not come up with a good solution to this; the previous technique does not work well because this is a concave corner, so folding paper away will not work unless you don't care about the folding flat property. I'm also inclined to say it's a small enough thing to not be worth bothering about.

A trivial improvement is to round the tips of the inner corners - I thought this would look strange since the rest of the model is angular, but if the previously mentioned improvements are made, this modification would make sense.

Selected Further Resources

http://www.langorigami.com/
http://web.mit.edu/origamit/
http://chosetec.darkclan.net/origami/

Page redesign status?

RDellimmagine — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:46:51 GMT

The transition from emergency mode (where we were pushing out fixes to critical bugs as quickly as we could verify them) to our standard mode (where we need to maintain the current level of stability and ensure we don't introduce new bugs) is taking longer than I had originally expected. The tasks we are working on (and have partially completed) are: reconfiguring and standardizing our stage environment; and automating the build, test (including writing regression tests and improving the load tests), and deployment processes. I'm working on ways to do an interim release before some of these pieces are together, but it's hard to get the full level of confidence in the new build without these processes in place. My expectation is it will be early January before we can roll out the 2-column design.

System Error: Expression resultCount is undefined on line 277, column 62 in template/global/search.ftl

etung — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:23:38 GMT

Yep, found that in the working search of just this forum but forgot to update the post. Thanks for deleting it.

Losing track of read threads, missing posts?

RDellimmagine — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:37:28 GMT

I believe this is now fixed.

We identified some issues with the kernel timer, which were causing problems with the platform's caching mechanism. This is the likely cause of the issues reported in this thread. After moving the application to different hardware as reported in November 15 Update, the timing issues have been resolved, and I have also not seen the problems reported here.

Congratulations to rcardona2k, our newest Virtuoso

esiebert7625 — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:28:11 GMT

Good job Richard!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Thanks, Eric
Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

VMware Communities : All Content - All Communities

Frequently Asked Questions about VMware Fusion

Quick Answers

Postflight script failed

Failed to connect to peer process

VMware Fusion cannot connect to the virtual machine. Make sure you have rights to run the program and access all directories it uses and rights to access all directories for temporary files.

Can't find CD/DVD a.k.a. What's this PXE thing?

Ctrl-click

Boot Camp virtual machine has a Blue Screen of Death with error code 0x0000007b

Bluetooth stops working when Fusion runs

USB sound devices connected directly to the guest produce garbled output on Snow Leopard hosts

Function keys

Number lock

Keyboard layout in the guest doesn't match the host

Force Quitting

Upgrading or updating Fusion

Firewire

When is the next release coming out?

On a oct-core 2009 Nehalem Mac Pro (16 logical processors), Fusion crashes when you power on or resume a virtual machine

Detailed Answers

High CPU Usage

Description

Explanation

Is the guest really idle?

Host CPU throttling

Guest timer interrupts

Devices

Multiple virtual processors

Unity

Full vs Light versions

Description

Explanation

Color Printing

Description

Explanation

Sound

Description

Explanation

Disk Space

Description

Explanation

Virtual Hardware

Description

Explanation

Major Known Issues

vmdk files truncated at exactly 266240 bytes

Updating from 2.0.5 Tools

HOWTO: Run ESXi in Fusion

Introduction

Difficulty Level

Requirements

Prepare

Install

Install VMware Infrastructure Client

Further Resources

A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion

Terminology

Where to Find Things

Fusion and vmware-vmx Processes

Virtual Machine Files

Other Files

Working With Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine Settings

Disk Size

Disk Type

RAM Size

VMware Tools

Installing Tools

Determining Which Version of Tools You Have

How To Shrink

Starting a VM...

...in One Click

...in Unity or Fullscreen mode

...at Login

...at Boot Time

Sharing Virtual Machines Between Users

Sharing Virtual Machines Between Platforms

Working With Multiple Displays

Further Reading

Official Documentation