VMware Fusion® (for Mac) : A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion : Comments

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

Yaztromo — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:07:06 GMT

You should note in the Paravirt section that it's only the 32-bit Ubuntu 7.04 which supports paravirt -- the 64 bit version currently does not (although this is supposed to be remedied in the next release IIRC).

The USB HID section currently ends in "However, this is a problem for other devices such as tablets, since", with no further text.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

etung — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:35:23 GMT

Thanks for pointing those out, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I posted. It is (currently) an open wiki, though, so you can make changes yourself

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

Yaztromo — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:40:29 GMT

Silly me -- I didn't even notice. I admittedly haven't taken in all the new functionality of the new forums software, so I never even noticed it was Wiki-ized :P.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

mykmelez — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:57:54 GMT

The "Fit Full Screen" section says to set autoFitFullScreen to "fitHostToGuest" and that "other valid values" are "fitHostToGuest" and "none". Presumably one of those "fitHostToGuest" references should be a reference to "fitGuestToHost", but I don't know which one (I still don't understand the functionality of this pref, despite having read about it and its possible values on several occasions).

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

Stokestack — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:22:11 GMT

Thanks for this info, but I can't find an important piece: Where is the .vmx file? I don't see it alongside the vmwarevm file or Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

etung — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:15:06 GMT

See A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion: Where to Find Things. The .vmx file is inside the .vmwarevm bundle.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

WoodyZ — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 19:54:50 GMT

The UI scripting link under Scripting is dead.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

BP9906 — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:23:59 GMT

Can we add information about Alt and Windows key swapping in the VM? Its useful to know since I tell OSX to swap the keys on my Windows keyboard.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

uruiamme — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:30:24 GMT

One thing that I find smart is this... I don't see any other such tips, so here goes:
DISABLE Windows native ability to smooth LCD Screen fonts using its ClearType trick. This is a subtle trick that relies on the fact that LCDs are full of red, then green, and then blue pixels (left to right, RGB displays). Mac OS uses a similar technology called Font Smoothing. Well, hopefully you know how to turn off Windows' ClearType if you are using it, because the instant that I did so while running Fusion, I instantly got a better looking Windows XP desktop. It would appear that using both OS's smoothing ends up with some red and blue edges on text so don't do both!! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Type.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

yuhong — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 23:19:17 GMT

Many of these features can also be configured by opening it in VMware Workstation 6.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

bwbeach — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:50:22 GMT

Thanks for posting these useful hints! I'm using VMware/Fusion for the first time today, and already I have a Red Hat development system up and running.

I'm having trouble with the Alt key, though. I've turned on mks.keyboard.swapAlt, and it only works intermittently, which is unfortunate because the Alt key is critical to us emacs users.

I have a friend who is an X Windows hacker, and I borrowed a program from him that prints out keyboard events as they come in. Sometimes Command is mapped to Alt, and sometimes it's mapped to Ctrl. It seems to depend on which key gets pressed next. If I type "Command-A", it's showing up in the guest OS as "Ctrl-A", whereas "Command-B" shows up as "Alt-B". After some experimentation, I found that the Command key is correctly getting mapped to Alt for most letters, but gets mapped to Ctrl for these: A C F P Y X and Z.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

etung — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:18:53 GMT

Sometimes Command is mapped to Alt, and sometimes it's mapped to Ctrl.

While the virtual machine is powered off, try adding the following line to the .vmx:

pref.mapMacShortcutKeys = "FALSE"

1.1.1 added some remapping, which sounds exactly like what is interfering with your situation. Disabling the new remapping of Command+C/Ctrl+C in Fusion 1.1.1

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

bwbeach — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:20:34 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply!

Setting pref.mapMacShortcutKeys in the .vmx file didn't make any difference, but putting it in ~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/preferences did the trick (as mentioned in the thread "Disabling the new remapping of Command+C/Ctrl+C in Fusion 1.1.1".

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

vmdufus — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:30:03 GMT

This comment basically pertains to the Beginner's Guide, but it seems to be maxed out with comments. Basically, I am not getting the full "block diagram" picture. From this guide, it sounds like everything is memory resident - the VM, the Guest OS, the Guest applications and the Guest files. But I know that can't be. So just what resides on the virtual disk, and what resides on a chosen physical disk. I want to maximize the latter. Also, somewhere there was a reference to Bluetooth only being able to function with one OS at a time (Host or Guest). Does this mean I won't be able to use my wireless (i.e., Bluetooth) keyboard and mouse with the VM? Note, I also read the Getting Started and Mobility docs available for download. It would be helpful if the full documentation were similarly available.

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

Pondurenga — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:28:18 GMT

I have Virtual Windows XP Pro on a 2 GH Mac Mini, with 2 GB of memory. I am running XP thru VMWare. Last night, I upgraded XP to SP2. Will "Dragon Speaking Naturally 10" work on my system?

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

tspider — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:39:14 GMT

I've tried adding

signal.suspendOnHUP = "TRUE"
signal.powerOffOnTERM = "TRUE"

To my virtual machine without changing my system settings. However any virtual machine that's started via launchd on my system startup (using the vmrun command) doesn't shut down. I checked out my vmx file, it seems once an auto snapshot runs it deletes these settings. Is there a way to set these on the vmware daemon itself, not just my user or the vmx file?

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

bs98909 — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:47:45 GMT

Thank you for these tip and sorry if this is a novice post or has been already addressed, my searches haven't turned up a solution yet. My issue is that I want to map one of my MacOS drives to a Letter. I cannot seem to get this to keep. In the VM (Windows 7) I have the mapped network drive to "X:" but upon reboot it is disconnected. And will not reconnect. I have to disconnect and reconnect and works fine again until the next reboot.

Mapping the Shared drive it seems to pick a scheme of Z:\ and moved backward assigning letters randomly based on how it detected the share at that boot - yes I have seen the devices walk or flop letters.

And on the mapping of the drive, I do specify a user login & password credentials and click on the remember box.

So truly how can I assign a share or a drive to a letter drive and have it stick?

RE: A Power User's Guide to VMware Fusion

cmartel — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:39:07 GMT

How do I get headless back in Fusion 3.0, I tried to flip the same switch again, and it doesn't seem to have turned it on?
Thanks...