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bukrat
Contributor
Contributor

hgfs problem with ubuntu 11.04

With Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit guest on a osx 10.6.7 host, when a file in a shared directory is edited or renamed on the host, the guest view of that file breaks.  A directory listing from the guest for that file simply contains   "????????  ????    ???".  And of course the file is not readable from the guest.  On the host there are not issues.   Additionally, creation of a new file from the host in a shard directory functions correctly.

This is using the latest vmtools package VMwareTools-8.4.7-416484.tar.gz

I also tried the same actions on ubuntu 10.10 with the same vmtools package and everything functions as expected.

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martyvona
Contributor
Contributor

great, thanks bukrat

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esaher
Contributor
Contributor

Any update on that?

I have the same issue. The only work around was setting permissions to 777 which seems to *sometimes* solve the problem.

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beverlyguillerm
Contributor
Contributor

I've reported it to customer service per the above recommendations.  They're "working on it", but no update yet.

I've done the following work around every time it happens to me, which is often:

sudo umount /mnt/hgfs

sudo mount /mnt/hgfs

That will reset everything back to what it was.

However, unless I need that specific version of ubuntu, I've reverted to using Meerkat 10.10 as my daily virtual machine.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hello,

I've not retested this yet, but there is an update to 4.1 and the release notes do not make mention of changes for hgfs.

So my guess is that it didn't make the update, but would really need to test as the release notes are not always complete.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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mattiniemela
Contributor
Contributor

FFS, I have 4.1 installed, for a time there everything seemed to be working just fine. But now I started to get the same ???? problem...

I updated the VMWare tools from something like 8.4 to 8.8.

The problem I have is that 11.04 processes LAMP (apache+PHP) pages in half the time compared to identically configured 10.04 with Zend Server CE.

Code on the mac over HGFS and mysql is not on the VM either.

VMP

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beverlyguillerm
Contributor
Contributor

Just an update from me -- I just updated to fusion 4.1, and I still encounter the problem using ubuntu 11.10.

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zabouti
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Now using ubuntu 11.10 server, 32-bit
VMware Fusion 4.1.1

Same problem.

This sure is getting old....

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bukrat
Contributor
Contributor

BTW, we ended up switching to debian squeeze and do not see these issues anymore.  Not sure what specifically is causes the isssue.  Ubuntu 11.04 has a newer kernel so maybe that is the issue.  Had also tried arch linux with latest 3.0 kernels and experienced the same issue.

I don't know if this is actualy kernel related, but thought i would mention it.

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blaiztrevian
Contributor
Contributor

Same here, using Ubuntu 11.10 server 64-bit with the latest VMware Fusion on Mac OS X Lion.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

I just wanted to post here to let you know that we are aware of this issue and a problem report has been filed with devleopment.

As per VMwares policy we do not dicsuss when/if a patch for an issue will be released as things can always change, so I would suggest when we release a update you check the release notes for meantion of this issue being resolved.

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martyvona
Contributor
Contributor

This is still a problem with ubuntu 11.10 updated as of 2/13/12.

I am now trying to workaround by using the older method of exporting an smb share from the host and mounting it within the guest.  It is working so far.  I will post here again if I encounter problems.

Brief HOWTO

------------------

On my OS X 10.6.8 host I enabled "File Sharing" in "System Preferences"->Sharing.  In "Options" there I turned on only SMB, and then I added a share "foo" for my homedir on the host.

Within the ubuntu 11.10 guest I did

sudo apt-get install smbfs

sudo mkdir /mnt/foo_smb

then I created the file /etc/samba/user with contents

username=foo

where foo is my username on the host.  I added this line to /etc/fstab

//172.16.241.1/foo /mnt/foo_smb cifs noauto,credentials=/etc/samba/user,rw,uid=bar 0 0

where bar is my username on the guest.  Finally I did

sudo mount /mnt/foo_smb

on the guest.

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martyvona
Contributor
Contributor

I've updated my guest to 12.04.  Host is still os x 10.6.8, but I also updated to newest vmware fusion 4.1.2.

The good news is that hgfs seems to be working again, in a few weeks of use I have not seen any of the stale directory entries that were the original topic of this thread.  However, "have not seen in a few weeks" is not exactly conclusive for something that was intermittent to start with.

The bad news is now there seems to be a new bug with (some kinds of?) symlinks on host filesystems not reading right when mounted in the client.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/49949/symlinks-broken-with-vmhgfs-on-fusion

So I am still using the workaround of using smb instead of hgfs.  My brief howto above seems to work on 12.04 but there I also needed to add the file

/etc/samba/lmhosts

with the one line content

172.16.241.1 WORKGROUP

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MavWolverine
Contributor
Contributor

This is how I fix it: Work Stuff - (Viraj Kanwade): VMware Fusion - Permissions on Shared Folders on Ubuntu and vmware should have fixed this by now. Anyways, they can use this fix and give me some discount for future updates :smileygrin:

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