Trying to connect to vmware ESX 3.5 with VmWare player 3 on ubuntu

[hubertf]

Hi,

I'm trying to get a decent console on my linux workstation for my Vm's...

I try to use vmware Player to get this...

vmplayer -h svlyovmw17 -u 'myusername'

show me a login/password window ... ok, after it shows a list of registered VM's... ok

But if i select a VM, i get this strange error : +Error opening virtual machine 144: Unable to retrieve any hosts on this connection.

+

Does anyone knows this problem?

Thanks

[wila]

Hi,

Interesting, this was one of the things I still had to look into and test.

So you are saying it is broken again with vmplayer3? It worked OK for vmplayer 2.5.x

I just tried very quickly on my windows 7 setup and didn't even get as far as you.

There still is no virtual machine selection dialog in the windows version.

Looks like I will have to install vmplayer 3 on a linux box down here this weekend...

I'm not sure if you've seen this document about it?

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[hubertf]

Hi, i've taken the idea to connect to ESX via vmplayer from the URL : http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8840

It works with

vmware-vmrc... but there's some strange bugs in my ubuntu machine (ALT or CTRL keys blocked sometimes)

I've a VMware Server machine too and connecting to it via vmplayer works like a charm... i've only problem with vmplayer + ESX

So :

Vmplayer + ESX -> Fails

Vmplayer + Vmware Server -> OK

vmware-vmrc + ESX -> OK

vmware-vmrc + Vmware Server -> OK

[wila]

Hi,

OK, I've just installed VMware player 3 on a mandriva 2009.1 box of mine and I see pretty much the same problems as you are reporting.

It works indeed with VMware Server, but don't click on the menu item "VM Settings" or player will crash with

NOT IMPLEMENTED /build/mts/release/bora-203739/bora/apps/lib/cui/vmStatusVIM.cc:695

And if I try to connect to an ESX 3.5U4 host I get the errors:

Unable to connect to the MKS: Internal error.
Unable to connect to the MKS: MKS ticket acquisition was disallowed at the time of scheduled invocation.

So it appears to me that this functionality is indeed broken.

The only solution I see at this moment is to uninstall VMware Player 3 and install Player 2.5.3.

It is a bit of a catch-22 advice as you then probably get issues getting the kernel modules compiled on a current desktop linux.

As for the Alt-Ctrl keys now working properly with the vmrc I think that is a ubuntu issue which has work arounds. I don't have an ubuntu box around anymore, but there's posts on the keyboard issues.

Try this:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/11/19/vmware-workstation-ubuntu-ctrl-alt-ins-not-working/

and

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/12/01/vmware-workstation-ubuntu-and-unity/

Oh and I'll update my document with what you've found.

Thanks for the report.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

edit: Actually I can't update my post as the VMware web site feature for doing this is broken ... again

I'll write a post about it on http://www.planetvm.net instead.

[wila]

Hi,

So I finally got around testing this with vSphere and VMware Player 3.x and am happy to report that this works as expected.

Tested on Ubuntu 9.10 32 bits as a host.

So not supported right now is connecting from VMware Player 3 to a ESX3.5 host, but ESX 4.0 does work just fine.

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[wila]

Hi,

More details on my test, see http://bit.ly/vmplayer3rc

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com