hgfs problem with ubuntu 11.04

[bukrat]

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.

[wila]

Hello,

Welcome at the VMware communities forum.

This sounds like a character set problem of some sort.

I can't see what language you are normally using, but could it be that your Virtual Machine is not set to support the same language as your host?

Can you create the files with characters exclusive to your language locally in the VM?

PS: It's very well possible that it is a localisation bug in vmware tools, just trying to isolate the problem a little bit.

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

[bukrat]

Hi Will, I'm using standard emglish char set. 

I simple create a file on the host, then when i rename or edit the file on the host, i cannot read it again on the ubuntu 11.04 guest.

Here is the screen shot.  In this case I created a file on the host "foo" and then renamed it on the host to "bar", and this is what a dir listing looks like from the guest side.   I do notice that sometimes this works, so things are  intermitant. 

I ran into this on one of our development systems when we ugraded to ubuntu 11.04 server 64 bit, guest from 10.10 and files are edited on the host with vim.  I noticed that renaming the file on the host produced same problem

I have not seen this issue on 10.10

Radek

[ctkmac]

I can confirm that this happens to me as well on 11.04.  When the file is changed on the host while the VM is running, the permissions only show ?'s.  Am running VMWare Fusion 3.1.3 on 10.6.7.

I've tried editing fstab/mtab to  include uid,gid but this does not help.

Edit:  I've noticed that it keeps the mac users uid and gid.  so in your case user of the files is 501 and gid is dialout.  Not sure if this affects anything.  My gid is dialout(20 i believe) as well.

[naneau]

I too experience this problem with an entirely clean install of Ubuntu 11.04 Server (64 bit). I can access files just fine from my guest, but as soon as I change a file on the host, permissions show as ?????? and I can't stat the file anymore.

Host is OSX Lion.

[ctkmac]

I have not found anyway to get around this issue, hopefully it will be resolved in the near future.  Until then I've set up sshfs as a work around.

From the Mac enable remote login from Sharing.

On ubuntu install sshfs:  sudo apt-get install sshfs

Then you can make a script to mount the folder on startup.

#!/bin/bash

IP=`route -n | grep 192.168.[1-9].[1-9] | awk '{print $2}' | grep -v 0.0.0.0`

sshfs $IP:/PATH/OF/MAC/FOLDER/TO/SHARE/ ~/Desktop/folder-name

This has been much more stable for me than other work arounds while still keeping things secure.

[naneau]

I ended up doing the same, although I can't say I'm too happy about that. SSHFS isn't particularly fast, and I would prefer to not have to open SSH on my host.

[bukrat]

I recently tried to force compile the tools on 11.04 but experienced the same results.

A little unfortunate that this is an issue as vmware host/guest compatibility has been so solid for a long time, and this is the first show stopper issue for us. 

We rely on hgfs for our dev infrastructure so this required us to create new dev system based on 10.10 and push it out to our devs.

Maybe this is a bug in ubuntu, but seeing that one of the changelog features in 3.1.3 was "File access: Improved reliability accessing shared files on the Mac." maybe there was a regression.

[mattiniemela]

I am also experiencing this very same problem on two different computers, at work and at home. Both run the latest OSX, VMWare and VMWare tools.

I hope the trust I've put into VMWare for it's professionalism, instead of it's competitors such as Parallels Desktop, will pay off with this kind of nasty bugs being squashed in a timely fashion.

Please fix this asap. This is affecting our day-to-day jobs, every day, nearly every hour.

[mattiniemela]

Today I installed VMWare Fusion 4 and the latest VMWare tools found inside the larger installer package (lite cannot find package from the update server, it says) and can confirm that this bug is present also in Fusion 4.

Please fix this asap.

[Pukupi]

Same here. Files loose permissions in shared folders on edit with Ubuntu 11.04 Vmware Fusion 3 or 4 guest. If I restart Ubuntu, permissions are restored (until next edit).

Interestingly if I edit a text file with BBEdit, persmissions are intact on save but if I edit with TextEdit, permissions are lost.

[mattiniemela]

Good VMWare,

I am happy to report that this HGFS bug is still making our lives miserable and difficult.

Something I've once said just popped into my mind and suits this situation so well; Please fix this asap.

[mattiniemela]

And BTW, don't think this is some kind of character set problem (in which case you should still fix it!). I have en-US OSX installed, and I installed the Ubuntu 11.04 in English (with a finnish keyboard which ofc doesn't affect HGFS!).

Also all the files are UTF-8 containing mostly ASCII (save for the translation files).

[beverlyguillerm]

I ran across this problem tonight... so it's still an issue.  I hate work arounds, it should work as it did before with just a normal hgfs mount.  Please fix this!

[martyvona]

Same problem here.  About to downgrade to 10.04 so I can get work done.  Unfortunately I'm using an academic site license that appears not to have support privs.  Has anone here filed a vmware support request to put this on their radar?

Another partial workaround is to unmount/remount hgfs when you get the errors.  This at least temporarily clears them up for me:

sudo umount /mnt/hgfs
sudo mount -t vmhgfs .host:/ /mnt/hgfs

also see http://askubuntu.com/questions/55316/changed-files-are-not-recognised-on-mounted-drive

[bukrat]

Ok I just bought fusion 4 and installed 4.02.

Installed ubuntu 11.10 server with non lvm entire disk partition.

downloaded tools  VMwareTools-8.8.0-465068.tar.gz ,  had to build the tools.

shared a directory from my osx 10.6.8 booted host. 

created a file called test in the shared directory with

hello

world

opend the created file on host in macvim edited it

hello

test

world

and saved it.

ls -l  the shared directory on the guest and i see

-????????? ? ?   ?                ?                ? test.txt

if I ls -l on the host it looks fine, and the actual contents are correct.

-rw-r--r--  1 radek  staff          17 27 Oct 13:40 test.txt

If i do a vmware-tools restart on the guest

/etc/vmware-tools/services.sh restart

and then ls -l the shared directory on the guest the file looks ok

-rw-r--r-- 1 501 dialout         17 2011-10-27 13:40 test.txt

It would be REALLY REALLY nice if this issue was addressed/fixed. 

[zabouti]

I have the same problem as described here and in the comments.

I made sure that both Ubuntu and OSX have the same UID/GID values, but when I make a change to a file from the OSX side, the ubuntu side can no longer use the file until I give this command:

$ sudo mount /mnt/hgfs -o remount

(/etc/fstab has this line in it: .host:/        /mnt/hgfs    vmhgfs  defaults,ttl=5,uid=503,gid=504     0 0)

I, too, would very much like VMware to solve this problem.

[Lebkuchen]

Same problem here, but I've seen it for the first time today: I edited a PNG file with Photoshop on the Mac (VMware Fusion 3.1.3 Build 416484) and it disappeared in Linux (Ubuntu 11.04 64bit) afterwards. After a remount, the whole directory containing the file was gone. A restart of the guest solved the issue.

Linux version 2.6.38-12-generic (buildd@crested) (gcc version 4.5.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-8ubuntu4) ) #51-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 28 14:27:32 UTC 2011

Maybe it only happens, if a file is in use on the guest while the host changes it? Could it be related to a kernel update? Like everyone else, I would appreciate a fix, because it's a major pain in the ass. Thanks!

[martyvona]

bukrat - since you have paid for a license, would you be able to file an official support request?  As I mentioned, I cannot do it b/c my academic license does not have a support entitlement.

My understanding is that vmware's bug tracking and support system is not necessarily connected to these message boards.  This issue may not even be on their radar.  The thread topic even says the issue is "possibly answered", which it is not.

[bukrat]

I actually did file an official support request 2 days ago.  I did not do this before as I assmed vmware would look in this form for topics like this, with confirmed issues, and implement a fix.  But maybe not. I referenced this thread in the support ticket.

I received a confirmation that the support ticket was received, but nothing as of yet.  I will share any info I get.