More Fedora 8 stuff

[dp_fusion]

MBP 13", 2G RAM, Leopard 1.5.1, Fusion 1.1.1

Fedora Core 8, 2.6.23.1-42

Shared folders enabled, 512 meg RAM

Tools are installed and configured.

The problem: No drag/drop, no copy/paste between OS X and Fedora, no dynamic screen resizing.

Running ps -ef |grep vm shows:

vmware-guestd -- background... (cut/paste doesn't work - full paths are actually returned)

Not running is vmware-user, so I ran /usr/bin/vmware-user. Lots of library path failures, so I used ldd to discover where it was looking. I created a script to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH so all paths would resolve - the /usr/bin/vmware-user script should do this but fails.

This is the result of running /usr/lib/vmware-tools/bin32/vmware-user binary directly after manually setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

Log: HOSTINFO: Seeing Intel CPU, numCoresPerCPU 2 numThreadsPerCore 1.

Log: HOSTINFO: numPhysCPUs is 0, bumping to 1.

Log: HOSTINFO: This machine has 1 physical CPUS, 1 total cores, and 1 logical CPUs.

Warning: vmware-user failed to initialize blocking driver.

Warning: Error in the RPC recieve loop: RpcIn: Unable to send

Warning: Another instance of VMwareUser may be running.

Anyone have any suggestions about where to look next?

[dp_fusion]

Ok - here's what I found. After migrating a perfectly running instance of OpenSUSE 10.3 from Windows and player.exe to Mac with Fusion I ended up with a total failure. Disastrous failure in fact. I've deleted it from my Mac system and I'm done with it (OpenSUsE and Fedora). I'm wasting my time with this stuff. The guides offer what are supported versions of Linux and I suspect it's best to stay within that list even though it's not what I require.

But just as an observation - Fusion has been referred to as polar opposites of ESX, yet the supported Leenooxes for both environments are what advanced users would be expected to use (and I like to think after 25 years in this I'm something of an advanced user). This looks like an expanding support of low-hanging fruit - what worked in ESX will be fine in Fusion. The problem children for Linux on Fusion are Ubuntu and the freebie Leenooxes from Novell and RedHat. I'm guessing the typical OS X user isn't going to deploy EL anything but I could be wrong. Anyway - nuff time wasted chasing this. I'll accept what I have as good enough and leave it at that.

I'd love to be told I'm wrong and that all I have to do to get OpenSUsE and Fedora Core 8 working with dynamic screen size and cut/paste is to just ... (here a miracle occurs).

Cranky as I sound, Fusion is still a spectacular system and has gotten me very far down a path otherwise not available, so overall I'm a happy/cranky customer who has run out of time to make this stuff behave as I'd like.

[admin]

Ok - here's what I found. After migrating a perfectly running instance of OpenSUSE 10.3 from Windows and player.exe to Mac with Fusion I ended up with a total failure. Disastrous failure in fact.

Can you be more descriptive?

The problem children for Linux on Fusion are Ubuntu and the freebie Leenooxes from Novell and RedHat.

How would you say these are "problem children"?

I'd love to be told I'm wrong and that all I have to do to get OpenSUsE and Fedora Core 8 working with dynamic screen size and cut/paste is to just ... (here a miracle occurs).

I'd like to tell you that, but I just tried FC8 and saw a lack of DnD/resizing. I filed a bug about this, and hopefully it'll get traction even though the guests aren't officially supported since they worked for you on Player.

I wonder if it's related to the Xorg 7.3/1.3 bug, e.g ?

[muumi]

I am also trying to run Fedora Core 8 on my Fusion. I have a problem with the desktop resolution resetting back to 800x600 always. I can change it to a larger resolution such as 1152x864 but it has no effect. When I boot the VM, the resolution is OK for a few seconds when the desktop boots, then it gets reset to 800x600. At least that is what I think it does since the font size looks good for the first seconds and then it gets really big and ugly. After this it is at 800x600 also right after boot unless I redo the change. The change is reset in System->Hardware->Display (resets to 800x600) but not in System->Preferences->Hardware->Screen Resolution (stays as I set it). I googled around and someone seemed to have had some problems with the display driver overwriting the values on boot in FC8 in general.

I originally installed my VM on windows VMWare Desktop on an external drive and now I am trying to use it also on my Mac via Fusion. On the windows version I had no problems but haven't tried yet after messing around with Fusion. Fusion did ask me if I had moved or copied the VM so I chose moved.. I guess it is due to HW change and I need to redo the move selection on windows and mac every time if I get this working..

I can't seem to get the tools to install either. From this thread I guess it is a common problem? On the windows version it worked fine. In Fusion, it installs the package but VMWare keeps saying it is not installed... Is this why the resolution keeps resetting? Is this maybe caused by display driver or what? Is my problem the same as is discussed in this thread?

[dp_fusion]

I will re-install the appliance and take notes for you. I'd really like to see this whipped. The appliance I'm using is the OpenSuSE 10.3 Gnome version on your appliance page. I put an instance of it in Player on Windows XP and it works perfectly. The instance I put in Fusion works as you discovered - no d&d and no dynamic vid.

What I know is the Fusion version asks to update the tools and I'd expect that but it turns out the tool installer doesn't know where to put things for that version of Linux. Running the vmware-config-tools.pl script creates a vmware-user script that has no clue how to construct the LD_LIBRARY_PATH it needs to find the parts. I have a feeling this is one of the issues that is resolved when Fusion knows specifically what Linux version is being installed. Anyway, manually constructing the LD_LIBRARY_PATH was possible by locating the needed libraries, and vmware-user would get past that but then fail when it couldn't devine some block drivers. I think the actual error message is in the perl script.

As it stands now I have a very stable but unfriendly version running. I have to use tricks to move things around owing to the D&D problem, but it is working very well otherwise. I've gotten around the screen sizing problem (and muumi observed erratic dimensioning problems and they're quite real) by using a second monitor in full-screen mode. It's actually quite nice, to be honest - I can live with that. The advantage I get is I can connect to our office VPN server in the VM and still have full access to the local net from the Mac host. And the Linux guest system is quite appropriate for the work I do in a Linux data center.

I'll post more info when I get the appliance unzipped. Recall this is a copy of an appliance that is running very well in Windows with Player. And to copy it I shut it down fully and tar'd up the directory it is in and rsync'd the gzipped tarball to my Mac.

Thanks for your interest, Erik - this excellent level of service is one of the major reasons I left Parallels behind.

[admin]

Preliminary replies from the Tools experts is that we inadvertently left libexpat.so.0 (Fedora 8 comes with libexpat.so.1) out of the Tools for 1.1. If you can find a copy, put it in /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32. Also, they say that detection of Xorg 7.3 is indeed not working, /usr/bin/vmware-user should point to /usr/lib/vmware-tools/bin32/xorg71/vmware-user-wrapper instead of /usr/lib/vmware-tools/bin32/vmware-user-wrapper.

I'm not sure why this would affect Fusion and not Player, just repeating what they said.

[wila]

If this is the missing libexpat in fedora 8 that you are talking about, then it can be resolved by:

 yum install compat-expat1

[dp_fusion]

More experimenting - and I have to tell you, snapshots are your friend. What a great tool that is. It would sure be nice to have multiple snapshots, hint hint.

I re-installed the OpenSuSE 10.3-Gnome appliance (the one copied from and that works perfectly in Windows with Player). I decided to ignore the prompt to update the vmware tools and explored some. I'd always updated the tools first when installing this appliance. So here's what works in Fusion if I don't change the tools:

Fusion 1.1.1, MacBook Pro, OS X 10.5.1

Linux opensuse-vm 2.6.22.9-0.4-default #1 SMP 2007/10/05 21:32:04 UTC i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Dynamic screen size works perfectly

Cut/Copy and Paste either direction works

Drag and Drop files works from OpenSuSE to OS X but not the other way

Networking (dhcp) failed to configure eth1, but it shows up in ifconfig -a so the device is there.

I manually configured the network, added a default route, and updated /etc/resolv.conf to point to the host IP (same as default route) and got networking to function.

So I'm back leveled on the tools but things are working well enough that I'm able to get some work done. I'll crawl the logs and explore the networking issue to see why dhcp failed when time permits, but for now I've scripted the net configuration and things are looking up. I gots happy feets.

I found that attempting to run vmware-config-tools.pl without updating the tools will error out with a path problem looking for kernel includes. I'll go back to the Windows platform I copied this vm from and see what happens there. This should be entirely host agnostic as it all happens inside the vm.

Edit: Time moved on and I had time to check into this

Running the Yast network configurator restored the DHCP functionality so networking is now working. I didn't remember to mention it earlier, but sound is also working. I recommend listening to http://irh.com/ while working on this stuff it's very calming.

To summarize:

• I have a nearly 100% functional instance of OpenSuSE 10.3 running. Only missing part is Drag 'n Drop from the host to the guest. Going the other way works fine.

• I have an outdated version of VMware Tools and I'm going to leave it that way for now

• I still gots happy feets

To Do: Install the same OpenSuSE version from the appliance file linked here in the appliances section and see if I can repeat this. That is the appliance I installed in Windows player and later copied to OS X. I'm just curious - nothing to gain but knowledge.