Fusion 6.02: linux guest --- how to see possible shares?

[iawelch]

[ok, I admit that I am trying out the kubuntu beta for 14.04, trusty tahr.  it has trouble with screen resolution under vmware, but I have fixed most of these.]

I installed the latest vmware tools on the latest vmware fusion 6.0.2..  everything installed fine, and then I rebooted.  (I also installed and then uninstalled open-vm-tools, and then reinstalled vmware-tools when nothing helped.)

so, I have fusion sharing ("Shared Folders") turned on, both for my main OSX root and for my /Users/me folder.  on my linux vm, there is a /mnt/hgfs, but it is empty.  nothing seems automounted.

how do I find out what sharable .host directories there are?

how do I mount?

mkdir shares

mount .host://Users/me ./shares

fails, as does

mount -t hgfs .host://Users/me ./shares

(this seems unnecessarily complicated.  why couldn't vmware fusion just access the host file system, the same way it can access an external disk drive??   if I authorize it to do this, it should be painless...)

regards,

/iaw

[iawelch]

has open virtual machine tools made it into ubuntu?  I long towards the day when everything will work out of the box, without me having to worry about recompiling the vmware kernel modules.  I have to add that my host vmware authorizer has never worked.  (it always reprompts for the root password.)  so, whenever a new linux host kernel comes out, I first need to sudo and start up my vmware player.  upon startup, it then detects the new kernel and recompiles correctly.  I don't need to open any virtual machines;  I just drop root privileges, and everything works fine in userland.  the guest OS (guest kernel) works fairly nice most of the time without any need for intervention.

I use a paid vmware fusion on OSX and a free vmplayer on linux.  both are pretty darn good.  alas, I did not find a cheap or free replacement for the headless virtualbox client (ala VBoxHeadless), so I also run Virtualbox.

/iaw

[thorsfall]

Darius - does the open-vm-tools package that we'd obtain as part of our Linux distro's favourite package manager (or install media) contain the updates and bug fixes that are being discussed in this thread?  A quick look at their download links on sourceforge shows that the project hasn't been updated since 2013, and their website's last update was 2010.  Is open-vm-tools somewhat defunct?

In your experience, what's the best policy regarding using the official VMware tools vs. open-vm-tools?  Just bootstrap with open-vm-tools and then uninstall the package and install the official VMware tools?

(As always, thanks for your time and the assistance you give on these forums)

Trev

[dariusd]

I'm not terribly familiar with open-vm-tools other than knowing that it aims to replace the need for several of our current VMware Tools drivers with versions that are incorporated into various Linux distros.  It's certainly not defunct.  I don't know whether it will ever cover all of the VMware Tools drivers – Thinprint comes immediately to mind.

open-vm-tools won't do anything to ease the host-side module-building situation if you are running a host OS that's not officially supported, but for the guest at least it may make a lot more stuff work by default.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[steve_goddard]

To add my 2c to the information provided by Darius thus far, as far as I know the  open-vm-tools which is incorporated into the various Linux distros is aimed to be the replacement.

However, currently not all the features are available with the open-vm-tools. In particular, the Shared Folders feature and the vmhgfs kernel driver.

The Linux distros didn't want to take this module upstream, so this component and feature is not available with the open-vm-tools version.

To get the shared folders feature, currently you have to uninstall the open-vm-tools then install the VMware Tools.

Having said that, for the upcoming new releases, changes have been made to the Linux installer for VMware tools that allows the open-vm-tools install to remain in place, so a user just has to install the VMware Tools on top.

This will then add the missing components not already present with the open-vm-tools. For example, you will then get the Shared Folders feature after installing the VMware Tools.

Steve

[myitcv]

Hi Steve - I just downloaded the tech preview. Just to confirm this should work ok with a 3.16 kernel?

Any other upgrade notes I should look for?

Thinking in particular about the fact that I need to run /usr/bin/vmware-user as part of my profile...

Thanks

[myitcv]

Using the tech preview (Professional Version e.x.p 1943533), under a 3.16.0-5 kernel I get the following errors trying to build vmware-tools (couldn't paste this for some reason):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6g4rzi9m3annste/vmware_tools_build_error.txt

Is this expected?

[steve_goddard]

yes this is a known issue and I am working on these changes currently.

I will try and fixes into the main release if I can.

Thanks for reporting this.

Steve

[myitcv]

Thanks. Is there anything bleeding edge I can patch in myself to the tools?

Or is the advice to revert to 6.0.4 with an older kernel?

I should also report, I couldn't work out a way to have the VM adjust the resolution when maximising.

Before this was handled by running /usr/bin/vmware-user in my profile. That script doesn't exist in the tech preview at least....

[steve_goddard]

My advice would be to hang on and use a slightly older kernel for now. There is no bleeding edge patch.

The changes required to fix this I have not had time to fully work out as yet. I have the compile issue but there are more changes required.

Not sure why you don't have that script but I will ask other developers to see what that issue could be.

Steve

[myitcv]

Hi Steve - is there any update on this?

Just to check my current understanding matches yours.

That the supported Kernel version for both 6.0.4 and the tech preview is 3.13, until such time as the known issue referred to here:

Re: Fusion 6.02: linux guest --- how to see possible shares?

is resolved, at which point the tech preview should start supporting the latest stable Kernel which is 3.16.

Thanks

[steve_goddard]

Sorry, no time to make progress on 3.16 right now.

3.15 kernels should be fine. Maybe not new enough for you but that is currently where we are at.

I am in crunch mode for Fusion 7 (and Workstation 11) which have more pressing issues to resolve ahead of this.

I will get back to this issue fairly shortly though, and when I have more information I will let you know.

Steve

[myitcv]

Thanks. Appreciate the response during 'crunch time'

I can't make 3.15 play nicely (various compile errors) but instead of posting those across I'll stick with 3.13 until the release of Fusion 7.