How HARD is it to sign the VMware Windows drivers?

[rcardona2k]

I still can't believe after all of these years it is that[/i] difficult to sign Windows device drivers. Why do I still get these ominous warnings when installing the VMware Tools?

Are there any plans to fix this? You'll have a whole new set of Mac newbies installing VMware Tools wondering about this.

[RDPetruska]

It's not that the process is hard[/i]... it's mostly paying MS a bunch of money, then letting them run the drivers through some tests.

[rcardona2k]

The last time I checked EMC was a multi-billion dollar company and VMware has hired an army of engineers in the last couple of years. Surely someone in the org has the time and budget to make it worth the effort.

[RDPetruska]

As far as I've seen in the past, VMware gets the GA versions of the product drivers signed, but does not for the beta/RC versions. Usually they are short-lived versions, so it's not worth the time and effort to go through the signing process.

[rcardona2k]

Good point! My initial post was made pre-coffee this morning.

Happy Holidays

[admin]

Hi rcardona

I am sorry that the lack of driver signing is an issue. When any code gets changed or updated in a driver they have to be re-signed, it would cause greater delays for us to re-sign the drivers every time we update the code vs doing it once later on in the project when the code has settled down and is no longer changing. So expect as we get closer to having a finale product this will happen and you should no longer see these warnings

[rcardona2k]

I appreciate your response. I completely understand for internal, daily builds, but I would think for a "first impression" on the first public beta on a new platform this would be a "sign-worthy" event.

I'm sure the RC or the GA version will be fine and that's what matter most in the end.

Thanks and Happy Holidays

[admin]

We're not going to sign beta code -- it's expensive, it takes a long time (which isn't tolerable during the beta cycle), and hey, it's beta code -- it might have bugs! We don't want to sign buggy code...

The GA version will of course have signed drivers.

[rcardona2k]

>it might have bugs! We don't want to sign buggy code...

This is a bold claim to make. Like any of the signed VMware Tools haven't had bugs?? My feedback is based on usability, and first impressions on a new platform not what it costs developers.

[admin]

Next you'll be asking us to remove the debugging code from beta builds so that beta customers can see how fast our software really is

I hear you, and it's a fair question. You asked how hard it is, I gave some reasons. It's certainly worth examining the tradeoffs. I think we could probably afford the $$$, but the turnaround time is an issue too during beta cycles. Just out of curiosity, and for leverage with The Management if we want to pursue this, do you know of examples of other software (or hardware) companies that sign their beta drivers?

[rcardona2k]

Probably not a fair comparison but Microsoft signed most of their drivers in the Vista beta cycle albeit oddly enough not the Virtual Server beta drivers.

[RDPetruska]

Probably not a fair comparison but Microsoft signed most of their drivers in the Vista beta cycle

Hmmm... I think the Vista development team may have been able to push their drivers to the top of the queue of the Driver Signing team, however.

[n6mod]

Next you'll be asking us to remove the debugging code

from beta builds so that beta customers can see how

fast our software really is

As someone who is making decisions about virtualization solutions for a multi-platform development house...

At least add a switch so I can make rational decisions.

I was laughing out loud at how slow the screen repainted during an Ubuntu install.

[HPReg]

At least add a switch so I can make rational decisions.

Don't count on it. If we did that, all beta testers would start running in non-DEBUG mode. The whole point of the beta program is to run with these gazillion sanity checks enabled, so the final product is rock solid.

[n6mod]

The whole

point of the beta program is to run with these

gazillion sanity checks enabled, so the final product

is rock solid.

In my world that's an alpha[/i] program. In Beta, you run with the code you intend to ship. Just think of all the race conditions you'll find when you turn off the gratuitous asserts. :smileygrin:

But I digress. I'll be taking a hard look at Lab Manager in January, but in order for that kind of outlay to make sense for us, we'll need to be able to run the same VMs on our desktop/notebook machines when we're offline. I haven't spent much time with Fusion yet, but my initial impression is quite poor. (painfully slow screen repaints, and the ubuntu install failed)