Shell-based Utilities/Scripts available for Fusion?

[shornby]

I'm trying to find out if there are any utilities available for Fusion. I found an interesting binary in the APP folder called "vmware-remotemks" but it doesn't seem to work, even via sudo. Is is a utility like VI or VMware remote console? That got me interested in poking around a bit...

I like the fact that Fusion is very simple, as the initial requirements are (IMO) for a end-user audience to support stable and basic VM functionality under OS X. What I see so far meets that requirement! The following utilities would be a "nice to have" but not critical before launch.

Nice utilities would be similar to the components available for the Windows/Linux/ESX products:

-Front end to VMX file (specific to Fusion) or a white paper on entries and values

-Local mount of VMDK

-VMDK creator

-Statistical and performance info

-Repair util for VMDK

-Something like vmkfstools ... okay, maybe that's asking for a bit too much.

-Perl scripts to do various magical tasks

-Some kind of offline snapshot manager (snapshots definitely work!)

If anyone knows about tools/scripts/utilities like this, please respond in this thread.

Thanks,

Steve Hornby

Genentech

[rcardona2k]

FWIW

>-Front end to VMX file (specific to Fusion) or a white paper on entries and values

So far I've found nothing specific to Fusion in its VMX files. Every option I've known or read about, including such things as enabling Undoable disk mode using legacy machine options works. The only exception, which I did not try, but read about here, is adding experimental 3D video card support will crash the runtime VMM.

HUGE Cautionary Warning:[/b]Modifying a VMX file directly or using unsupported options such as ones at these sites can DEFINITELY lead to unexpected behavior including data loss in the Guest VM, runtime VMM crashes, etal. Do NOT use these utilities unless you are willing to risk losing a Guest VM at any time. Fusion VMs, IMO, should be completely discardable at this point anway.) CAVEAT EMPTOR[/b]

In addition to the VMX settings throughout the VMTN forums, there are some excellent third-party reference sites like

VM builder web site:

http://www.consolevision.com/members/dcgrendel/vmxform.html

VMX Builder in Petruska's VMware® Utilities (must be run in a Windows guest)

http://petruska.stardock.net/Software/VMware.html , and

Ulli's VMX Reference

http://www.sanbarrow.com/vmx.html

>If anyone knows about tools/scripts/utilities like this, please respond in this thread.

I've requested most of your command line utilities wishlist in these series of posts:

vmware-cmd

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=59125&tstart=0

Host-based Disk Mount

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=59126&tstart=0

VDiskManager

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=58932&tstart=0

x64 Processor Check Utility

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=58772&tstart=0

vm-support script

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=59296&tstart=0

[shornby]

I think you and I are looking for about the same thing here. I'll post udpates to this post as I see more. I'm going to yank a few perl scripts from ESX and see what happens. I don't expect to see anything incredible, but who knows.

As for editing VMX files, it's probably not the best way but a requirement when there isn't any front end at all in Fusion!! I did see some weird stuff happen after editing my Win 2003 VM, as the VM started and immediately stopped. Turned out to be two identical entries in the VMX (not even conflicting!) that caused the problem.

Thanks for the post.

Steve

[ksc]

The 'vmware-remotemks' binary is an accidental inclusion - a prototype during development. All the dependencies should be gone, but best not to be wrong the week before a beta ships :-). The binary will be removed shortly.

Re: rcardona2k's 3D graphics ... many things have changed on the 3D side and that code is quite new, even relative to the other things you are seeing. Let's just say that 2D graphics are a better milestone for beta exposure!

VMX options will never be formally documented. Ulli's site is the best I have seen (and in most cases, is better than our internal documentation). It is much like trying to document all the /proc options in the Linux kernel: the code changes too rapidly for documentation to stabilize, and most of the settings should never be touched anyway.