Ugliness updating IPhone from ITunes running on XP 5.x Guest VM on Ubuntu 8.04 host running on VMW 6.5.2

[stevecoh1]

In VMWare Workstation 6.5.2 build-156735 I was able to load ITunes on the XP Guest and have it recognize and talk to the IPhone(after adding the line ehci.present = "true" to the vmx). This vmx was created a VMW 5.x vmx. things seemed to be working well until I decided to download an IPhone OS upgrade from ITunes. Bad idea. The upgrade crapped out in the middle and could never complete. Even using the "restore" option which loads a vanilla factory install of the latest IPhone OS version could not complete and the IPhone was rendered useless until I could attach it to a real Windows PC and access ITunes from there. Fortunately I was able, after the restore, to retrieve most of my backed up content using the VMW Itunes (the same one that failed to perform the OS upgrade). The Apple troubleshooting documentation tends to lean toward bad cables or connectors as causes of this type of problem, but in this case it seems to have something to do with improper VMW USB detection through some phase of the upgrade process. From what I could tell, there is a slice of time in which the PC does NOT recognize the IPhone as an IPhone but as some other sort of device, and only when some preliminary load phase is complete, does it again detect an IPhone, and this is what the VM couldn't handle.

It is possible that the 5.x nature of the VM has something do with this. But I am unable to upgrade it to a 6.x VM because that menu option is greyed out. If it would be beneficial to do this (other than this I have had few problems with the VM) how can I accomplish it? How in general do you upgrade a VM created in one version of VMW to a later version of VMW if the upgrade option is greyed out?

[mikefoley]

I gave up trying to update my iPhone from a VM. I'd suggest creating a small partition on your host disk, install XP and iTunes there and use that for upgrading. I'm pretty sure you're right about the timing of the USB devices. After a number of failures, I gave up and moved iTunes to my host system and haven't had a problem since. (My host is Win7 RC now)

mike

[jsa]

You are not alone.

You can sync and back-up, but attempting to install a new version of the iPhone software in a VM usually leads to tears. The problem occurs when the phone disconnects in the process of installing the software. Ubuntu will often kernel panic when this happens, and always fights vmware for the device. The end result is that the phone ends up corrupted.

It doesn't work any better in Vmware player.

VMware Guys: I know some of you have iphones, and with a new release of the software just out this is your chance to find and fix this. Its not like its really rare, it happens every single time.

Run Ubuntu. Install XP in a VM. Install itunes in XP. Back up your iphone on a REAL windows machine before you try to upgrade it in the VM because I guarentee you will need the backup.

[stevecoh1]

I concur with jsa's diagnosis. In my particular configuration, there was no kernel panic but the IPhone was left in an unusable state. Ordinary synching works fine, but not to install a new OS. Is it possible to file actual bug reports with VMWare over something like this?

[Goulou]

I have ton confirm this bug, since it just appened to me while upgrading to iphone OS 3.0.1...

I used VMWare Server 2.0.1 (last version to date), and was connected to it with VMWare player (using command line "vmplayer -hostname host:port" or something like this. In the middle of the update, the screen was locked to the image showing "connection to iTunes required", and there was no way of getting out of there. The device was well detected by the virtual machine, but at step "preparing the iphone for update", I got "error 13 (unknown)" in iTunes.

While the iPhone was locked in this state, I tried again few times, connecting and disconnecting it, rebooted the virtual machine (not the guest), tried running vmplayer as root, nothing. I also launched the guest directly on the host (by loading the appliance to my local disk) with vmplayer (2.5.2, build 156735, latest version to date), but to no success...

At last, I finished the installation (successfully...) on another computer running vista "directly".

For your information, if you were to test this : make a backup of your iphone first, in my case, I got everything back after update+restore, except musics and applications, but when you install them back, they will find there data (params, ...).

[cknerr]

Confirming the same behavior.

VMWare Workstation 6.5.2

Host OS: Ubuntu 8.10

Guest OS: Win XP SP3

[djaquays]

I've never tried to update my ipod through a VM, and do not have an iphone. However, I have tried to do various tasks with a palm pda with a vm and the problem is actually related to the way the device starts and stops communications repeatedly. When this happens on a physical computer, it's not a problem as the driver for the device handles the breaks. However, when you're adding another layer of communication the timings get mangled. You now start communication which the host acknowledges, connects and then vmware forwards to the vm to ackowledge and connect. It then breaks the connection, which the VM is expecting, but the host is not, and tries to reconnect again. I wouldn't really call this a "bug" in vmware, it's been a known issue for quite awhile, assuming the issue is the same as the Palm.

[MarkT21]

If you are running Ubuntu as the VMWare Server, then this may help ..

http://freshfoo.com/blog/iphone_upgrade_with_vmware

Which also links to another way of doing this ..

http://teknofire.net/articles/2009/07/06/ubuntu-vmware-and-accessing-the-iphone/

Rgds

Mark Taylor