Unity not working for me

[scabot]

Hello.

I have upgraded VMWare workstation to 6.5 from 6.03. I'm running XP prof sp3 as host and fedora 9 kernel 2.6.26.5-45 as guest.

Also the latest vmware-tools is installed and seems to work OK.

When I try to switch to unity mode an error dialog box appears that say:

"The virtual machine cannot enter Unity mode because:

• Unity is not supported on this guest operating system.

• The guest operating system's resolution cannot be changed."

I must point out that at one point it did switch to unity mode but when trying to start a new application nothing happened neither on the host nor on the guest.

Unfortunately I can't seem to even do this anymore .

Any suggestions?

[Jasemccarty]

Per the Release Notes for Workstation 6.5:

Unity mode - Integrate your favorite guest applications with your host. Open the application window, enter Unity mode, and the Workstation window is automatically minimized. The guest application windows look just like host application windows, but with color-coded borders. You can access the virtual machine's Start menu (for Windows virtual machines) or Applications menu (for Linux virtual machines) by placing the mouse pointer over the host's Start or Applications menu, or by using a key combination.

Note: Unity mode is supported only experimentally for Linux guests.

Could be it doesn't like the window manager you are running...

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[wila]

Hi,

Is this a viirtual machine that you created in either another VMware product or an earlier version of VMware workstation?

It that's the case, then there's a good chance that your virtual hardware is not version 7.

Have a look at the vmx file for the virtual machinel. OR check out the upgrade hardware wizard "Upgrade or change Version" under the right click context menu when you select the virtual machine and make sure it is set to the latest hardware version.

When using Unity the first couple of times it can take a while for it to work as the unity feature will try to export your list of installed programs to the host. I would expect this to work in fedora, althugh -admittedly- I've only tested it with Ubuntu.

--

Wil

[scabot]

Well. I did run the update wizard and I had a look into the vmx file as suggested and it is version 7. So maybe as Jase suggested it's just because it experimental for linux guests.

Sebastian

[scabot]

Thanks. I read the release notes but missed this part.

I'm running KDE 4.1

If anyone has further suggestions they will be welcomed.

Sebastian

[admin]

Try running vmware-config-tools.pl to ensure that tools is running properly in your guest.

I had Ubuntu 8.04 working in Unity, then I did updates, which included a kernel update and Unity stopped working. The problem was that the kernel update made tools' kernel modules incompatible and I had to recompile them.

If you do need to recompile modules, be sure to restart X.

I'm using Gnome, I assume KDE should work as well though.

[znmeb]

I'm having a similar issue. The host is VMware Workstation 6.5.1 on openSUSE 11.1 64-bit and the guest is openSUSE 11.1 32-bit. I think Unity worked once when I was running the XFCE4 desktop in the guest, but since I rebuilt the guest with Gnome I haven't been able to get Unity to work. I'm going to install XFCE4 again in the guest and see if that fixes it.

Meanwhile, openSUSE 11.1 guests seem to "automatically" have the "open VMware tools" installed. Workstation 6.5.1 thinks the tools are OK, but I couldn't get the host filesystem feature to work either. To try to resolve the Unity issue, I removed the open VMware tools that openSUSE installed and installed the ones from VMware. That didn't change anything on the Unity front, but now it looks like I can mount host filesystems in the guest. Stay tuned.

[znmeb]

Yes! Unity works with the XFCE4 desktop! So ... what is it about Gnome / Metacity that's angering Unity??? This is Gnome 2.24, by the way. So ... I think I am going to rebuild my guest with just XFCE4 -- Gnome's a bit on the large side anyhow.

[znmeb]

More testing with openSUSE: If you have an openSUSE 11.1 guest, you may have the open source VMware tools installed. They do not appear to work with shared files, and the Unity support may not be as good as the versions supplied with VMware Workstation 6.5.1. The way to check this is to open up the YaST software management tool in the guest and search for "open-vm-tools". There will be an open-vm-tools and an open-vm-tools-gui. If they are installed, flag them for de-installation. Then do a search for "vmware-kmp". There will be a "vmware-kmp-<version>", where <version> is the kernel version you have installed. If this is installed, flag it for de-installation.

You may also need to install the kernel development pattern. Switch the YaST tool over to "pattern" mode. You should see a "Kernel development" pattern. If it's not installed, select "Install all". This will bring in the compiler, "make", kernel headers, etc. that "vmware-config-tools.pl" needs to build the kernel modules. Once you've got all the selections made, start the software de-installation/process.

Once that's done, do a normal VMware Tools install from the VMware-supplied tools. "vmware-config-tools.pl" may complain about different compiler versions -- you can ignore that. It may also complain about not being able to "insmod" vmci.lo. That one I haven't tracked down yet, but I don't use VMCI.