thanks.  this is not what I meant/need.  I want to run my VM to experiment with boot processes.  I don't have networking running in my guest, certainly not early and all the time.  on the guest, I just have a command line.  I need to interact with what used to be called a local console---keyboard and screen, but no mouse.  (now, console seems to refer more to the console.log and is a destination device, not an I/O device.)

right now, I always have to ctrl-command to get my mouse back when I have typed into the VM and then I want to go back to another OSX window.  this is annoying and unnecessary.  after all, my GUI-less CLI in the vmware guest does not use the mouse.

what I need is "tell the guest there is no mouse; leave the mouse with the host"

regards,

/iaw