Monthly Archives: September 2007

VMware Server 1.0.4 now available !

VMware Server 1.0.4 bug and security release now available

Perhaps the most “interesting” fix is
“This release fixes a problem with virtual machines running Red Hat Linux 7.1, kernel version 2.4.2, that caused the guest operating system to become unresponsive during the installation of VMware Tools, after the user selected the default display size.”

Its reassuring to see that there are others out there who are still using Red Hat 7, 8 & 9 !

VMware guests using GNU/Linux kernel 2.6.16+ and clock/clocksource

From kernel 2.6.16 the clock= command line option is deprecated and the following option should be used:

clocksource=acpi_pm

The following option may be better suited to a Linux guest with kernel 2.6.21 or later and to VMware products such as VMware Workstation 6 that provide “VMware paravirtual kernel support”:

clocksource=vmi-timer

Source http://theether.net/kb/100039

VMware releases open source Virtual Machine Tools

VMware has just released a majority of VMware Tools as open source software as part of the project Open Virtual Machine Tools. VMware Tools is a set of guest operating system virtualization components that enhance performance and improve management of VMware virtual machines.

Open Virtual Machine Tools (open-vm-tools) is hosted at http://open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net, and the source code is available today to enable Linux vendors to integrate open-sourced VMware Tools into upcoming versions of their operating systems.

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/tools.html

gNewSense & Xubuntu VMware guest clock loses time

gNewSense & Xubuntu (Edubuntu & Ubuntu) 6.06 VMware guests lose time (clock runs slowly) if :

  • you are not using clock=pit
  • you are not running the vmware-guest deamon
  • you haven’t added tools.syncTime = “TRUE” to your vmx file
  • you’ve updated your kernel (which stops the vmware-guest deamon !)

You can fix this by

  • add clock=pit to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst
  • update-grub
  • (get latest kernel headers)
  • vmware-config.pl
  • reboot

check that

  • pstree -capl | grep guest

displays

  • vmware-guestd,4555 –background /var/run/vmware-guestd.pid

Read more about you needn’t shouldn’t use NTP to solve these problems in the VMware white paper “Timekeeping in VMware Virtual Machines” hidden in http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/
as http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/238