Archive for the 'Virtualization' Category

VMware Fusion 2.0 and CVSNT

Published
by
roger
on 2008-09-18 @ 16:05
in Mac, Tools and Virtualization
. 0 Comments

VMware recently released Fusion 2.0, its Mac virtualization product with an extremely annoying incompatibility–it won’t work properly with Windows guest systems running CVSNT, the CVS client installed with TortoiseCVS.

As the release notes say:

CVSNT and VMware Tools are incompatible.
There is a known incompatibility between CVSNT (…) and VMware Tools. You should uninstall CVSNT if you want to install VMware Tools to use Unity view, and to use cut-copy-paste or drag-and-drop between your virtual machine and your Mac.

While you can work around the clipboard issue by exchanging text between host and guest via a public pasteboard file stored in a shared folder, it’s aggravating that this sort of kludge should be necessary and especially astounding considering that “Unity Improvements” are among the selling points for the new version.

According to an employee comment in a recent thread, it’s the CVSNT Server control panel that VMware Tools don’t get along with, and a fix is in the works for the next release.Removing the CVSNT Server

So if you’re not running a CVS server on your virtual machine, you can solve the problem by removing the CVSNT Server control panel via Add or Remove Programs (select CVSNT, click the Change button, select the Modify option and disable the CVSNT Server components).

Restart the guest system and re-install VMware Tools in the virtual machine. After another reboot, Unity view should work properly, and you can still connect to remote CVS servers using the client components of CVSNT.

It’s a shame VMware didn’t manage to include this solution in the release notes…

Using Mac VPN Clients with Virtual Machines

Published
by
roger
on 2008-03-11 @ 17:16
in Mac and Virtualization
. 0 Comments

If you use Parallels or VMware Fusion and a Mac VPN client such as VPN Tracker, you can share your VPN connection between the host Mac and the guest PC by setting the network adaptor to share the host’s Internet connection via NAT.

This connection method also has other advantages, as the VMware Fusion Release Notes explain:

“VMware Fusion’s default network connection type for new virtual machines is NAT, which will prevent the spread of viruses over the network into the virtual machine, and will only expose the virtual machine to external viruses through browser security flaws when you browse the Internet.”

The idea of sharing VPN connections with Windows applications via Parallels is touted as a VPN Tracker feature and explained in detail in a how-to PDF, but it works equally well with VMware Fusion.

The key is setting the network adaptor to shared networking (NAT) as opposed to the bridged or host-only options shown in the VMware settings screenshot below.

screenshot

With this approach, network traffic from your virtual machine is routed through the existing VPN connection on the host Mac, so there’s no need to install a separate VPN client application on the guest PC.

CTRL-clicking in VMware Fusion

Published
by
roger
on 2007-10-10 @ 20:33
in Mac, Software and Virtualization
. 0 Comments

If you use the Enable Mac OS keyboard shortcuts option in VMware Fusion, Mac keyboard commands are passed on to the VM, which is useful if your Mac-schooled muscle memory has you pressing Apple+S every time you breathe.

The Enable Mac OS mouse shortcuts also affects the CTRL key, which is used in Windows for nonadjacent selection & a few other handy things.

With the latter option active, VMware interprets the a CTRL-click like a Mac would, invoking the context shortcut menu instead of extending the current selection, which can be absolutely vexing if you’re trying to select a bunch of individual files in a folder or open a Firefox link in a new tab.

While you can easily disable the option entirely, there is an alternative if you’ve grown accustomed to command-clicking to emulate a middle-click and want access to these mouse shortcuts in your VM:

To have it both ways, just use the Enter key to the right of the space bar instead! When you press this key and click the mouse, VMware passes this on to Windows as a CTRL-click.