Talk:VMware Guest

native vmware tools - installation issues
According to this thread, many people will spare themselves a hassle by installing open vmware tools instead of native vmware tools. Maybe it would be worth adding appropriate introduction on which vmware tools version does gentoo prefer. Originally I've installed native vmware tools because I've thought that the native version is the most up-to-date one. However after following the guide, there were still unresolved issues, like a failed compilation of vmxnet3 module, missing mkinitrd command (mkinitrd was removed from portage according to this thread).

VMXNET3 and PVSCSI compiled as modules for native vmware tools
In the process of installing native vmware tools, I got this message:  maybe it would be worth noting that, for native vmware tools, it's better to compile pvscsi and vmxnet3 modules as modules . What do you think?

Question about updating page content
Hi guys, Could anyone update these instructions please? I'm using VMWare fusion and the latest gentoo sources (gentoo-2.6.30-r5) and some of the options advised (in particular PCMCIA SATA) were not available in menuconfig. Following this guide as closely as is possible causes an unusable system which kernel panics on boot.

make.conf -march settings
In the example make.conf it states "# VMware emulates an Intel Core 2 Duo", which is false. Any CPU settings should be based on the hosts hardware. VMware virtualizes, not emulates, the CPU(s). Anybody following that make.conf that doesn't have have a -march=prescott compatible CPU is going to run into problems.

Kernel Config Updates for 2.6.32
I am currently tryi to get an ESX Gentoo build up with kernel version 2.6.32-r1. My old config file, I believe from either .30 or .31, no longer works. So far I noticed the ISA options are gone, and the Firewire options have changed. I'll post the new working config information here in the discussion tab when I get a build the boots.

VMXNET3 and PVSCSI for VMware Workstation guests
It is possible to use both VMXNET3 and PVSCSI for virtual machines running in VMware Workstation (tested last on version 7.1.2 build-301548).

There is no way at this time to configure the virtual machine to use this virtual hardware using the graphical interface.

By editing the configuration file manually it can still be done.

Probably this is unsupported, but since it gives a performance boost it is at least a nice option for non-critical machines.

To achieve this, edit the .vmx-file for your virtual machine (it is a text file, so it can beedited with vi or notepad) by adding or changing it so that it contains these lines:

scsi0.virtualDev = "pvscsi" ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3" Those lines cover the first of each device type, so if there are more devices those can be changed separately if the whole virtual machine is to be migrated to fully virtualized hardware.

Of course this all requires having the appropriate hardware supported in the kernel, but that is already covered in the article.

85.225.84.201 20:25, 30 September 2010 (GMT)