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VMacTool - GUI control of VMware from MacOSX


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For anyone who is using MacOSX in VMware, you might find this useful:

 

http://gnubeard.orgfree.com/VMacTool.dmg

 

See my homepage for other things of interest.

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Alright, this is working pretty well. I've fixed a few things that a kind soul emailed to me. VMacTool features

 

Connecting / Disconnecting virtual devices

You can set the options for the mouse behavior (input grabbing / release, etc)

Clipboard management

Toggling the background mouse daemon enables/disables the options selected on the mouse menu.

All program information / stats are available from one dialog

 

I've also sped a few things up, but it is still slow. Maybe I should have done this in Perl instead of bash <shrug>.

 

-gnubeard

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I've added fullscreen video toggling to VMacTool.dmg (check my website).

 

This has been done as a patch to vmw.c which enables toggling the 'unknown' bits in the VMware options word. If you like playing with VMware,

I'd appreciate some reports on it. Invoke the new vmw from the command line as: ./vmw o -v to see the new options.

 

./vmw o +f will switch from windowed to fullscreen mode

./vmw o +3 will switch from fullscreen to windowed mode

 

These commands have been added to the VMacTool GUI to enable easy switching from within the VM.

 

I'd appreciate reports of what these new options report on your config. If you run vmw o -v please post your results here, along with a synopsis of your host platform, vmware version, and so on.

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Thats a good idea. I'll make an announcement there too, I guess.

 

The current incarnation is just a prototype. It is written in bash, using CocoaDialog for the GUI functions. I'm in the process now of digging into the vmw.c source in preparation for tearing out main() and replacing it with a Cocoa interface 'natively'... but the more that I think about it, the more I think that this isn't the Right Way.

 

My current line of thinking is that I'd do better to make vmw continously read commands and options from stdin, fire off the VMware hooks, and print any results to stdout in an easily parsed fashion. Then I write a Cocoa GUI app that exec's the new vmw and communicates with it via dual pipes.

 

This way, the GUI is seperate from the VMware backend. It will make producing such tools for other unsupported OS's in VMware that much easier. QNX and Haiku are high on my list after MacOSX.

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Hello,

 

I tested your tool and it's very useful! :o Nevertheless, can you explain how to use the copy paste? Is drag and drop working too? Moreover sometimes some strange things happenned to me with the patch for the mouse... :P

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Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad you're finding it useful.

 

Drag and drop is not supported, and won't be until at least v2.0.

 

Copy / Paste of text data is supported. "Get Host Clipboard" takes your host machine's clipboard contents and puts it in the textbox that is displayed. You can then highlight what you want (maybe all of it) and copy/paste as normal in OSX. "Write Host Clipboard" takes whatever you type (or paste) into the textbox and sends it to the host's clipboard when you punch the "Clip" button.

 

As far as "weird" things with the mouse, can you be more specific? Also, please choose "VM Info" and post the text that it displays, along with your VMware version, host OS, and so on.

 

Thanks!

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ah the download isnt available from your site anymore can someones please upload it for me

 

Huh.. you know, the first time this happened, I thought that I screwed up. But now it appears to me that Orgfree is jerking me around. 1GB daily limit my ass.

 

I'm going to re-upload this now.. but it appears that I need to find better free webhosting ..

 

Anyone have any ideas?

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Maybe build out a project page on sourceforge? I'm pretty sure they give projects download mirroring etc etc.

 

Yeah, sourceforge is certainly an option. The problem there is that it is really tailored for more organized projects. I just want some space that I can store random blobs of code.

 

-gnubeard

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks for the VMacTool!

 

Here are some comments from what I experienced:

 

I've downloaded the tool and gave it a run. First thing that I did was to set up the mouse behaviour so I can seemlessly pass between host os (ubuntu feisty) and guest OSX 10.4.7. I selected the mouse options and clicked on Toggle - the vmactool reappeared without any change. :mellow:

 

So I started the Console - to have a look what's going on. Toggling the settings while having the console opened miraculously pushed me forward as the options were really changing and the behaviour changed respectively.

 

Mouse entering and leaving the OSX window worked - only the osx desktop mapping became approx 20 pixels shifted. (I had to click 20 pixels to the left from the spot I wanted to click on). I also was unable to reach to the edges of the OSX window - being approx 40 pixel near the edge, the mouse cursor jumped out of the window itself.

 

Fullscreen worked perfectly!

 

VMacTool is a great job. I had this wild vmware image I downloaded - so I guess most of my problems come out of that installation.....(and the rest out of my ignorance ;-) )

 

I'll be installing 10.4.8 (JAS) today or tomorrow and I'll try the upgrade to 10.4.9 from your tutorial, so I'll post my updates experience with VMacTool then....

 

Thanks! Keep up the good work.

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  • 1 month later...
Yeah, sourceforge is certainly an option. The problem there is that it is really tailored for more organized projects. I just want some space that I can store random blobs of code.

 

-gnubeard

 

If you still need some space, contact me. I can give you an osxlibrary.com subdomain with FTP access :huh:

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  • 1 month later...
For anyone who is using MacOSX in VMware, you might find this useful:

 

http://gnubeard.orgfree.com/VMacTool.dmg

 

See my homepage for other things of interest.

 

Great work, gnubeard. Now the next thing you need to do is add support for changing resolution....Of course you can do this in OS X in VMware by editing the com.apple.Boot.plist file but just for the n00bs out there...... One thing I had a question about is the full screen toggle. You can already do this normally in VMware I'm pretty sure by clicking on the full screen button.

 

Great work anyway,

PCWiz (master of VMware OS X installations, even though I'm a Protege)

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  • 1 month later...
Great work, gnubeard. Now the next thing you need to do is add support for changing resolution....Of course you can do this in OS X in VMware by editing the com.apple.Boot.plist file but just for the n00bs out there...... One thing I had a question about is the full screen toggle. You can already do this normally in VMware I'm pretty sure by clicking on the full screen button.

 

Great work anyway,

PCWiz (master of VMware OS X installations, even though I'm a Protege)

 

The VMware API doesn't expose functionality (that I'm aware of) to change the video resolution. That is done through the ordinary fashion of making some sort of ioctl() call (dunno what the equiv. call would be under OSX IOKit) to the VMware video driver.

 

We don't have a VMware video driver for OSX.

 

My tool talks to VMware through its "backdoor" port. Fullscreen/windowed mode is a switch available through this virtual port, so I include support for it. I don't know how it is all that useful - ask VMware.

 

I'm just a code monkey :)

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The Full Screen Toggle isn't much use because you can already do that in VMware without any additional software but the rest of the features look great!

 

Yeah, I realize that - but again, it is in there because the VMWare backdoor port allows it. I think it is more important to expose all available functionality rather than arbitrarily limit it.

 

I've recently gotten my hands on a very good description of the VMWare SVGA II virtual device specification, now I just need to find the time to dig into IOKit programming to see if I can whip up a VMware video driver for OSX. The main hardship there is that OSX is VMware is

slow -- making substantial development a pain -- and my Mac Mini isn't much better w/ just 512M of RAM :)

 

Now, I'd be in Mac HEAVEN if the MOL <Mac on Linux> maintainers would port MOL to the 64-bit PPC / Cell processor. Then I could run MacOSX / PPC on my PS3. Yummy.

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  • 2 years later...
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