VMware Fusion + Fedora 9

[stuartbh]

To whom it shall concern:

I recently assisted a friend in upgrading to Fedora Core 9 which is running in a virtual machine under VMware Fusion 1.1.2 (under Leopard on a MacBook Pro).

The problem is that the video resolution is far greater than his display right now (we do not know why), but attempting to run vmware-tools-config.pl fails as it cannot find the /usr/src/linux/include directory, and as such, it really is missing.

Any one know why vmware is broken under FC9?


Any suggestions?


V/R,

Stuart

[Seve]

Hello:
Based upon what you have posted, nothing is broken ... at least at this point.

From Fedora open a terminal and login in as root

yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel
then
yum groupinstall "Development Tools" "Legacy Software Development"

using the exact syntax including the quotes.

when all that is finished [reboot if you have a new kernel installed] and then run

./vmware-tools-config.pl

and hopefully you are good to go

Seve

[stuartbh]

Originally Posted by Seve

Hello:
Based upon what you have posted, nothing is broken ... at least at this point.

From Fedora open a terminal and login in as root

yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel

Well the installation of kernel-headers went flawlessly, and the installation of kernel-devel noticed an older FC8 version and removed it in precedence to the install.

Now here is what I find odd, if it knew to do that, and I did an "upgrade install" when I did the originate FC9 install, why did these packages not get upgraded? Hmm....

Originally Posted by Seve

then
yum groupinstall "Development Tools" "Legacy Software Development"

using the exact syntax including the quotes.

Indeed this apportionment of your instructions seemed to work quite flawlessly as well.

Originally Posted by Seve

when all that is finished [reboot if you have a new kernel installed] and then run

At first blush I did not think I had a new kernel installed, but heck, rebooting is free! So I did it anyway.

Originally Posted by Seve

./vmware-tools-config.pl

and hopefully you are good to go

Seve

It seems that even after typing the /usr/src/kernels/(etc...) path, it still was unable to run since the kernel sources were for "-18" and I noticed that a uname -a returned a running kernel of "-14", so I then decided to do a yum update for kicks and giggles.

This yum update then was the instigate to seeing the "-18" kernel binaries installed. Thus, noticing that in fact the kernel had been upgraded, I went to /boot to make sure my new kernel was the default from grub.

Then I rebooted again.....and re-ran the vmware-config-tools.pl

Now this time it worked quite nicely!! I was prompted to accept the proper directory, and it indeed did compile flawlessly!!!


When completed, I rebooted again. - And I did notice the GUI coming up in graphics mode, but still I have these damn scroll bars and do not have a screen that is the entirety of my virtual display absent the need to scroll.


Stuart

[Seve]

Hello:
I'm guessing at what you mean ..... the screen of the guest does not fit correctly ?

If that is what it is, {again just a guess } then as a suggestion first try slecting from VMware from the View Tab

Autofit Window
Autofit Guest

see if it makes a difference ? ... you may have to power down and power up between changes.

If not then leave them both selected and run ./vmware-tools-config.pl
an select a smaller screen size .. you may have to run it a few times to get the vertical (get rid of the scroll) correct.

I'm not sure it's really a F9 issue as I have seen the same behaviour with other OS's on VMware .. and I've had to play around with several settings to get the screen to fully display without any scroll bars.

Seve

[stuartbh]

Originally Posted by Seve

Hello:
I'm guessing at what you mean ..... the screen of the guest does not fit correctly ?

If that is what it is, {again just a guess } then as a suggestion first try slecting from VMware from the View Tab

Autofit Window
Autofit Guest

see if it makes a difference ? ... you may have to power down and power up between changes.

If not then leave them both selected and run ./vmware-tools-config.pl
an select a smaller screen size .. you may have to run it a few times to get the vertical (get rid of the scroll) correct.

I'm not sure it's really a F9 issue as I have seen the same behaviour with other OS's on VMware .. and I've had to play around with several settings to get the screen to fully display without any scroll bars.

Seve

1) These "Autofit" options seem to be conspicuously missing from the VMware Fusion that my friend has

2) I had a chance to see an F8 installation and it had the same issue, so I see now that it appears not to be a strictly Fedora 9 issue. However, it is quite curious that when logged into Fedora 9 as a user, the problem evaporates and the screen is exactly the right size at 1920x1200. Hmmm.....

[Doctroid]

I also tried installing Fedora 9 under VMWare Fusion on a MacBook. I downloaded the Fedora install disk to a disk image and used that to install Fedora on a new guest. Then I changed the CD/DVD configuration to connect to the physical DVD drive. If I insert a (data) DVD it doesn't appear in the Mac OS, at least not until I shut down the guest in Fusion. But if I click the CD/DVD icon in Nautilus it says "Unable to mount location / Can't mount file."

Thinking it might be a problem peculiar to Fedora 9 I tried again with Fedora 8. Basically the same thing happened, though the message is slightly different (and less grammatical): "Unable to mount media. / There is probably no media in the drive." (But there is indeed a DVD in the drive.)

Any idea how to get this working?