Add Vmware Addons?

[kvdman]

Vincent Duvert made a nice package which works quite well with Vmware. It consists of mouse sharing, clipboard, and disk utilities. It also comes with a deskbar applet where you can manage all of the above.

It's also released MIT.

​http://www.haikuware.com/directory/view-details/utilities/miscellaneous/vmware-add-ons

​http://dev.osdrawer.net/projects/show/vmwaddons

[starsseed]

Even if Vincent made a good add-on (I use it), including it by default is not a good idea, because this kind of tool crashes non-VmWare-systems like real harware, quemu or VirtualBox (nb : that last one can use vmdk disk image)

[umccullough]

IMO, targetting virtual machine usage so directly in the default images by adding special software that only works with a given VM provides the wrong message for Haiku users.

As long as Haiku starts up in a VM and provides internet access, the user can get the tools manually (and perhaps there should be something mentioned in the "Welcome" package indicating how they can do so).

On the other hand, it might make sense to include this package only when the vmware images are built... but certainly not for raw or cd images.

[kvdman]

Sorry, that not's entirely what I meant. Perhaps including it as an optional package only for when jamming a Vmware disk image.

Also, you're right. It probably brings up compatibility problems with Virtual Box and Qemu.

[VinDuv]

Nice to see that my little application has some audience ;-)
I already made an optional package for VMW Add-Ons (files vmwaddons_1.0_gccN.zip on ​http://dev.osdrawer.net/projects/list_files/vmwaddons), that starts the Deskbar replicant automatically with a postinstall script. But I'm still looking for a way to prevent the installation on haiku-image and haiku-cd targets: the application and the input server add-on shouldn't crash when started on real hardware or in another VM, but the former will show a very annoying warning box, so this should be avoided if possible.

[kvdman]

Hi Vincent,

How is the addon removed from startup? Is the script added to UserBootScript?

thx

[VinDuv]

Replying to kvdman:

Hi Vincent,

How is the addon removed from startup? Is the script added to UserBootScript?

This is actually a post-install script (/boot/common/boot/post_install/run_vmwaddons.sh), so it runs only once, when you start Haiku for the first time. The only thing it does is to start VMW Add-Ons. The application itself installs the icon into the Deskbar and quits ; after this, the Deskbar will reload the icon automatically at each boot.
So in order to get rid of the icon, just quit it, it will not come back automatically at next reboot.

[kvdman]

Thanks for your reply.

I've included it in Senryu builds under Desktop Applets and not executed by default because I know a lot of people install to physical hardware through Vmware.

[kvdman]

Vincent,

Do you plan on updating and integrating the Vmware Video Driver into your package?

There's currently some issues with it:

​http://haiku.it.su.se:8180/source/xref/src/add-ons/kernel/drivers/graphics/vmware/

[luroh]

A related email with useful information: ​http://www.freelists.org/post/haiku/R1-Alpha-1,4

(+1 btw for making the vmware tools available as an optional package, very useful for the ones who build, boot and test using vmware images ten times a day.)

[mmlr]

Replying to luroh:

(+1 btw for making the vmware tools available as an optional package, very useful for the ones who build, boot and test using vmware images ten times a day.)

That only applies for the clipboard sharing server. For the vmware_mouse add-on you can simply add it to your UserBuildConfig, as it's already part of Haiku.

[luroh]

Replying to mmlr:

That only applies for the clipboard sharing server. For the vmware_mouse add-on you can simply add it to your UserBuildConfig, as it's already part of Haiku.

Right, thanks for the clarification, although I'd like to think my point still stands regarding also having the clipboard functionality included, plus making the whole process of adding these tools much less obscure.

[VinDuv]

Patch to add VMW Add-ons as an optional package

[VinDuv]

In case someone is interested, here is a patch to add VMW Add-ons 1.1 as an optional package. The package will only be install on vmware-image targets. It should be harmless on real hardware or other VMs, tough.

[luroh]

Any chance of landing this before r1a2?

[umccullough]

Is there a reason this was closed as "invalid"?

If it's truly invalid that's fine - but please comment on why that is as well since there's very little above indicating that it would be.

AFAICT, the clipboard sharing is still missing.

[Robert S.]

Sorry it was my mistake. I thought it would be removed, but in fact it's not. It's just moved to optional packages, so i reopened it.

[mmadia]

Perhaps this can be revisited, created as an HPKG and added to the depot?

[pulkomandy]

Added a package to the depot in hrev48428.