Re: [9fans] vmware fusion - plan9 snarf issue

[Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com>]

>> snarf doesnt work properly in plan9 on vmware fusion 2.0 for mac. from what
>> i found this seems to be a known issue. is there any fix available?
>
> no; someone needs to write a new version
> of the vmware tools that works with the latest
> vmware versions.
>
> russ

i've been reviewing open-vm-tools[1] and Russ' vmwarefs.  from what i
can tell the old backdoor (low bandwidth) mechanism is still supported
and the protocol hasn't changed.  there's an alternative high
bandwidth mechanism but i'm not sure if the advent of the high
bandwidth rpc was later than plan9's vmware tools (Russ?).

i setup a new vm (workstation v.  6.5.1) and installed from the latest
iso image and compared it to my existing vm (4.5.3) running an older
kernel.  the results from directly io to /mnt/vmware/snarf are the
same as far as i can tell.  this pattern is consistent: the snarf
buffer of the Plan 9 guest can be made visible in Windows host
consistently ONLY if in Plan 9 guest, the snarf file is read before
writing to it.  that is:

cat /mnt/vmware/snarf
echo 1 > /mnt/vmware/snarf

then the host and the guest os clipboard correctly reflect the last snarfed piece.

-Skip

[1] http://open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net/

the low level parts referenced in vmwarefs can be found under:
	lib/backdoor
	lib/guestApp (getdeviceinfo)
	toolbox/ (get/setguistate)