[9fans] vmware fusion - plan9 snarf issue

[9fans] vmware fusion - plan9 snarf issue

[Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan]

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hi,
quick question.

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?

any help appreciated.

thanks
dharani

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

[Russ Cox]

> 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

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

[Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan]

hi russ,

okay, this confirms some of the postings in the past.

in my opinion, this shortfall is really a bad one. cut-and-paste is
something very common operation (that too in plan9). it is really
difficult to live without it. i wonder why it has to be this
complicated in vmware.

btw this is what i noticed:

- if i mark(sweep) some text and press middle button in acme or use
send in rio, it works as intended.
- if i mark, cut and paste right there, then also its fine.
- anything else goes for a toss. in fact, the cut and paste buffer
even seems to bring a copy buffer content of previous instance of
guest OS after which i rebooted.
- this issue seems to have shown up in linux OS as well. so plan9 is
probaly yet another platform that got affected.

i am also trying to see if i can keep vmware fusion setup as file
server and avoid using the console (currently snarf buffer issue is
the major issue for me). i am trying to use drwaterm or so to use
plan9. i hope i can resolve my cpu/auth server setup issues.

thanks
dharani

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
>> 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
>
>

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

[Anthony Sorace]

to be clear, this behavior is while running the old plan 9 vmware
tool, right? without that, i'd expect the snarf buffer to work
properly within the guest environment, but you won't have any way to
get things out.

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

[Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan]

hi anthony/russ,

okay, this is what i see now:

- with stand-alone kernel, i do see the snarf issue as i mentioned.
- however, i completed the installation to make it auth/cpu server. i
think i added a couple of devices in the config file, built the image
and used it for booting as auth/cpu server. i no longer see the
cut-and-paste issue now. i dont really know what did the trick but i
am very happy to see that the problem went away.

btw, i meant cut-and-paste within plan9 within the same VM. for now, i
am not worried about cut-and-paste for copying in and out of VM.

thanks
dharani
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 6:44 AM, Anthony Sorace <anothy@gmail.com> wrote:
> to be clear, this behavior is while running the old plan 9 vmware
> tool, right? without that, i'd expect the snarf buffer to work
> properly within the guest environment, but you won't have any way to
> get things out.
>
>

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

[Skip Tavakkolian]

>> 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)

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

[Russ Cox]

> 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?).

it happened about the same time.
there is support for the high bandwidth
channel -- read and write /mnt/vmware/msg.

> 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

interesting.  maybe that's worth making a new binary.

russ

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

[Roman V. Shaposhnik]

On Sat, 2009-01-03 at 10:21 -0800, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
> >> 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.

Where's the source code for vmwarefs located?

Thanks,
Roman.

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

[Russ Cox]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Roman V. Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:
> Where's the source code for vmwarefs located?

http://9fans.net/archive/2008/12/180

Russ