[FreeNX-kNX] Vmware

[dewey hylton]

> Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 14:46:50 +0100
> From: Paul van der Vlis <paul at vandervlis.nl>
> Subject: [FreeNX-kNX] Vmware
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have tried to install Windows XP in VMware on a machine what uses
> FreeNX. The installation works fine till I install the VMware drivers,
> after that i get a "signal 11" and XP crashes. I installed 2 times, and
> both the same problem. Is VMware's driver not-compatible with FreeNX?
> 
> If yes, does somebody know which part of the driver is not compatible?
> (mousedriver, videodriver).
> 
> Or is here somebody who uses VMware with XP and driver without any
> problems with FreeNX? Please tell.
> 
> I am using FreeNX 0.60, NXclient 1.5.0-113, VMware workstation 5.5.5,
> NXserver version 1.5.0-60 OS GPL.
> The thin-client is very minimal (Thinstation 2.2).
> 
> With regards,
> Paul van der Vlis.

i don't have an answer for you, but i do have some observations. i run nx on 
freebsd, and only as a gateway; i've never run it as an actual application 
platform. in addition, i've only run the older (freenx-0.4x/nx-1.4x) codebase. 
but i think my observations may still be valid. 

i use vmware-server, and it runs on a machine other than the gateway/nx box. i 
achieve a fluxbox desktop session on the gateway via nxclient. from there, i ssh 
into the vmware-server box and tunnel the vmware-console back. it does work, 
when using 'ssh-Y', but i have also experienced problems with it closing and 
producing errors at various times (i can't be more specific, it's been a long 
while since i've attempted this). 

i'll assume you are running vmware-workstation on your freenx box via freenx 
connection from your thin client. 

one huge difference between our configs is that vmware-workstation is an x 
application; if you close the vmware-workstation window, vmware-workstation 
stops and the guest ceases to run. closing vmware-console, however, simply 
closes the "view" of the guest console - vmware-server and the guest continue to 
run.

in both our cases, the nx client is acting as the X server. i'm going to assume 
that the vmware-console software has the same X requirements as vmware-
workstation, and our base problem is therefore the same (the nxclient doesn't 
fully provide something the vmware-console requires - possibly something it 
doesn't attempt to utilize until you've turned on video acceleration in your 
guest via the vmware-tools video driver). 

so it's possible that in your case the failure of vmware-workstation to use the 
display properly actually affects the guest (because vmware-workstation handles 
the guest), whereas the failure with vmware-console doesn't affect the guest 
itself because the guest is running in another process under vmware-server.

what i'm trying to get at is that though our specific symptoms differ, i believe 
we have run into the same underlying problem - and that is the vmware X 
applications require something that the nx client X server doesn't properly 
provide. the vmware X client could also contain a but that so far is only seen 
with the nx client X server, but who knows ... ?