vmware4

The VMware 4 disk image is now sorely outdated and is no longer distributed. You can install into a VMware4 virtual machine using the install CD just like on a real computer.

Here are some tips on dual booting bare machine and vmware using the same physical disk for both, while avoiding a couple of pitfalls.

Problems and work-arounds:

• There is a problem with the CDROM in VMWare 4.5. If you boot Plan9 with a CDROM device attached to your virtual machine 9Load will hang unless a CDROM is present ("connected"). If you don't need CDROM support it is recommended that you remove the CDROM device from your virtual machine. If you need this device, make sure to keep a CD image attached.

• Problem with 9load hanging when booting in VMWare can be avoided if you move the CD-ROM drive to the SCSI bus. VMWare allows SCSI simulation for ATA CD-ROM drives: just select appropriate radio button in the cd-rom settings dialog. SCSI controller (BT-958) is supported by Plan 9. In this case use /dev/sd00 for access to CDROM drive.

• There is a problem using more than two buttons on an IBM Thinkpad. Russ Cox described a workaround on 9fans:

Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:43:25 -0500
Subject: [9fans] VMware and Plan9

Two things.  First, go into Control Panel -> Mouse -> Trackpoint
and make sure that the middle button setting is "neither" (there
are three choices: "scrolling", "zooming", and "neither").

Second, start regedit.  Look for

	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
	 System
	  CurrentControlSet
	   Enum
	    ACPI
	     IBM3780
	      <ugly hex>
	       DeviceParameters

You may have to substitute something else for IBM3780 depending
on who makes your laptop.  Find the one with keys named "MouseResolution",
"MouseDataQueueSize", etc.  Add a new DWORD variable "NumberOfButtons"
with value 3.  

Now you should be okay.

The problem is actually not the IBM-supplied mouse driver but the
underlying Windows-supplied basic i8042 PS/2 mouse driver, on which
the Trackpoint driver sits.

The Windows driver expects the Trackpoint to respond to command E9
as the Logitech mice do, giving the number of buttons as the second byte.
Unfortunately, the Trackpoint sends back some form of sampling resolution
instead, and even more unfortunately the default resolution is encoded
as 0x02, tricking Windows into thinking that there are but two mouse
buttons on the Trackpoint.  Since this is the Trackpoint controller simply
implementing a different command E9, the only way to get the hardware
to respond correctly is to turn it off in the BIOS, so that the external
mouse can respond for itself.

Happily, Windows is nothing if not configurable.  The registry key makes
Windows ignore what it has incorrectly interpreted the hardware to have said.
DirectInput (which VMware uses, but most apps don't) ignores the middle
button when it thinks the mouse has only two buttons.  The stock Windows 
mouse path has no problem with a "two"-button mouse generating middle-button
events.

Russ