Spanspek

I just Opensuse 11.2 and installed it. Wouldn't you know it? Vmware Server 2.0.2 doesn't work with a 32-bit install (which mine is).

Fortunately, because Google is my friend, I discovered an install script. Instead of using the rpm, it uses the gzipped source and builds the server.

It worked faultlessly.

A while ago, I installed Vmware on my laptop so I could run Windows.

This has proved to be very useful, as I also bought (and rather like) Office 2007. But I also used it at the Music Festival held at my institution last year. We had the use of two Digidesign digital mixing consoles, a Profile and an SC48. I was able to take the basic patch and program each show using the stand-alone DShow software.

Just recently, Vmware stopped working. The web interface works fine, but when I tried to open a console to see and work with the Windows virtual machine, there'd be no response.

Well, thanks to a lot of clever people whose posts had been indexed by Google, I found out that the Vmware Firefox plug-in doesn't work with Firefox 3.6. Moving back to 3.5.8 fixed the problem. But this is a pain, as I like 3.6.

Once again, the boffins came to the rescue. You can take that plug-in and use it to launch a stand-alone console without the browser. It presents you with a login screen as well.

Now, logging into the Web UI on "localhost" requires the URL http://127.0.0.1:8222 for an insecure connection and https://127.0.0.1:8333 for a secure connection. When typing the URL into the stand-alone console's login dialog, no http is required, presumably because http is not being used. But only port 8333 works, for reasons that aren't apparent.

Still, it's a minor inconvenience. I have Firefox 3.6 and a Windows VM working again. I just wish the login dialog would save the URL so I didn't have to type it every time. Perhaps if I could write a shell script, I could figure out a way of doing that.