Issues with Arch 2009.02 in VMware Workstation [SOLVED]

Question

I installed Arch Linux 2009.02 i686 as a guest in VMware Workstation 6.5.1, my host is Vista x64. The installation of Arch itself and Xorg wasn't a problem although from this point I've had several issues.
I was unable to 'startx' or 'xinit' without getting crashes, however adding hal to the daemons fixed that problem - some wiki entries state to add dbus, but dbus is already started. A lot of content on the wiki is outdated, telling users to use hwd; I did install hwd separately (from sourceforge) although it gave me hundreds? of errors related to PCI and eventually failure to parse some x configuration binary in /usr/bin.
Multimedia Issues
I then installed xfce4 and gstreamer-plugins. All video and audio play back too quickly, i.e. it seems to play the streams as fast as they can decode. This also happens with flash content such as youtube after I'd installed the appropriate programs. Thinking this may be a timing issue, I editted the vmware config file on my Windows host although it did not help; the timing in the VM seemed to be correct anyway.
Display Issues
When I run 'startxfce4' from a terminal, Xfce will start as 800x600 - if I go to change this resolution all options show 0Hz as the refresh rate and many options my monitor cannot display are shown even though I have VMware set to allow a maximum size of 1680x1050. I was unable to generate a 'good' xorg.conf file using 'X -configure' and as mentioned earlier, hwd would not work for me. I installed xf86-video-vmware and xf86-video-vesa as well as both open-vm-tools and normal vmware-tools (not at the same time or together) but can't seem to sort this issue. vmware-tools was able to generate a valid xorg.conf file but it only included a handful of 4:3 resolutions and some of these still showed 0hz. For some strange reason 'startx' and 'xinit' now do not work having failed to find /dev/fb0.
VMware Tools
When I did try to install vmware-tools, it had many difficulties trying to build the modules - mostly regarding to not recognising __FREEBSD__, I cannot remember the complete error. I also tried to build open-vm-tools but that gave an error about not being able to find libproc even though I had procps installed. Stopping open-vm-tools on shutdown also always fails and occurs twice.
I'm going to try reinstalling now that I know a little more about what I did to get things working but if anyone could give me a hand it'd be much appreciated.
Last edited by andyxl987 (2009-08-04 00:17:29)

Answer 1

After a lot of experimentation I've got a satisfactory installation although a few minor problems remain:
Adjustments required to correctly run Alsa+Xorg in Arch Linux 2009.02 using VMware Workstation
The current kernel does not play nicely with alsa, downgrade to kernel26-2.6.29.4-1:
wget http://www.schlunix.org/archlinux/core/ … pkg.tar.gz
pacman -U kernel26-2.6.29.4-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz
Install/Upgrade dbus:
pacman -Sy dbus
Add hal (if it's not installed then make sure to do so) to your daemons located in /etc/rc.conf, e.g.
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond hal)
The current open-vm-tools-modules is not compatible with the older kernel, instead use open-vm-tools-modules-2009.04.23-1:
wget http://www.schlunix.org/archlinux/commu … pkg.tar.gz
pacman -U open-vm-tools-modules-2009.04.23-1
The installation will prompt you with an error that /etc/modprobe.conf could not be found (as does the current version), add the following to /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf:
install pcnet32 /sbin/modprobe -q --ignore-install vmxnet; /sbin/modprobe -q --ignore-install pcnet 32 ; /bin/true;
You can now install open-vm-tools:
pacman -S open-vm-tools
To autoload open-vm-tools on start up you need to add it to your daemons located in /etc/rc.conf, e.g.
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond hal open-vm-tools)
Add vmware-user to your /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file if you desire (for seamless mouse and display switching), e.g. my xinitrc with xfce4 ends with:
vmware-user &
exec startxfce4
Install the following components: xf86-video-vmware xf86-video-vesa xf86-input-vmmouse xf86-input-mouse:
(You will not be able to start x if you have installed xf86-video-fbdev and do not have a valid xorg.conf file, this is addressed later)
pacman -S xf86-video-vmware xf86-video-vesa xf86-input-vmmouse xf86-input-mouse
Lastly we need to edit/create the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to use our vmware drivers, this will enable automatic resolution switching and seamless mouse functionality:
(All of the following is necessary otherwise X will ignore our vmware drivers)
Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "AllowEmptyInput" "false"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "VMware Mouse"
    Driver      "vmmouse"
    Option "Protocol"         "ps/2"
    Option "Device"           "/dev/input/mice"
    Option "ZAxisMapping"     "4 5"
    Option "Emulate3Buttons"  "true"
EndSection
Section "Device"
    Identifier  "VMware SVGA"
    Driver      "vmware"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier  "VMware Config"
    InputDevice "VMware Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection
Issues
* open-vm-tools fails to stop during a shutdown or /etc/rc.d/open-vm-tools stop/restart
* most screen resolutions show 0Hz (although everything works correctly) and adding VertRefresh to xorg.conf produces a major error
* playback of flash video produces a sound artefact when starting - although I think this may be to do with the decoder rather than system
I've marked this as solved although I welcome any suggestions regarding these minor issues. The open-vm-tools one I can probably sort out but it's too late now to look into tonight
Last edited by andyxl987 (2009-08-04 00:21:03)