Here is a list of some useful hints on using VMware on FreeBSD. - Full screen mode does not work. Don't do it. - Raw disk may not work. Use virtual or plain disk instead. - The vmware-mount.pl utility does not work. If you want to mount the "disk" while vmware is not running, you must use plain disks instead of virtual ones. Set up a 63 sector file as an "mbr" section, then a file for each partition on the "plain" disk. To mount the "disk", use vnconfig -c /dev/vn__ file and then mount the vn device. If you are setting up a plain disk as a workaround for the broken raw disks, you will need to set up the disk description file by hand, as the wizard will complain. Here is a sample one: DRIVETYPE ide CYLINDERS 16383 HEADS 16 SECTORS 63 ACCESS "/path/disk.mbr" 0 63 ACCESS "/dev/rad0s1" 63 4192902 RDONLY "/dev/null" 4192965 12305790 The geometry must be the physical geometry reported by the disk. grep ad0 /var/run/dmesg.boot and look for the 3 numbers in the brackets. They are the C/H/S. In the example above, "disk.mbr" is file used to keep a replacement MBR for the disk. You can use dd if=/dev/rad0 bs=1b count=63 of=mbr to create it if you like. The reason is so that the guest's decision about which OS you booted last is different than the host's (this is for the FreeBSD boot manager). You can also feel free to replace the MBR with the standard boot manager if you like. fdisk(8) and a vn device can help with this, though you will have to be sure and supply the correct geometry to fdisk(8) since the vn device won't support those calls. This time it's the BIOS "fake" geometry. Watch out! As you can see, the 1st partition simply is a FreeBSD slice device. The first number after the filename is the offset in blocks where the given file starts in the plain disk. The last number on the line is the length of the block. If you are using a file, its length must be equal to this number * 512. The last entry is an example of how to block out partitions you don't want vmware to mess with. Why do this instead of simply making the C/H/S numbers for the disk smaller? Because then the guest's BIOS might not make the same choices about the "fake" geometry to use, which would prevent the OS from booting in most cases. You might be able to follow the same procedure to make SCSI drives work. It is slightly less likely to work as SCSI vendors often differ as to how they set up BIOS geometries. Your raw device must end up having the same BIOS geometry as a Bustek SCSI controller, which is the device vmware virtually supplies as the host adapter. - It is a good idea to disconnect removable media devices (CDROMs and Floppies and the like) from the "guest" either when they are empty or when you're about to eject the media. - Under FreeBSD, floppy device should be configured as follows: Type: file Path: /dev/rfd0 (Obtain the write permission on /dev/rfd0 if you write floppy disks) - Consider making a link /compat/linux/tmp if your /tmp doesn't have sufficient free space or is slow. VMware uses /tmp to back the VM's memory. e.g. ln -s /usr/tmp /compat/linux/tmp Also, be very careful if /tmp/ is a tmpfs partition. vmware creates a file that is about 25% larger than the guest's RAM size, unlinks it and does mmap on it. Such a large, active file in tmpfs can lead to deadlocks. -- Akinori -Aki- MUSHA Nick Sayer