VMware Fusion incorrectly assigns user ids for hgfs shares

Because VMware is aimed at CentOS, by default the hgfs shares are set up to be owned by the user with id 501; you'll need to change this so that it's owned by your user. To do this, first run `id`:

$ id
uid=1000(user) gid=1000(user)

Then edit `/etc/fstab` and change the line:

# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software

to

# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software

Where the values for `uid` and `gid` come from the output of the `id` command as above.

Remount `/mnt/hgfs`:

$ sudo umount /mnt/hgfs
$ sudo mount /mnt/hgfs

Note that you'll have to do this EVERY TIME you upgrade VMware tools.

VMWare Server Timesync on Ubuntu 7.10

I had installed VMWare server on Ubuntu with little pain, but it would not keep the time stable in the XP guest. I had installed the VMWare tools, but it wouldn't help - it would get up to a day off in a short period of time.

Turns out that my processors automatically scale down (Core 2 Quads), and so I needed to edit /etc/vmware/config and add the line host.cpukHz = 2400000 which is the correct one for my 2.4GHz CPU. After this, I restarted the vmware-server service, and the time is perfectly synced.

I was able to confirm the kHz number to use by running burnp6 from the cpuburn package on all four cores and looking at /proc/cpuinfo to see what speed it reached.

VMWare Server USB on Ubuntu 7.10

If you want to use USB devices with VMWare Server on Ubuntu 7.10 you need to do the following:

Shutdown VMWare

sudo mount -t usbfs usbfs /proc/bus/usb/

Start VMware, and load your virtual machine.
Select the USB device in VM -> Removable Devices -> USB

Note that if you want usbfs to be mounted at boot, you'll want to add this line to /etc/fstab:


usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0


I put it directly under the proc entry.