VMWare Tips & Tricks

USB device access on SuSE? 10.1 Host OS by vmware 5.5.2

Problem:

VMware doesn't recognize USB devices. That's because VMware (release 18.7.2006) only knows the usbfs.

Solution:

Within /etc/fstab change the following line:

   usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0 

to

   usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw,devgid=108,devmode=0660,busgid=108,\\
busmode=0770,listgid=108,listmode=0660 0 0 

Edit this (single!) line (w/o the backslashes!) does not work, probably a bad entry for "devmode" try "devmode=0666". Create group usbfs with gid=108 and add a vmware user to this group.

How to adjust a Windows VMWare guest to a widescreen (16 : 9) laptop?

Full screen mode

In standard settings for the vmware grahics driver some screen resolutions are not configurable. You can come around this by just adding an additional 'Resolution.x' binary value to the Registry Key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\vmx_svga\Device0

where the 'x' stands for 0,1,2,3 ... . Currently 11 resolutions are defined (Resolution.(0..10)) are given.

In this example I need to have the specific screen resoltion 1280 x 800 which is not listed in the standard screen settings.

In regedit go to the key mentioned above and create a new binary value, f.e. 'Resolution.11' and enter the following series of hexadecimal values:

31 32 38 30 78 38 30 30

'78' represents an 'x' here. Save this entry close regedit and restart your computer. Now you should be able to set your desired screen resolution.

Quick switch

In order to switch easier between multiple running guests the quick switch mode is used. To avoid scrolling vertically and/or horizontally the guests desktop a resolution slighty below the full screen resolution should be set.

Examples:

Note: These Values are best when running VM on Linux hosts because of the different appearance of application windows in KDE. On Windows hosts the y value can be set closer to the FS value.

VS, 2008-07-04:
Since VMWare-Workstation v.5 and VMWare-Server 1.0 you can circumvent this by simply activating the "Autofit Guest" feature in the view menu.