Running vmware console in Mac OS X

After following several guides I was still without a vmware console interface on my Leopard machine. Several of these guides where very detailed and well written, however the didn’t solve any of my problems. Which mainly related to keyboard mapping issues.

First things first

You can not run vmware console natively in any Mac OS browser. You are bound to run in in a different environment and port the display of the application to the Mac OS computer (hereinafter referred to as the client computer).

My setup includes the following

• A Linux server (Debian 5.0 Lenny)
  • VMware Server 2.0.1
• Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8
  • The X11 application (2.1.6)

The guides I tried to follow includes these ones

• http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2007/04/ running-vmware-server-console-on-a-mac.htm
• http://www.vmware.com/support/ws45/doc/devices_linux_kb_ws.html
• http://the.taoofmac.com/space/HOWTO/Run%20vmware-console%20Remotely %20With%20Apple%20X11

Setting up the Server (VMware host)

I assume that VMware is up and running.

Find the correct keymap

Navigate to /usr/lib/vmware/xkeymap and check the available keymaps

trikks@vmware1:/usr/lib/vmware/xkeymap$ ls
be101  chde101  chfr101  de101  dk101  es101  fi101  us101
be104  chde104  chfr104  de104  dk104  es104  fi104  us104
fr101  gb101  	is101    it101  jp106  no101  pt101  se101
fr104  gb104  	is104  	 it104  jp109  no104  pt104  se104

Since I’m located in sweden and uses a pro keyboard I’ll use the se104 keymap.

Config files

The keymap can be registered in two different places, either per user or for the entire server.

# User specific
~/.vmware/preferences

# System wide (affects all users)
/etc/vmware/config

Fill in the following line in the end of the config/preference file

xkeymap.language="se104"

Dont!

Some guides say that you should enter some additional lines, but adding them are a big no no!

xkeymap.usekeycodeMapIfXFree86 = true (DO NOT ADD)
# and/or
xkeymap.usekeycodeMap = true (DO NOT ADD)

Configure the ssh server

Open the config file /etc/ssh/sshd_config and check that the following lines are set up like the ones below

PasswordAuthentication yes
X11Forwarding yes

Save and restart the ssh daemon

/etc/init.d/ssh reload
/etc/init.d/ssh restart
# OR
trikks@vmware1:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh reload && sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
Reloading OpenBSD Secure Shell server's configuration: sshd.
Restarting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd.

Install a browser

This step might be optional for some of you, my usual linux setup doesn’t include a browser since I don’t user windows managers.

Download firefox

If you download it through your mac, ftp it to the home folder on your Linux box. Install it

# Decompress
tar xjf firefox-*.tar.bz2

# Copy or move to a public dir
sudo mv firefox /opt

# Create a link
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

The Client computer (The Mac OS X computer)

Depending on your configuration (of course) this can be done in a few different ways. I’m very fond of the built in terminal but the budled terminal i X11 will do as well. So, open one of them and ssh to the Linux server (you are probably already logged in since I assume the config above was made through ssh).

ssh user@host
#or
ssh host -l user

Everything should be ready now, enter the command

# To start firefox
firefox &

# Or to start firefox and navigate to the vmware server screen by default
vmware &

Thats it.

Good luck!

Backup failed with error: 11

Thank you apple for this informative error message. What happens is that my backup hangs after approx 10 GB, which sucks a bit since I have lots of more data that needs to be backed up regularly

So I’ve spent a few days searching for related information regarding howto’s and workarounds solving this error and the most common solutions where

• Fix your disk permissions and reboot. This one didn’t help me at all

sudo diskutil repairPermissions /

• Rename your computer, if your computer name contains bad characters that is. Well, my computer name “mini” should have passed and renaming it to “tvdator” wasn’t the solution either.
• Repartition and format the time machine backup drive, make sure to use GUID Partition Table. This didn’t solve my problem either.
• Disable spotlight indexing of the time machine drive. Still no.

My setup was actually a bit more advanced than a usual desktop system. I have a Leopard Server 10.5.something that needs to be backed up since I’m moving all functionality to another Leopard server. This includes the iCal Server, DNS, Mail Server, Open Directory etc. The basics are still the same though.

Figuring it out

Well, i made some deep diving in the system.log file and found error messages like this

Aug  7 13:47:55 herlitz /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3524]:
Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.
framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC/objc/test/
test_methods2.py to /Volumes/Backup of mini/Backups.backupdb/
tvdator/2009-08-07-113449.inProgress/88342F77-7636-4A95-B6C1-
B42767AC0954/mini/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/
Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC/objc/test

Ta’

Well, I just disabled the backing up of the entire /System/ folder since I really won’t need any data from there anyway.

If you however do need data the data in this folder

1. begin with disabling all subfolders of /System/Library/ (like Automator, BridgeSupport, Caches etc), and I mean ALL
2. backup your disk and then…
3. recursively remove one folder at a time and backup your machine

Other tips

If your not into the terminal commands, use the Console application found in Applications > Utilities. Enter a filter where it sais “String matching”. Enter

backupd

or if you are a bit wild

backupd Error

Now,  you should only be able to see the log lines related to the search filters you just entered. If you are into terminal, or like to learn. Open a terminal window and enter

sudo grep backupd /var/log/system.log

Or if you want a live updating terminal window, enter

sudo tail -f /var/log/system.log | grep backupdb

Thats it

Enjoy

Additions

2009-12-13

I’ve got a few mails that pointed to this solution. At least if your backup-disk is a USB-drive and not a Leo Server.

# Delete this file (Located on your backup drive)
/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/nameOfComputer/date.inProgress

Try it out and let me know!

2010-11-11 – Yet another fail

Funny, got this error again, headed out on the Internet and found my own solution for the error. This time it was a bit different. When checking the system.log in the system util app i fount this error string

Nov 11 00:12:24 Trikks com.apple.backupd[6902]: Error: (-41) SrcErr:NO Copying /Applications/Personal.app/
Contents/SharedSupport/PersonalPlugin.bundle/Contents/SharedSupport/PluginHelper.bundle/Contents/Frameworks/
PersonalCommon.framework/Versions/A/Resources/English.lproj/InfoPlist.strings to /Volumes/Backup320/Backups.backupdb/
Trikks/2010-11-09-213954.inProgress/xxxxx/Mac HD/Applications/Personal.app/Contents/
SharedSupport/PersonalPlugin.bundle/Contents/SharedSupport/PluginHelper.bundle/Contents/Frameworks/
PersonalCommon.framework/Versions/A/Resources/English.lproj

Nov 11 00:12:24 Trikks com.apple.backupd[6902]: Copy stage failed with error:11

Nov 11 00:12:30 Trikks com.apple.backupd[6902]: Backup failed with error: 11

What it says is that the application “personal.app” has gone fubar and I’m not allowed to backup it for some reason. This I can solve later, to fix the problem right now just exclude the file from the backup!