problem with keyboard (and mouse?) focus in a vmware workstation running through vnc

[James Weatherall]

Carl,

If you install the Vmware tools inside the hosted operating system, you
should find that things start to work.  The problem is, I think, due to the
fact that Vmware relies upon relative mouse movements unless the tools are
installed, whereas VNC produces absolute movements(*).

Cheers,

Wez @ RealVNC Ltd.

(*) VNC Enterprise Edition also supports a Relative Mouse Mode that should
work with VMware.


-----Original Message-----
From: vnc-list-admin "at" realvnc.com [mailto:vnc-list-admin "at" realvnc.com] On
Behalf Of Carl Brewer
Sent: 14 April 2005 08:55
To: vnc-list "at" realvnc.com
Subject: problem with keyboard (and mouse?) focus in a vmware workstation
running through vnc


Hello

I'm runing a VMware workstation (5.0) on a RHEL 3 ES server
(Redhat) in a remote datacenter and have run into a
bit of a stumbling block.

I've installed VNC 4.1.1 from this
tarball : vnc-4_1_1-x86_linux.tar.gz and fired up
VNC over an ssh tunnel (via putty 0.57 forwarding
port 5901 from localhost) from a
Windows 2000 desktop box - the version of
vncviewer I'm running on the w2k box is 4.1.1 (ie:
everything's current!)

I start VNC on the server as root :

[root "at" aqua vmware]# vncserver
and it's in the process table :

ps -auxww | grep vnc
root      7799  0.3  0.2  6364 4252 pts/18   S    17:34   0:00 Xvnc :1 
-desktop aqua.vivitec.com:1 (carl) -auth /root/.Xauthority -geometry 
1024x768 -depth 16 -rfbwait 30000 -rfbauth /root/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 
5901 -pn
root      7811  0.0  0.0  3212 1224 pts/18   S    17:34   0:00 vncconfig 
-iconic


I can open up a connection from my desktop, and the normal xterm works as
I'd expect (ie: all good ...)

I then fire up VMware workstation 5 in the VNC X session as follows : #
xauth + # su vmanager $ vmware

vmware then opens up in the vncviewer X display, and the mouse on my w2k
workstation works so I can set up vmware, the keyboard works so I can enter
various parameters into it etc.  It works just like it should.

I then start my virtual machine - I'm trying to install RHEL ES 3 in the VM,
and it starts ok, but I can't seem to get any keyboard or mouse focus in the
vmware vhost panel.  Everything else is fine, I can start & stop the VM etc,
but no combination (that I've found) of clicking mouse in panel, enabling
focus grabs etc has so far let me send any keyboard or mouse input to the
VM.  So I can see the RHEL install menus, but I can't install ... Somewhat
frustrating!

Has anyone seen anything like this before?  If you're doing this and it
works for you, can you share your settings in both vmware and vnc?  Is this
maybe an issue with twm and VMware? I remember a *long* time ago seeing
something similar with old versions of Mosaic running on SunOS boxes not
liking some focus changes with twm, and requiring vtwm etc, is there some
chance that I need a different window manager in the vncserver to work?  any
suggestions?

Thanks!  I've been beating my head against this all day, googling and
RTFM'ing to no avail.

Carl


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