Update on Fedora 18 on VMWare Fusion 5.0.3

Everything now works.

VMware FusionScreenSnapz017

 

The quick version is:

  • Create a new Fedora 18 VM
  • Do not use “Easy install”
  • Disable 3D acceleration in the VM settings (Command-E) prior to starting the install, otherwise you get a spinning idle cursor and no action upon first boot
  • Install as you see fit. I use a 64 bit F18, 4 GB of RAM (my Mac has 16 GB of RAM), 100 GB partition, and 4 virtual processors. YMMV. General rule of thumb is that 1 GB is plenty for a casual Gnome desktop, but if you’re using it for software development like me, then the more the better.
  • Once installed, update all software using
sudo yum update
  • and then reboot.
  • This gets you to kernel 3.8.4-202.fc18.x86_64 at the time of writing. This is currently incompatible with VMware tools 9.2.2-893683, but there are known patches (see below) until a VMWare Tools update comes along.
  • Let’s install the build tool chain needed to complete VMware Tool installation
sudo yum install patch kernel-devel kernel-headers gcc make
  • Reboot just to make sure we’re all good
  • Click “Install VMware Tools”
  • Unzip the tar ball to ~/Downloads/vmware-tools-distrib/
  • Visit this page http://erikbryantology.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/patching-vmware-tools-in-fedora-18.html
  • Download the vmware9.k3.8rc4.patch and vmware9.compat_mm.patch patches, and if you feel like you’re not a patch wizard, the shell scripts that apply those patches, too. 
  • Follow the directions in the above page to patch the source to the VMCI and HGFS file system sharing modules
  • Now build the patched VMware tools
 sudo ./vmware-install.pl
  • There should be no compilation ERRORS (there will be a couple of warnings, particularly for 64 bit architectures)
  • Reboot
  • Test drag and drop file sharing, cut n paste, screen resizing, shared folders, and printing to a MacOS X printer.
  • If it’s all good, shutdown the VM
  • Go to Settings for the VM (Command-E)
  • In Display, re-enable 3D acceleration
  • Start up the VM

At this point, you should have access to accelerated 3D within the VM and all VMWare Toolbox features.

Comments

One response to “Update on Fedora 18 on VMWare Fusion 5.0.3”

  1. najib Avatar
    najib

    Thank you for sharing this. I have just installed vmware tools for Fedora 18 successfully in my Vmware Fusion 5.0.3 with no difficulty at all.

    I’m using MBP Retina 15′. Are you aware of ways to tweak the screen resolution so that it retains the resolution but zoom everything twice (the way it’s implemented natively I guess).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *