Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 02:07:40 +0000 From: Alex <ak@freenet.co.uk> To: Phil Regnauld <regnauld@ftf.net> Cc: "Vladimir N. Silyaev" <vsilyaev@mindspring.com>, Darren Wiebe <dkwiebe@heartland.ab.ca>, freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: VMware on FreeBSD (Full Screen) Message-ID: <384DBD6C.7D5EBDD9@freenet.co.uk> References: <199911271743.MAA01184@mindspring.com> <384C1D00.387104FB@heartland.ab.ca> <384C1E81.E251A1C6@heartland.ab.ca> <19991206215459.B456@jupiter.delta.ny.us> <384D50DC.9665019E@freenet.co.uk> <19991208002346.58069@ns.int.ftf.net>
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OK - just for the record - full-screen works! Currently in graphics modes only, until something is done to make FreeBSD consoles aware of Linux-compatible ioctl's that VMware uses to switch into a text mode. As far as I understand, VMware uses the following scheme: 1) Standard mode If the guest system is in text mode, VMware emulates it as graphics in a 640x480 X window. Otherwise (graphics mode), it adjusts the size of the X window to the resolution used by the guest OS (which is usually 640x480 unless special drivers are used - see below). 2) Full-screen mode If the guest OS is in graphics mode, VMware uses DGA extensions of the X server to go full screen. If the resolution used by the OS is less than that of the X server, it centers it in the middle of the screen. For a true full-screen effect, the guest OS must use the same resolution (and colour depth) as X. If the guest OS is in text mode (e.g. 80x25), VMware tries to use the following trick: initialize the next available console (tty8) to use the same text mode as the guest OS. This part is Linux-specific and doesn't work under FreeBSD. It doesn't even work under Linux if the kernel is compiled with framebuffer support. Hopefully, the missing ioctl's shouldn't be hard to implement, but I don't have a Linux box handy to give it a go. So far, I have been able to run Solaris 7, Corel Linux and Windows 98 under VMware/FreeBSD. VMware.com has some drivers for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD to enable them to run inside VMware at higher resolutions than standard VGA (nothing for Solaris). Windows looks really cool in full-screen mode (1024x768 on my laptop); it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a VM session and the real thing, except that under VMware it freezes for a few seconds every now and again, apparently due to lack of /dev/rtc. VMware actually displayed a warning about /dev/rtc and that it only seems to affect Windoze systems. Now for vmnet... Vladimir? Alex To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-emulation" in the body of the message
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