So today when I tried to start my XP machine, I’m greeted with VMware 2 telling me that it has expired.
Frustration: Why should I use a program that’s going to decide to quit working for no reason? I’m moving off this as soon as I can find a viable alternative. I wouldn’t use it at all but Quicken contains my business data for the past 10+ years and transitioning that to something else would be a pain. Why I can’t buy Quicken Linux for Business is incredibly frustrating.
Anyway, next frustration:
yum upgrade vmware
does nothing. Indeed, yum doesn’t know there is a package called “vmware” installed though of course it’s running. After much hair-pulling, this command works and tells us what’s really going on:
# rpm -qa | grep -i vmware
VMware-server-2.0.0-110949
#
Aaaagh… it’s mixed-case, then a dash, then “server” — but don’t give yum anything past the second dash or it will get all confused again. Just as brain-damaged as ‘man’ telling you:
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), whatis(1), less(1), groff(1), man.config(5).
but when you try to ask for one of those pages you are greeted with the obnoxious:
$ man less(1)
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(‘
and you actually would have to type:
$ man 1 less
which is NOT what the manpage told you at all. It should have said: See also: 1 man, 1 less, …etc…
Anyway back to the issue… after downloading the new .rpm, do an rpm -Uvh on it… then
/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware stop
/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl
/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware stop
Yes, you must reconfigure the vmware server… things may have changed, let it do its magic.
Finally as to the problem of arrow keys not working: see this post: VMWare and the fubar keyboard effect
Basically, vmware gets confused by trying to remap the X keyboard. In your /etc/vmware/config, add the line:
xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true
and that should restore the arrow keys. If not, you can always turn NumLock off and use the arrow keys on the numeric pad. (A bit of a pain when using accounting software!)