Mac Shared folder freezing Fusion

[EricBurgess]

I have an IMAC extreme with 2GB of RAM and 500gb of disk space. My VM is Windows XP pro.

I was running Mac OS X Tiger with Vmware 1.0 with tools installed and I could access my Home folder on my Mac with no issues, moved and copied files no problem whatsoever. No BootCAMP.

I did the following, upgraded the OS to Leopard. Did not notice an issue at the time but not sure I tried the shared folder feature. Then I upgraded VMWARE to 1.1 and I also clicked upgrade VMWARE tools from within Windows XP PRO.

Ten my trouble started: When I click on the z: (logical drive for the Mac shared folders) it would open an explorer window, the OS still runs, but then when I select a folder the virtual machine freezes and so Does the VMWARE console. VMWARE is totally locked! After a few minutes wait the XP Pro VM shuts down by itself but Fusion remains unresponsive. The rest of the MAC OS appears fine. I can Tab- out to other OS X apps and they appear unaffected. If I try to restart the XP Pro I get an error message, "Failed to get exclusive lock on the configuration file."

If I force Quit VMWARE Fusion the lock remains, the only remedy is to shutdown and restart OS X. I can then relaunch the Virtual Win XP pro, but if I click on the shared folders again... It locks up again.

I thought this mught be because my account on the mac did not have root priveledges so I tried moving the VM to a shared folder and then logged in a Admin to try and load that XP VM. It looks like the rights on the file dont allow me to load it under a different user. I did not want to fiddle with the file so I went back to the original login account and from the VMWARE cosnole ran the VMWARE tools installation again with the repair option. Still no fix...

Any Ideas? I would prefer not hving to recreate the XP pro VM, but not quite sure what to try next. I ran the VMWARE tool and attached the output for the serious Tech heads.

Attachment(s)

vm-12-13-07.386.tgz   219 KB 1 version

[WoodyZ]

I normally do not use VMware Shared Folders feature as it tends to be problematic from time to time as well as being slower than using Standard Network Resources Sharing implemented by the OSes without VMware Shared Folders even part of the picture. You may want to try turning off Shared Folders in the Settings for that VM and use the OSes Sharing of the same resource to see if things are better. I know that doesn't expressly fix the issue with VMware Shared Folders however it should make access the share much smother and faster.

Anyway one thing I noticed is that both Built-in-Ethernet (en0) and Airport (en1) on your computer are connecting to the Network on the same Subnet. If your connecting via Built-in-Ethernet why are you also using the AirPort? Having both enabled and on the same Subnet can be problematic. If you don't need both then disconnect/turn off one of them.

I also saw a couple of things in system.log that probably have nothing to do with your VMware issue although you may want to address them. I would look at issues that are being cause by your Epson Printer and ArcSoft Backup Software in the /var/log/system.log.

BTW VMware is spelt VMware not VMWARE :smileyhappy:

[EricBurgess]

Thank you WoodyZ,

I am new to the world of MAC having made the switch 1 month ago. So thank you for the additional comments they will help me sort a few things out. I had issues installing my Epson scanner software, this may be what you noticed in the system log. The Arcsoft software came with an external MyBook USB drive I have. These pieces don't bother me any but as you say may need attention. The dual network connection is just because I was uising the PC and Mac side by side for a while and had only one Ethernet port handy. I used the wireless on the Mac for the time it took to clean off the PC (6 years worth of cruft) and then when I got rid of it jacked in the MAC without disabling the Airport. I left both active as I thought the OS could easily handle both interfaces, but really the bottleneck for any communications is going to be the provider side of the router.

I am not certain what you mean by OSes Sharing of the same resource`. Do you mean declaring a share in the Mac OS and then having the XP VM authenticate to it?

It is odd that when I was using the feature before I had no issues whatsoever.

Again thank you for taking the time to read through the .tar file

[WoodyZ]

I had issues installing my Epson scanner software, this may be what you noticed in the system log. The Arcsoft software came with an external MyBook USB drive I have. These pieces don't bother me any but as you say may need attention.

These issues are on going and persistent and suggest they be address sooner than later.

The dual network connection is just because I was using the PC and Mac side by side for a while and had only one Ethernet port handy. I used the wireless on the Mac for the time it took to clean off the PC (6 years worth of cruft) and then when I got rid of it jacked in the MAC without disabling the Airport. I left both active as I thought the OS could easily handle both interfaces, but really the bottleneck for any communications is going to be the provider side of the router

It not that the OS can't handle multiple NICs however in a multi-homed system (system with 2 or more NICs) if the NICs are both set to DHCP and are being configured by the same DHCP Server then you can/will encounter problems. I see it all the time in corporate networks and have to tell the user to turn off WiFi when they are wired and sure enought the issue they were having goes away.

I am not certain what you mean by OSes Sharing of the same resource`. Do you mean declaring a share in the Mac OS and then having the XP VM authenticate to it?

Yes and to make it convenient in Windows you can map that share to a drive letter. If you did an Windows Easy Install and said to make your home folder accessable then it was automatically mapped to Z:. I would disconnect Z: and reconnect using the Samba Share not VMware Shared Folders.

It is odd that when I was using the feature before I had no issues whatsoever.

Not odd at all considering you upgraded to Leopard and upgraded to Fusion 1.1 as I've see either one of these cause problems with existing VM's. There are plenty of posts in this forum to provide evidence of that. The bottom line is upgrading anything breaks something regularly! :smileyhappy: