Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 08:23:57 -0400 From: Robert Withrow <bwithrow@nortelnetworks.com> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> Cc: "Vladimir N. Silyaev" <vsilyaev@mindspring.com>, emulation@FreeBSD.ORG, bwithrow@engeast.BayNetworks.COM Subject: Re: VMware port stability Message-ID: <200008021223.IAA08126@pobox.engeast.BayNetworks.COM> In-Reply-To: Message from Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> of "Wed, 02 Aug 2000 00:04:08 EDT." <v04210100b5ad42f1257f@[128.113.24.47]>
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Nothing worse than complaining users, right? ;-) I also am *ecstatic* about the work you have done to get VMWare running. I think you deserver to be awarded, at least, a free (large) Chuck doll! (Actually, I think VMWare should hire you to do *official* FBSD support!) The latest VMWare port in the ports tree (the one with the Makefile with version 1.19) runs *fine* on 4.0 REL *with* host-only networking. Using NAT one can get that to look just like bridged networking, or (as I use it) you can have the VM share your host OSs address. I think this is a valuable thing to support! There will be a number of users who will want to run VMWare who will not be upgrading to 4.n (n > 0) for some time, for whatever reason. It would be a real shame to unnecessarily remove VMWare from the list of things they can run. Now, your suggestion to just update the port to fetch the newer bits from VMWare when they change is a reasonable one, except that it is possible that future VMWare changes might require changes to your OS shim layer code. Likewise there might be bug fixes or other stuff in your shim code (vmmon) that would help 4.0 REL users if they were made available. So I guess what I am suggesting would be best for the users is: 1) have just *one* port that works for all versions of FreeBSD with v >= 4.0 Rel. Looking at the makefile it seems like this should relatively straightforward, although the vmnet part would be a pain. 2) Have a designated and labeled 4.0 port that would track changes in VMWare and fix bugs in the underlying support code. I know that this would make extra work for you, and that you don't have resources (machines, time, etc) to do this all yourself. I'll volunteer to test releases on 4.0 Rel (since we will have 4.0 machines running here for at least the next 6 months), and help with debugging etc. I'm guessing other users would be willing to help out also. Again, thanks for all your good work. This tool is an incredible FreeBSD productivity enhancer! -- Robert Withrow -- (+1 978 288 8256) BWithrow@BayNetworks.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-emulation" in the body of the message
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