VMware

[Scot Hetzel]

On 11/21/05, Annelise Anderson <andrsn at andrsn.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>        Vmware 3.3 is in ports, but vmware has advanced to 4.5, 5.0, and
> now 5.5 is in beta testing.  All of these run FreeBSD as a guest (I'm
> running 6.0 as a guest on Windows XP).
>
>        But VMware 4.5, 5.0, and 5.5 don't run on FreeBSD, which I think
> is unfortunate as it prevents FreeBSD from being used as a test platform
> for other operating systems.  While native FreeBSD support would be nice,
> running with linux emulation would be okay, but not even this works.
>
>        Wouldn't this be an important priority for making FreeBSD a more
> widely used test platform?
>
>        Thanks you for your consideration.
>

Orlando Bassotto made VMware 4.5.x run on FreeBSD 5.x.  But it
required a patch to the FreeBSD kernel to support gettid syscall in
the linux emulator.  This syscall is now in FreeBSD 6.x and -CURRENT. 
But still requires patching of the FreeBSD 5.x kernel.

While he does supply a patch for vmmon.  He doesn't have a patch
available for vmnet.  And the patch for vmnet from the vmware3 port
will not apply to the vmware4+ sources of vmnet.  If someone can
create the missing patch, and then create the vmware4 port (restricted
to FreeBSD 6+, and/or FreeBSD 5.x with patch).  After this is done
someone will have to port the vmnet and vmmon patches to vmware5 and
5.5.

http://www.break.net/orlando/freebsd.html

Scot

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