HOWTO Add 1680x1050 resolution to Windows VMware Server clients

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 03:04:00 --1000

I make extensive use of VMWare Server on my laptop for Flex and Flash development as Adobe haven't released Flash and Flex for Linux yet (hint hint). When I'm flicking back and forth between Windows and Linux I typically leave the Windows window at 1024x768 which allows it to have no scrolling and still fit on my 1680x1050 screen. However, there are times when you just need more screen real estate in windows and as the VMWare driver doesn't come with a native 1680x1050 resolution you need to make some minor registry edits to get it working. A bit of searching got me to an knowledge base article but the instructions didn't work for me, as the registry keys didn't exist there but were located pretty close. So without further ado (there's been quite a bit already I admit).

Start->Run and type regedit
Select the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{device id}\0000. Note the deviceid is a big horrible uuid, and there may be multiple ones. Use the one that has a key "Device Description" of VMWare SVGA II
There are a load of Resolution.x lines, add a new "Binary Value" 1 higher than the highest resolution. Eg Resolution.11
Enter the binary value of: 31 36 38 30 78 31 30 35 30 which is ASCII for "1680x1050"
Close regedit and reboot.
After reboot you should have a new resolution available to you.

For other resolutions you can use the following numbers keys:

ASCII	Value
30	0
31	1
32	2
33	3
34	4
35	5
36	6
37	7
38	8
39	9
78	x

Cheers, Mark

VMWare partial snapshot recovery HowTo

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 06:10:00 --1000

I recently came across a Vmware server machine that was had a drive that kept expanding until it filled the entire host machine's avaiable space. The machine in question had a number of drives including a 100GB and a 200GB partition and the host machine had a 600GB partition to hold all this. After digging around a bit I discovered that the drives were performing snapshots. Which means that they main drive was frozen in time and all changes were written to another file. This should have been an easy fix, tick a box in the admin to remove the snapshot. However, in the admin for the machine there were no snapshots registered and no way to remove them. A bit of hunting found a couple of articles on the subject:

However, I used the following approach to fix the problem which seems to be simpler than the techniques documented above. Note: make sure you have a backup before proceeding - my 600GB backup took 6 hours but was worth it.

Step 1: Make a backup to another drive (internal or USB)
Step 2: Check that you can boot your VM from the backup.
Step 3: Identify and document all disk names and files
- Document all drives, paths and scsi/ide nodes
- Create a text file in the root of each drive - you can then check for this to ensure you have the correct snapshot.
Step 4: Use the following command to convert a snapshotting disk to a new clean disk:


vmware-vdiskmanager -r sourceDisk.vmdk -t 3 destinationDisk.vmdk

Step 5: In VMWare remove the disk for this machine and then add back your new disk. Make sure you use the same SCSI/IDE node numbers.

Note 1: It is important to select the correct snapshot as the source disk. For example: sourceDisk.vmdk could have a number of snapshots, sourceDisk-000001.vmdk sourceDisk-000002.vmdk. Have a look at the timestamps to determine the active one. Note 2: If you get the following error:


Failed to open the disk 'sourceDisk-000001.vmdk' : The parent of this virtual disk could not be opened (23).

Don't panic - as long as you have the backups you will be fine. Have a look in the sourceDisk-000001.vmdk and make sure the "parentFileNameHint" path is correct. I.e. if it is an absolute path and you are trying to restore it from a different location (i.e. your backup) you can correct it or simply make it a relative path. Note 3: It is also very helpful to edit the network settings for the VM to ensure that the network is Not Connected on boot. Particularly if there are mail services or similar running on the machine. This allows you to boot the machine safe in the knowledge that it is completely isolated from outside influence.

Resources

Another useful document which helped out what the file reference on the vmware site - What Files Make Up a Virtual Machine? Hope it helps. Cheers, Mark

Lynch Consulting Blog - VMWare

HOWTO Add 1680x1050 resolution to Windows VMware Server clients

VMWare partial snapshot recovery HowTo

Resources