Re: Coexisting with vmware?

["David A. Desrosiers" <hacker gnu-designs com>]

> If VMWare doesn't have focus, I can pick that to get the
> sorry-visor- has-the-device message. If it does have focus, I get
> that message right away.

	You're not actually clicking/selecting anything from this
menu, are you? I'll bet that's part of the problem you're running
into.

	Here's the process which works for me on my test boxes (FC3
with a hand-built 2.6.9 kernel using the FC3 stock .config for 681
[FC3 broke USB in their most-recent 3 kernel revisions], SuSE 9.1 and
9.2 Professional, and my "main" development machine, Debian Unstable):

	1.) rmmod visor if it exists in the kernel namespace

	2.) Give the VM focus. Not the vm _window_, but the actual VM
	    itself. The easiest way to be sure, is to right-click on
	    the desktop inside the VM so the context menu appears.

	3.) Cradle your Palm and hit HotSync

	4.) Don't click or touch anything inside or outside the VM

	From here, the Windows HotSync Manager should wake up and
begin to sync with your Palm. Behind the scenes, visor is loaded, but
is not bound to the socket, since VMWare already grabbed it.

	After synchronizing once within the VM, if you hit HotSync
again while the VM still has focus (or not), you will get the error
message that the port is in use (by visor). Simply rmmod visor again
to start the process over. I find that much easier than having to edit
in and out of the usbmap. You could even add the rmmod visor to your
vmware startup for that virtual machine (I launch mine from Sawfish
via some custom menus, you could do the same, no doubt).

	But I think for you, the LANSync option is best. In fact, you
could continue that further by using LANSync exclusively on your local
machine, for both VMWare and your Linux-specific PIM applications.

	The best approach for this, is to use install-netsync (for
now, until we have the config file part working properly in
pilot-link) and just pass it the local IP in one pass (to sync under
Linux) and then the vmnet IP in your VMWare synchronization pass for
times when you sync to that.

	Here's one idea that I've been toying around with, when we
finally get the user-specific configuration file bits worked out (very
pseudo for now):

	[global]
	username = David A. Desrosiers
	userid = 12345
	pcid = 256125672385216315
	action = forcepctohh

	[local]
	ip = 10.0.1.8
	pcid = 759275076196166316
	action = sync

	[vmware]
	ip = 192.168.128.2
	pcid = 637382365167136163
	action = forcehhtopc

	..or something like that. Then you would pass a configuration
class name at sync time with whatever too you were using, and let it
sync. Alternately, you could sync to all three in one pass, and it
would change the target IP accordingly, and "Do The Right Thing(tm)".

	Just an idea, but its something I'm exploring for the future,
when gnome-pilot and other tools don't have to carry their own sync
code, and they can all read and parse our global config file for some
basic setup defaults.

	Its also important to note, that by synchronizing with both
Linux and Windows iteratively, you're incurring a "Slow Sync" on both
machines every time. It may or may not matter, but its worthy of
mention, because it may not do what you think it should in some cases,
where records get out of sync (no pun intended) between the two
systems.

	Anyway, I didn't mean to drag this on this long, but there are
a lot of other users who are going to be experiencing this as they
transition over to using Linux from their previous Windows
environments.


David A. Desrosiers
desrod gnu-designs com
http://gnu-designs.com