Subject: Re: VMware
To: Ben Elliston <bje@wasabisystems.com>
From: Stephan Uphoff <ups@stups.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 05/20/2003 21:53:11
> Does anyone have any experience in running VMware on recent versions
> of NetBSD/i386?  Does it work well?  Any gotchas?
> 
> Thanks, Ben
> 

I had to patch the vmware modules to get it running on a
dual-processor machine.

The current vmmon kernel module for Vmware 2 trashes the fs register.
( Found in package pkgsrc/emulators/vmware-module .)
Since the register is used for the curcpu() magic in MULTIPROCESSOR
kernels it needs to be saved/restored in the function Task_Switch().

With the change to save the fs register and some minor ``get it to
compile on current'' changes, vmware2 seems to run fine on an Intel
SMP machine. ( Only the cycle counter emulation seems to have problems
on guest systems and netbsd comes up with a 30 GHz CPU ;-))

I also changed the code to release the kernel lock when running the
emulation monitor following the logic of the linux code.
( Does not block the kernel anymore while vmware is busy 
emulating in the monitor.)

My plans are to clean up the patches and submit it to the maintainer
of the package. (veego@netbsd.org)
Unfortunately this is way back on my to do list and might take a while.
If anyone needs the patches before that or even wants to clean up the patches
let me know.


	Stephan