Phasor Burn

Today, I needed to come up with a definitive list of all VMWare GuestOS id’s for some software that will generate configuration files for various versions of VMWare ESX.

I haven’t seen these listed in detail anywhere before. Google is silent, as is the VMWare site. Sure, you can get the list of supported operating systems from VMWare’s official documentation, but not the actual list of guestOS = strings to use.

So here they are, hopefully this will be of use to someone else.

First, the lists, then how I divined them.

VMWare ESX 2.5
MS-DOS (strings found nearby suggest it is unsupported)
win31
win95
win98
winMe
winNT
win2000Pro
win2000Serv
win2000AdvServ
winXPHome
winXPPro
winNetWeb (ie: Windows .NET Server 2003, Web Edition)
winNetStandard
winNetEnterprise
linux
freebsd
netware4
netware5
netware6
OS/2 (probably unsupported)
solaris (probably unsupported)
other

VMWare ESX 3
win31
win95
win98
winMe
winNT
win2000Pro
win2000
win2000Serv
win2000AdvServ
winXPHome
whistler
winXPPro
winXPPro-64
winNetWeb
winNetStandard
winNetEnterprise
winNetBusiness
winNetStandard-64
winNetEnterprise-64
longhorn
longhorn-64
winVista
winVista-64
freebsd
freebsd-64
redhat
rhel2
rhel3
rhel3-64
rhel4
rhel4-64
rhel5
rhel5-64
suse
suse-64
sles
sles-64
nld9
sjds
mandrake
mandrake-64
turbolinux
ubuntu
ubuntu-64
other24xlinux
other26xlinux
otherlinux
other24xlinux-64
other26xlinux-64
otherlinux-64
solaris6
solaris7
solaris8
solaris9
solaris10
solaris10-64
netware4
netware5
netware6
darwin
other-64

VMWare ESX 3.5
win31
win95
win98
winMe
winNT
win2000Pro
win2000
win2000Serv
win2000AdvServ
winXPHome
whistler
winXPPro
winXPPro-64
winNetWeb
winNetStandard
winNetEnterprise
winNetDatacenter
winNetBusiness
winNetStandard-64
winNetEnterprise-64
winNetDatacenter-64
longhorn
longhorn-64
winVista
winVista-64
freebsd
freebsd-64
redhat
rhel2
rhel3
rhel3-64
rhel4
rhel4-64
rhel5
rhel5-64
suse
suse-64
sles
sles-64
sles10
sles10-64
nld9
sjds
mandrake
mandrake-64
mandriva
mandriva-64
turbolinux
ubuntu
ubuntu-64
other24xlinux
other26xlinux
otherlinux
other24xlinux-64
other26xlinux-64
otherlinux-64
solaris6
solaris7
solaris8
solaris9
solaris10
solaris10-64
netware4
netware5
netware6
darwin
other-64
vmkernel
openserver5
openserver6
unixware7

VMWare Fusion 1.1.2
win31
win95
win98
winMe
winNT
win2000Pro
win2000Serv
win2000AdvServ
winXPHome
winXPPro
winXPPro-64
winNetWeb
winNetStandard
winNetEnterprise
winNetBusiness
winNetStandard-64
winNetEnterprise-64
longhorn
longhorn-64
winvista
winvista-64
freebsd
freebsd-64
redhat
rhel2
rhel3
rhel3-64
rhel4
rhel4-64
rhel5
rhel5-64
suse
suse-64
sles
sles-64
nld9
sjds
mandrake
mandrake-64
mandriva
mandriva-64
turbolinux
ubuntu
ubuntu-64
other24xlinux
other26xlinux
otherlinux
other24xlinux-64
other26xlinux-64
otherlinux-64
solaris6
solaris7
solaris8
solaris9
solaris10
solaris10-64
netware4
netware5
netware6
darwin
other-64

The Process

Something has to read the .cfg or .vmx configuration files. An examination of “ps aux” was in order.

[root@pod42 root]# ps auxwwww | grep vmx | head -1
root      3117  0.0  0.0  1748  148 ?        S< 2007   5:36 /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmkload_app
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -ssched.group=host/user -@ pipe=/tmp/vmhsdaemon-
0/vmx8eee7804afcedec4;vm=8eee7804afcedec4 /vmfs/volumes/46ae1d59-f8a70ce6-b9f9-
001b78b81088/firewallvm/firewall.cfg

Likely suspect is vmware-vmx

[root@pod42 root]# strings /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx | grep -ni solaris10
10281:solaris10
10282:solaris10-64

yep!

Let’s pull all the strings out and jump to line 10281 and see what we find :

[root@pod42 root]#  strings /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx >/tmp/tt ; vi +10281 /tmp/tt 

We’re in the middle of the list of guest os’s, no doubt here. Copy/Paste then remove the /tmp/tt scratch file.

Repeat for other flavours of VmWare.

In the case of Fusion (on OS X), the executable to run strings against is found way down in

/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmx/Contents/MacOS/vmware-vmx

So simple and yet nobody, that I can find easily anyways, has posted these lists before. Hope it helps ya!

I was cleaning up some dupes in my email archives and stumbled onto a typical email situation for me :

On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 3:39 PM, the president wrote:
[ CC: security guy, ceo, ops manager, web developer for our product proper ]

All,

This screen shot is from a potential client in San Francisco. It is our website at 3pm MST. Can anyone offer a reason why it would look like this? Can anyone offer a fix?

The back story on this email was that we had recently outsourced our corporate brochure-ware website redesign to some outfit in India. Cheapest labour available, etc etc….

I of course had to point out that the president had rocks for brains for doing this without considering that low cost would probably mean low quality . . .

To: el presidente
CC: everyone from the original email cc

Looks to me that the website is working except for the flash bits. Using flash for the navigation controls on a web site is ill advised. Short term, the user will have to enable flash for our site. Longer term, get rid of the flash. It doesn’t add anything useful.

If you want to keep the flash for the people who do have it enabled, then at least have the website designed to detect lack of flash and degrade gracefully to javascript controls (which again, not everyone has enabled) and then gracefully further back to plain old html.

Degrading gracefully down in stages until you eventually hit first gear and plain old html is a basic web usability design process that professional site designers recognize, plan, and implement for.

ie: You got what you paid for.

Amazingly (or not, depending on how well you know me), I kept my job. I’m still there… the president is, ahem, no longer with the company . . . . 8-P

I shouldn’t let this go to my head, really.

I’d probably get much further in life if I learned how to sugar things up instead of spewing it out there without any niceties to dress it up. Not gonna happen…

I’m well on my way to being “Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!”

Here’s a hi res still from the Lala Showers Video

La La Showers - photo by Dr. Tiki [ view on flickr | view large ]

Alberta touts holidays at home
Province launches $5.6M campaign
Sean Myers, Calgary Herald
Published: Friday, April 25, 2008

Posted gasoline prices reached $122.4 and even $125.9 at some service stations on Thursday. Facing that reality, many Calgarians are planning to stay close to home this summer.

You moron. It’s 122.4¢ not $122.4

Note how the symbols go on the other side of the number and change the meaning drastically.

What’s wrong with the following ?

Is Yahoo promoting poor ergonomics and telling women they should use computers in a manner that will cause back issues, among other things?