[NTLUG:Discuss] VMWare

[Richard Cobbe]

Chris Cox wrote on 11-26-1999:

> VMWare can directly access your CDROM, parallel and serial devices...
> BUT...remember, that if VMWare is using them, then Linux shouldn't
> try to do so at the same time or strange things could happen. Where
> possible, use Samba to get to any shared devices where you want
> both Linux and the virtual machine to access something.

I remember someone saying this several months ago at an NTLUG presentation
on VMWare, and I remember having the same reaction then.

This limitation about accessing the CDROM etc. under VMWare & Linux at the
same time surprises me.  One would think that Linux simply treats VMWare as
another user process.  Therefore, contention for hardware devices between
processes would be resolved in the same fashion as when all of the
processes are normal Linux programs.  Granted, if VMware accesses /dev/lp*
directly, rather than going through lpd, you can run into problems, but
this shouldn't won't affect the CDROM.

Has anyone actually run into problems with device sharing like this?  Or
does anyone have any ideas why there might be such problems?

This is hardly critical as I don't run VMWare myself; I'm just curious as
to why people keep saying this.

Richard