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samtregar (2699)

samtregar
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Journal of samtregar (2699)

Wednesday April 23, 2008

06:15 PM

VMWare's Jerky Mouse

[ #36233 ]

This isn't the least bit Perl related, but I figured this was an easy way to get some useful info out to Google. I searched in vain for a solution and managed to hit it only by accident. Maybe I can save someone else the trouble.

In short, I installed Fedora 8 as a guest in VMWare running on Windows XP. Everything was fine but the mouse movement was jerky. Not jerky like a video performance problem, but more like wiggly and jittery. It looked a little like my hand was shaking on the mouse, but I was calm as can be.

Reading through the logs, I realized that X had somehow detected my mouse twice. I guess it was getting conficting signals from each movement. I fixed it by opening /etc/X11/xorg.conf and commenting out the entire mouse configuration section and the reference to the mouse config in the screen section. I restart X and my mouse was auto-detected fine.

Most of the advice I could find on the topic of funky mouse movement in VMWare advises you to install VMWare tools. Don't bother - it won't work under Fedora 8 and you'll waste a lot of time trying. You don't need it anyway - Fedora 8 comes with working VMWare display and mouse drivers.

-sam

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Recent Distros (Score:2)

by Mr. Muskrat (4572)

Recent distros will include the appropriate drivers. VMWare tools is only needed if you want extended functionality between the host and the guest OS such as shared folders, copy/paste, time synchronization, etc.
Xorg autoconfiguration (Score:2)

by Mr. Muskrat (4572)

I'm a bit surprised that the Xorg autoconfiguration script didn't get it right. Recent releases of it are pretty slick; you can totally remove your configuration and it'll reconfigure everything the next time you try to use X.
- Re: (Score:2)
  
  by samtregar (2699)
  
  Well, I'm not sure what part of Xorg to blame. The config actually looks fine - just one mouse configured to use the VMWare driver. But when I start X it finds the mouse twice. Some kind of conflict between the config and the auto-probe code perhaps.
  Ultimately it comes down to the fact that Fedora 8 isn't actually supported by VMWare. It's reasonable to expect a bit of pain when playing outside the lines. I was mostly surprised I couldn't find a solution after a lot of searching - most VMWare bugs a
  - Re: (Score:2)
    
    by Mr. Muskrat (4572)
    
    I've installed unsupported OSes in VMWare in the past with no problems. Perhaps there's something new in Fedora 8 that is interfering somehow.
    
    This is probably a stupid question but here goes anyway. Did you enable Desktop Effects in Fedora 8? I can see how that might cause problems.
    
    I suppose the new virtualization features in Fedora 8 could be wrecking havok with VMWare.
    - Re: (Score:2)
      
      by samtregar (2699)
      
      No, no desktop effects. I know it sounds like a rendering problem but I'm sure it wasn't. The rest of the display was snappy, the mouse pointer was just shaking!
      -sam
Thanks for the tip (Score:1)

by Phred (5358)

Just starting using FC8 on VMWare and I know exactly what you are talking about :)