VMware SVGA II display driver for OS X, v1.2.5

[AlmirKadric]

Hi Zenith432,

 

I have been working on a project which creates bootable ISO files for VMWare and VirtualBox in a scripted fashion. And during my search I found this project. So I installed this on my local VMWare box and found it to work great in terms of acceleration.

 

However since my screen is quite large (2560x1600), the window size of the VM gets huge (i'm guessing its now ignoring the settings inside the chameleon config and getting the screen resolution from VMWare). Now this still isn't really that big a deal.

 

The main issue is that when in this mode, my cursor positions are off. I noticed that they are spot on from the very center of the VM screen. However the more i deviate from the center, the more proportionally inaccurate the cursor gets in that direction. Setting the "Specify monitor settings" option does not fix this either.

 

Is this a known issue? Did I miss something? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

FYI My Setup:

  Host OS: Windows 8

  CPU: AMD FX 8300

  GPU: ATI Radeon 5970

  VMWare 10

  MacOSX 10.9.4

  I Installed "VMsvga2_v1.2.5_OS_10.9.pkg"

 

P.S. If you're interested in seeing my project, I have it here OpenSource: https://github.com/AlmirKadric/MacOSX_BootableISO

Apologies to anyone who looks for the lack of a README, but the rest of the project is more or less complete

(the final pieces i'm working on at the moment are custom package installation from installer, like Niresh does in his distro)

 

Best Regards,

Almir Kadric

[JVene]

However since my screen is quite large (2560x1600), the window size of the VM gets huge (i'm guessing its now ignoring the settings inside the chameleon config and getting the screen resolution from VMWare). Now this still isn't really that big a deal.

 

The main issue is that when in this mode, my cursor positions are off. I noticed that they are spot on from the very center of the VM screen. However the more i deviate from the center, the more proportionally inaccurate the cursor gets in that direction. Setting the "Specify monitor settings" option does not fix this either.

 

While I'm not Zenith432, I took a que from his post here and switched to VMwareGfx from Darwin7.iso.

 

VMsvga2 was "the standard" for OS X on VMware for quite a while, but as Zenith declared development ended it seems his advice is sound. Is there a reason you chose VMsvga2 over VMwareGfx?

 

I'm currently using VMwareGfx on 10.9.4, and while I don't have reason to stretch to 2560x1600, I have no problem stretching the OS X VM over two or three monitors for resolutions exceeding 4000 x 1080. It won't support multiple monitors, but it will stretch to fill them. I'm not seeing mouse alignment issues over those resolutions.

 

If you're staying with VMsvga2, did you try the VMMouse driver?

 

I vaguely recall some issues with mouse alignment, but a quick search didn't reveal where I had read about that....but there was a solution (sorry to be of little help).

[AlmirKadric]

While I'm not Zenith432, I took a que from his post here and switched to VMwareGfx from Darwin7.iso.

 

VMsvga2 was "the standard" for OS X on VMware for quite a while, but as Zenith declared development ended it seems his advice is sound. Is there a reason you chose VMsvga2 over VMwareGfx?

 

I'm currently using VMwareGfx on 10.9.4, and while I don't have reason to stretch to 2560x1600, I have no problem stretching the OS X VM over two or three monitors for resolutions exceeding 4000 x 1080. It won't support multiple monitors, but it will stretch to fill them. I'm not seeing mouse alignment issues over those resolutions.

 

If you're staying with VMsvga2, did you try the VMMouse driver?

 

I vaguely recall some issues with mouse alignment, but a quick search didn't reveal where I had read about that....but there was a solution (sorry to be of little help).

Thanks for that. To answer your question, when i did my search for a vga driver I could only find VMsvga2.

Anyways I'll give the VMwareGfx a try and see how it works out.

 

BTW is the VMMouse driver only for VMsvga2 or is it a good to have even when using VMwareGfx?

 

Best Regards,

Almir Kadric

[Donk]

Thanks for that. To answer your question, when i did my search for a vga driver I could only find VMsvga2.

Anyways I'll give the VMwareGfx a try and see how it works out.

 

BTW is the VMMouse driver only for VMsvga2 or is it a good to have even when using VMwareGfx?

 

Best Regards,

Almir Kadric

 

Hi

 

I would just use the drivers from the official VMware tools. Much of what Zenith432 did is now part of the official drivers.

[JVene]

When the VMware installer does it's thing, it installs everything that makes it work correctly, so if there is something that takes the position of VMMouse, it's there (maybe by a different name, but the problem it addresses is covered).

 

But you get more than just a graphics driver that does auto fit and all your supported resolutions.

 

You also get shared folders and....I just realized this myself....cut and paste through the clipboard to/from Mac OS X to the host OS.

[AlmirKadric]

Just to report here, I used the official VMWare tools and had a few problems. Firstly the vmmemctl.kext has special checks inside it to ensure that the Guest is not running on non Apple hardware. If so it will prevent the kernel from booting (panic immediately when the kernel is loaded and begins loading kernel cache). I found a fix for this online which was to remove that kext, but the fix was also missing the fact that you need to rebuild your kernel cache after as well. This got me in however I still have the mouse cursor issue. I'll search around for a VMMouse.kext and see what I can dig up. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[AlmirKadric]

Another thing to report, I also installed the VMMouse kext and it improved the smoothness and speed of the mouse dramatically. However the click position is still way off from the cursor on screen. Another thing to note, I do not get this problem when there is not graphics driver installed. i.e. neither VMwarefgx.kext nor VMsvga2.kext are installed.

[JVene]

I'm not a specialist on the subject of VMwareGfx, but I do have decades of experience as a developer and I have this working here.

The problem is that I'm not sure why it's working for me and not for you, so let's compare to see if that can be discovered. To be sure, I have a VM of OS X upgraded to 10.9.4, and I've used various Kernels with reasonable performance, and at this point I'm using Bronya's recent one - but all of them had the same performance relative to VMwareGfx, which is to say I simply installed it from Drawin7.iso and it worked without complaint, requiring no further adjustments or fixes. The same Drawin7.iso installed on a 10.8.4 that had been using VMsvga2 for at least a year, and also installed without issue. I've never seen a mouse problem like the one you described.

Now, my install source is likely different than yours. I tried Niresh with poor results in VMware (shutdown always crashed), but I obtained a copy of the SoulDev (a VMware appliance, not exactly loved here), and with nothing more than a kernel substitution, it worked with a default graphics driver in a fixed size resolution.

I employed those suggested "fixes" to the VMX file attempting to create an Apple MAC address, then I installed the Clover boot loader. It seems to me the SoulDev image didn't bother with any kind of boot loader, but I chose Clover as a simple means of providing a MAC identity. The Clover Configurator has a generator which automagically gave the VM the appearance of a MacBook Pro with a quad core Intel chip. My "About this Mac" page shows a quad core Xeon (which I don't really think is in the MacBook pro).

Perhaps something I did along these lines before I installed VMwareGfx was, without my knowledge, sufficient to give the install of DarwinTools all that it was looking for. I don't have sufficient data upon which to base that conclusion, so it's conjecture.
 

[zrplcnhg]

Hi Guys, sorry to jump in but I've tried everything and still doesn't work.

 

I'm trying to get a 10.10 Vanilla install working on VMWare Player. This are the steps I am following but I cannot get the screen to display any other resolution except for 1024x768.

 

1. Clean install of 10.10

 

2. Installed VMWare Tools 7

 

3. Without rebooting I've deleted vmmemctl.kext as suggested by AlmirKadric

 

4. Re-built the kext cache using the following:

sudo chown root:admin /

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

sudo kextcache -system-caches

 

5. Rebooted and I still get only 1024

 

Things I've tried:

 

- Set a manual resolution in the VMware Settings.

 

- Tried to add the EDID as suggested by Zenith, I've not sure I've done it correctly:

 

The EDID looks like this (found it on the internet)

 

00ffffffffffff000610a49c0000000016130103802115780ae585a3544f9c260e505400000001010101010101010101010101010101ab22a0a050841a30302036004bcf10000019000000010006103000000000000000000a20000000fe004c544e31353442543038000a20000000fc00436f6c6f72204c43440a20202000ac

 

and I've encoded to base64 to looks like this

 

MDBmZmZmZmZmZmZmZmYwMDA2MTBhNDljMDAwMDAwMDAxNjEzMDEwMzgwMjExNTc4MGFlNTg1YTM1NDRmOWMyNjBlNTA1NDAwMDAwMDAxMDEwMTAxMDEwMTAxMDEwMTAxMDEwMTAxMDEwMTAxYWIyMmEwYTA1MDg0MWEzMDMwMjAzNjAwNGJjZjEwMDAwMDE5MDAwMDAwMDEwMDA2MTAzMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwYTIwMDAwMDAwZmUwMDRjNTQ0ZTMxMzUzNDQyNTQzMDM4MDAwYTIwMDAwMDAwZmMwMDQzNmY2YzZmNzIyMDRjNDM0NDBhMjAyMDIwMDBhYw==

 

Is this what is supposed to look like? I'm trying to get 1920x1200 resolution.

 

Any help would be really appreciated.

 

Thank you

[MSoK]

Hi Guys, sorry to jump in but I've tried everything and still doesn't work.

 

I'm trying to get a 10.10 Vanilla install working on VMWare Player. This are the steps I am following but I cannot get the screen to display any other resolution except for 1024x768.

 

Is this what is supposed to look like? I'm trying to get 1920x1200 resolution.

 

Any help would be really appreciated.

 

Thank you

zrplcnhg,

 

All this editing and deleting kexts , etc. should only be required for AMD based CPU machines, if you have an Intel Dual Core or above that supports VT-x then none of these fixes / patches should be required, and just installing the latest VMware Tools from Fusion 7 (darwin.iso) should allow full screen resolution of 1920x1200. I have just checked on my Dual Xeon 5520 Workstation running Workstation 10.0.3 with Donk's 1.3.0 unlocker and Yosemite Beta version 5 - 10.10 (14A386b) and VMware Tools 7.0.0 installed and get 1920x1200 without any additional modifications.

 

It also may be a restriction of Player, as in Workstation under Preferences > Display you can choose Autofit settings. Although Player does not have the Autofit preferences I was still able to go full screen at either 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 or indeed any non scaled resolution supported by my monitor, i.e. 1680x1050, without any issues.

[zrplcnhg]

zrplcnhg,

 

All this editing and deleting kexts , etc. should only be required for AMD based CPU machines, if you have an Intel Dual Core or above that supports VT-x then none of these fixes / patches should be required, and just installing the latest VMware Tools from Fusion 7 (darwin.iso) should allow full screen resolution of 1920x1200. I have just checked on my Dual Xeon 5520 Workstation running Workstation 10.0.3 with Donk's 1.3.0 unlocker and Yosemite Beta version 5 - 10.10 (14A386b) and VMware Tools 7.0.0 installed and get 1920x1200 without any additional modifications.

 

It also may be a restriction of Player, as in Workstation under Preferences > Display you can choose Autofit settings. Although Player does not have the Autofit preferences I was still able to go full screen at either 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 or indeed any non scaled resolution supported by my monitor, i.e. 1680x1050, without any issues.

 

Wow... you were 100% right! Tried in Workstation with Vanilla Yosemite GM2 and Darwin Tools from Fusion 7 and it worked a treat! 

 

Thank you so much

[dolphinsystems]

Currently using svga2 under Mavericks and Mavericks seems to be working out of the box, but system crashes randomly and i have to log in back (though everything seems to get restored) again and again.

For those who are unable to play videos try xbmc, its working out of the box and found 64bit version slightly fast but still lagging on SD, HD, FHD videos, HEVC would work on chrome's HEVC Player but still very slow its may not be vram on limitation a problem but driver itself is slower for video playback, though i am noob to Mac but overall experience was way better than installing Mountain Lion previous year.

Anyways cannot test hackintosh since all my systems have incompatible hardware but on vmware its working fine, looking forward to svga2 updates but since its dead so we need something better to work with large vram or using nvidia under OSX.   

[nico81]

Wow... you were 100% right! Tried in Workstation with Vanilla Yosemite GM2 and Darwin Tools from Fusion 7 and it worked a treat! 

 

Thank you so much

Worked a treat meaning you get the resolution, but it's still very laggy, right?

[Guest euandros]

It's the first time I try this so don't be evil with me 

 

- Attempting this on two computers, a desktop and a PC, both with 4th gen Intel CPUs.

- The desktop has VMWare Workstation, laptop has VmWare player (both on latest official). I basically have the same behaviour on both machines. 

- I have unlocked VMWare using the latest unlocker

- Used the OSX 10.9 VMWare Image (pre installed)

- Installed the latest Tools, version 7.

 

I manage to get the guest addition working (like copy-paste). I can also manually force the resolution of the screen, but can't manage to get autofit/ auto resize, it bumps to 2.5k. Is this an expected behavior?

 

Many thanks!

[JasF]

Hi Everyone! You may be able to suggest

I have ESXi 5.5U1 with Yosemite installed, but svga 1.2.5 driver on Yosemite is pretty slow, less than 10 fps. On Mavericks I have more than 30-40 fps

How can I fix this issue?

 

Thank You for attention

[MSoK]

Hi Everyone! You may be able to suggest

I have ESXi 5.5U1 with Yosemite installed, but svga 1.2.5 driver on Yosemite is pretty slow, less than 10 fps. On Mavericks I have more than 30-40 fps

How can I fix this issue?

 

Thank You for attention

JasF,

 

You may have to wait for ESXi 6 for better Yosemite support, it certainly runs better in Fusion 7 compared to Fusion 6, but in the interim, upgrade to ESXi 5.5 U2 and / or use the latest VMware Tools from the Fusion 7 darwin.iso it offers the best experience for Yosemite currently, link below:

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/31-vmware-tools-for-os-x-darwiniso/

[JasF]

MSoK,

 

Respect and thanks, You have calmed me 

[11Al]

I have a different problem. I upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite, everything works fine except for one, with Yosemite on boot login screen resolution is not full screen, but windowed at 1024x768. Login screen on logoff instead, is in full screen 1920x1080. VMware tools 7 installed.

[Ringoz]

Hi Everyone! You may be able to suggest

I have ESXi 5.5U1 with Yosemite installed, but svga 1.2.5 driver on Yosemite is pretty slow, less than 10 fps. On Mavericks I have more than 30-40 fps

How can I fix this issue?

 

Thank You for attention

 

This can be fixed by disabling Beam Sync. For example via Quartz Debug Tools.

[zrplcnhg]

Hey Guys,

 

thanks for the help, I just wanted to highlight some of my findings and ask you a question.

 

If you are using VMWare player and you are unable to get the guest autofit working (to get the full res after installing the vmware tools) you can get a Workstation Trial, open the VM with that and then when you go back to Player you just need to click on the "go fullscreen" button to put it back in windowed mode and then click it again to make the autofit work. I bet there is a line in the vmx file that make this work on player but I couldn't find it.

 

The question has to do with VMware Tools Vs VMSVGA. I get it that VMSVGA2 is not supported any longer and we should use the tools instead but anyone is having an issue with apps that use Java like Photoshop or PHPStorm? What happens to me is the windows inside the app will not refresh (and show anything) until you move the window and any change you make (for instance changing a radio button or adding some text) you have to move the window again to have it shown. In practice they are unusable. This issue is not in VMSVGA2 but it's in the tools.

 

Ps. BeamOff is awesome! Yosemite is running full speed now!

[Jack Martin]

 

JasF,

 

You may have to wait for ESXi 6 for better Yosemite support, it certainly runs better in Fusion 7 compared to Fusion 6, but in the interim, upgrade to ESXi 5.5 U2 and / or use the latest VMware Tools from the Fusion 7 darwin.iso it offers the best experience for Yosemite currently, link below:

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/31-vmware-tools-for-os-x-darwiniso/

 

 

I upgraded the 7.0.1 tool and also turned Beam Sync off(@Ringoz)

 

But it's not working...

On my Yosemite is still less than 10 fps.

 

Any help~

[11Al]

All this editing and deleting kexts , etc. should only be required for AMD based CPU machines, if you have an Intel Dual Core or above that supports VT-x then none of these fixes / patches should be required, and just installing the latest VMware Tools from Fusion 7 (darwin.iso) should allow full screen resolution of 1920x1200. I have just checked on my Dual Xeon 5520 Workstation running Workstation 10.0.3 with Donk's 1.3.0 unlocker and Yosemite Beta version 5 - 10.10 (14A386b) and VMware Tools 7.0.0 installed and get 1920x1200 without any additional modifications.

 

It also may be a restriction of Player, as in Workstation under Preferences > Display you can choose Autofit settings. Although Player does not have the Autofit preferences I was still able to go full screen at either 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 or indeed any non scaled resolution supported by my monitor, i.e. 1680x1050, without any issues.

Ok, I be part of to the case of cpu intel duel core, indeed I have no problem, holding full screen resolution at 1920x1080 on Mavericks with VMware Workstation 10.0.0. But I haven't installed the darwin iso tools nor the svga 1.2.5 OS 10.9 pkg. I ask you, should I install one of these two packages or not?

I have only one real problem with Mavericks, images not display in iPhoto and some as thumbnail previews in the sidebar of Preview.app.

[MSoK]

11Al,

 

Full screen, may not require the VMware Tools installing, but Autofit support requires either VMware Tools or Zenith432's SVGA driver and guest fit patch. However with the release of Fusion 7, the best available support for graphics is provided by the latest VMware Tools from Fusion 7.0.1, link below.

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/31-vmware-tools-for-os-x-darwiniso/

 

Please note any applications that use QE/CI will not function correctly, often seen as a black, blank or invisible screen, in a virtual machine using any currently available virtual graphics driver.

[11Al]

Ok MSoK, thanks for response.

[11Al]

I found in the various options of MacPilot, beam sync mode. If you click on "disable" is the same thing as you get with the beamoff bynary app?

With addition of these tweaks Yosemite run good now 

 

PS: I checked it, indeed they are not the same thing, to work needs beamoff activated.