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Solaris10U1 Virtual Machines Might Not Properly Discover and Configure the Virtual Floppy Device, Virtual Parallel Port, or Virtual Serial Port (2270)

Details

Why do Solaris10U1 virtual machines not properly discover and configure virtual floppy devices, virtual parallel ports, or virtual serial ports?

Solution

After you add a virtual floppy device, a virtual parallel port, or a virtual serial port, a Solaris10U1 guest might not properly initialize the devices. For example, a host operating with Solaris10U1 normally has a floppy disk automount to /floppy when the disk is inserted into the floppy drive. On a VMware ESX Server 3.0 host with Solaris10U1, this might not happen.

To solve this problem, enter the following commands in a terminal on the Solaris10U1 virtual machine:

# eeprom acpi-user-options=0x0# touch /reconfigure# reboot
These commands cause Solaris10U1 to recognize and configure your virtual devices properly. To verify, follow the steps below that are appropriate for the device you're adding.

Virtual Floppy Device

  1. Insert a floppy disk into the ESX Server host.
  2. Using the user interface, make sure the floppy is connected.
  3. In the Solaris10U1 virtual machine, issue the following command:
    # volcheck -v
    This mounts /floppy (/dev/diskette) to your floppy disk.

Virtual Parallel Port

  1. Add a virtual parallel port to your virtual machine and choose to output to a file on the ESX Server host.
  2. Using the user interface, make sure the parallel port is connected.
  3. In the Solaris10U1 virtual machine, issue the following commands:
    # lpadmin -p tofile -v /dev/printers/0
    # lpadmin -p tofile -l
    These commands show you the properties associated with the printer. Please refer to the Solaris documentation for additional configuration information.

Virtual Serial Port

  1. Add a virtual serial port to your virtual machine and choose to output to a file on the ESX Server host.
  2. Using the user interface, make sure that the serial port is connected.
  3. In the Solaris10U1 virtual machine, issue the following command:
    # echo "my serial port is now working" > /dev/term/a
  4. On the ESX Server host, view the serial output file to make sure the message has been posted.

Note: This method does not work for serial connections through named pipes.

Keywords

2270

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