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Certain Latin Characters in Virtual Machine File Names Do Not Display Properly in VMware Management Interface

Details

I created a virtual machine that uses non-ISO-Latin-1 characters in the configuration and disk file names. The characters in the virtual machine's display name and in the path to the virtual machine do not display correctly. What is wrong?

Solution

VMware GSX Server is not localized in any language, and the VMware Management Interface cannot be displayed in any language other than English. However, you can change the character set the management interface uses so it can correctly encode and decode your input (items such as path names and virtual machine display names). This allows VMware GSX Server to interpret this information properly. This also makes the management interface display your input properly, though the rest of the management interface still appears in English no matter what encoding is used.

To configure VMware GSX Server to use the correct encoding, you need to change the setting for vmware_CODESET in two files on your host.

Windows Hosts

The character set encoding is specified in two files called init.pl. If you installed VMware GSX Server in the default location, the files are located in the following two places:

  • C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware GSX Server\vmserverdRoot\init.pl
  • C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Management Interface\htdocs\init.pl

Look for the following line in both files:
$ENV{vmware_CODESET} = 'iso-8859-1';

The iso-8859-1 definition for the character set indicates that VMware GSX Server supports the ISO-Latin-1 character set by default. Change this character set definition to the desired character set definition. For example, for Japanese support, change the iso-8859-1 definition in both files to shift-jis, the type of encoding typically found on Windows hosts.

After making these changes, you must restart both the VMware Management Interface and the VMware Registration Service, or you can just reboot the VMware GSX Server host itself.

Linux Hosts

The character set encoding is specified in two files. If you installed VMware GSX Server in the default location, the files are located in the following two places:

  • /usr/lib/vmware/serverd/init.pl
  • /home/vmware/mui/apache/conf/access.conf

In /usr/lib/vmware/serverd/init.pl, look for the following line:
$ENV{vmware_CODESET} = 'iso-8859-1';

In /home/vmware/mui/apache/conf/access.conf, look for the following line:
PerlSetEnv vmware_CODESET iso-8859-1

In both of these files, the iso-8859-1 definition indicates that VMware GSX Server supports the ISO-Latin-1 character set by default. Change this character set definition to the desired character set definition. For example, for Japanese support, change the iso-8859-1 definition in both files to euc-jp, the type of encoding typically found on Linux hosts.

After making these changes, you must restart both the VMware Management Interface and vmware-serverd, or you can just reboot the VMware GSX Server host itself.

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