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Security → VMware Unity

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22 Jun 10 at 14:33

Everyone knows about virtual machines and understands why they are necessary. But sometimes the work in the virtual machine’s window is not user-friendly, the same way as not easy to use a virtual machine that is opened to full screen, there is no application integration capabilities from the real and virtual machines. Unity is designed to solve this problem.

Before Unity mode will be available you should create a virtual machine with one of the operating systems that are supported by guest utilities. Or to take a complete one. Then you should install guest utilities there.

Unity view mode appeared in VMware Player 2.5 and VMware Workstation 6.5. But the opportunity to place virtual applications’ shortcuts on the desktop (or elsewhere) of the real system has been appeared only after the release of VMware Player 3.1 and VMware Workstation 7.1.

Consider the following example: the real system - Windows XP, the virtualization system - VMware Player 3.1, the virtual machine 1 - Windows 7, the virtual machine 2 - Ubuntu 10.04.

We are starting with the launch of the virtual machine and wait for the final load. Then in the virtual machine’s menu bar we will select the "Enter Unity":

After that, the virtual machine’s window will be closed, and the virtual machine’s menu bar will be appeared next to the button "Start":

The button will be dynamically hidden/showed if needed, if the cursor moves on the Start button, it will appear.

Such button as "Start" menu of virtual machine works:

Or the menu "Applications" in the case of Ubuntu:

To place a virtual application’s shortcuts on desktop of real system, you should drag the shortcut from such menu on the desktop. Here you can see "Chess Titans" shortcut from Windows 7 and "System Monitor" shortcut from the Ubuntu on the desktop of my real Win XP:

And here you can see a screenshot at which these applications are running simultaneously:

An interesting feature: in the windows of Windows 7 we can see incorrect work of transparency:

Whereas Ubuntu shows an excellent result in the same conditions:

The applications that are launched in that way will appear on the real system’s taskbar:

Created shortcuts contain the string of launch the vmware unity helper with the following parameters:

Quote:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Player\vmware-unity-helper.exe" -r -G:1 -V:1

There is no mention of which application should be run in the shortcut. Probably, these data are saved in some configuration file, but I could not find them. The difference was only in the parameters for an application from the Ubuntu:

Quote:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Player\vmware-unity-helper.exe" -r -G:2 -V:2

The icons for shortcuts are saved in the virtual machine’s root in the folder named "caches\LinkIcons":

So, review step by step the example. Let us suppose that we are tired of "Mines" from Windows OS and we decided to use a "Mines" from Ubuntu OS. First of all you need to install it. Launch the Synaptic Package Manager:

Enter in quick search the "gnomine":

We are clicking the right button on the detected string and mark it for the installation:

After that the link to the game will appear in the menu "Games":

Let us go into "Unity" view mode and open the menu in a real system:

We are draging a shortcut on the desktop of a real system:

Now if you want to feel yourself like a sapper in Linux OS just need to double click on the shortcut (and a few minutes wait) and the mine finder for a gnome at your service:

That's such a useful thing.

Dmytro Krasylnikov
"Design and Test Lab", Ltd. 2010
/specially for www.av-school.com/

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Entry comments:



Spider Rice	Rating: +1	# 23 Aug 10 at 09:26

Rating: 1

"There is no mention of which application should be run in the shortcut. Probably, these data are saved in some configuration file, but I could not find them."

These can be found in the following location on Windows 7:
c:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\VMware\unity-helper.xml