VM MKS Client - 5

Today I added two new features to the Virtual Machine MKS Client. Richard suggested to ad a menu item to  send Ctrl+Alt+Delete to the virtual machine and Philippe would be very happy with a borderless window mode. Their wishes are my command and in the 1.6 version you can find both menu items under View. Just some figures, the Virtual machine MKS Client is downloaded over 600 times and the internal version is 1.0.0.11. On an average day my blog is visited by more than 800 people. You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.6 in the software menu item of my blog.

I added another really cool feature to the Virtual Machine MKS Client. When you click on the menu item Virtual Machines you will see a list of all your virtual machines. On the left of the virtual machine you see a little bullet. This bullet is an indicator of the overall status of the virtual machine. When the bullet is green there is nothing wrong. When it’s grey the virtual machine is powered down. When it’s red there is an alarm and when it’s yellow there is a warning.You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.5 in the software menu item of my blog.

 

When you are running the Virtual Machine MKS Client on a system that never visited Web Access than the MKS Client won’t start. This problem is caused by the absence of the ActiveX Control that is used by the MKS Client. I created a workaround for this problem. Download vmware-mks.cab, unpack the files, right click the quickmksax.inf and choose install. After this short procedure the Virtual Machine MKS Client will function correctly.

I installed the Virtual Machine MKS Client on a Workstation where the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client 2.0 wasn’t installed yet and the Virtual Machine MKS Client didn’t work. I still have to find out what’s causing this behavior. I received some real  good feedback and was able to implement some of the feature requests. In this new version I added some icons and I fixed a few typo’s. You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.4 in the software menu item of my blog.

I fixed a major bug, this bug was responsible for randomly black screens when connecting to a VM. I also added an extra menu item. This new menu item is called Full Screen. When you select it you will see the VM console in Full Screen mode. Don’t forget to press CTRL+ALT to return.

You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.3 in the software menu item of my blog.

The games have begun. Bouke and I are in sort of a contest who will build the most fancy Virtual Machine MKS Client. Bouke calls his creation the KVM-Tool,  my application goes under the name VMware MKS Client. So it’s the KVM-Tool versus the Virtual Machine MKS Client from now on. No more code sharing and no more walks during lunch breaks ;-). I don’t know when Bouke is going to deliver his first beta version because we are only communicating through our weblog posts from now on ;-). What I do know is that my beta version is ready. You can download it here. Have fun with it.

Continue reading "Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.1" »

The first VMware MKS client is ready. This is an educational version only, because by the time I wanted to put it on the internet, Bouke Groenescheij showed me how to embed the MKS ActiveX Object into a VB.net application. My first version still uses an embedded Internet Explorer, which is fed by a self constructed html file. I know, it isn’t the way to do it, but I’m really proud of it and thought what the hack let’s post it anyway. Before you launch this client, you should visit a Web Access console page. This way the VMware MKS ActiveX Object is installed on your computer. Thanks to Bouke the next version will be a lot faster and we will get rid of the buttons so stay tuned.

I embedded the Java script code from Bouke into a Visual Basic 2005 application and created a nice userinterface. Here is a screenshot of the vmMKSclient. It’s not finished, I still have some difficulties with the sizing of the console but it’s working :-). I expect that the download will be available within the next two weeks.

A few weeks ago I started building a VMware MKS client with an integrated VM console. I got stranded at the point that I was staring at a black screen until Bouke Groenescheij showed up. We have teamed up for a few moths and are working together at Ahrend IT-Services where we are responsible for the IT infrastructure. On one of those rainy afternoons you often have during the Dutch summer season I showed Bouke my progress on the MKS client. After a few minutes I lost control over my real keyboard and mouse and Bouke took over. He started with some real serious hacking and showed me the ropes of Java script. This eventually resulted in some late hours of coding but we did it. Finally there is a working piece of Java script that functions as a MKS connection to the VM. The next step is embed this code into a nice looking user interface. I think this is going to be a hot summer after all.

The project to disconnect all the CD’s from all the VM’s with one click of a button is finished so I thought it’s time for a new project. Let’s build a VDI connection broker with an embedded console for the XP VM’s. The first thing I needed to do is figure out how I could embed a console view into my VB application. After some searching in the VMware forums I ended up with one or two posts that weren’t much of a help. I decided to take a closer look at the console that is used in web access.  When you logon to web access and select a VM, you can get a console in your Internet Explorer. Let’s find out what happens in the background. Log on to Web Access : https://vcserver/ui

Continue reading "VMware MKS client (step one)" »