2006-11-26 12:58:05 -07:00
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VMMouse
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-------
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The VMMouse driver enables support for the special VMMouse protocol
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that is provided by VMware virtual machines to give absolute pointer
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positioning.
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Installing the driver will improve the user experience when using the
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mouse to interact with the guest operating system. In particular, use of
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the driver improves mouse "lag", provides mouse speed and acceleration
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consistent with the user's host operating system, and enables the
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auto-grab/ungrab feature in VMware products without requiring the VMware
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toolbox application.
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Using the driver
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----------------
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Assuming you have built and installed the driver in the standard way
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for autotools based packages (see INSTALL), or the driver was already
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installed by your distro, using it is simply a matter of changing the
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driver used for the mouse input device from "mouse" to "vmmouse".
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The vmmouse driver is capable of falling back to the standard "mouse"
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driver if a VMware virtual machine is not detected. This allows for
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dual-booting of an operating system from a virtual machine to real hardware
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without having to edit xorg.conf every time.
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Implementation
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--------------
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The following is not necessary reading for anyone who wants to use the
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driver, but should help anyone who wants to understand how it works or
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who wants to write a driver for a different target, whether it's another
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operating system, a linux kernel input driver or even gpm.
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The driver is composed of three different layers:
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1) The vmmouse protocol layer (vmmouse_proto.[c|h])
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- This provides the call to read and write the port over which
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the vmmouse packets are transfered.
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2) The vmmouse client layer (vmmouse_client.[c|h])
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- This builds on top of the protocol layer to provide higher
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level calls for enabling/disabling the vmmouse mechanism
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and for reading data.
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- A new driver for a different target would use this interface.
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3) The Xorg vmmouse driver (vmmouse.c)
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- This is the actual Xorg specific part of the driver.
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- Note that interrupts indicating the presence of mouse data
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are still transmitted on the PS/2 port so it is necessary
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to be set up to receive those interrupts like a standard
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PS/2 driver, but the actual data on the PS/2 port is ignored.
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2009-05-03 08:11:13 -06:00
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vmmouse_detect
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--------------
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A simple program to detect whether the vmmouse device is present.
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It is used by the HAL callout script to automatically detect a
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vmmouse device.
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Returns 0 if we are running in a virtual machine where the vmmouse
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device is present.
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Returns 1 otherwise (either we are not in a VM or the vmmouse device
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was disabled).
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