VMWare Web Access Console on OSX

Question

Using ESX 3.5 U4, logging on to the Web Access with FireFox 3.

Can't use the xPI console plugin.

Has anyone been able tog et this to work? I know that OSX/FF is not supported, but maybe someone's modified the xpi installer in some fashion?

Answer 1

I ran into the same issue with VMware Server 2.0 on OS X. The solution I used was to create a virtual machine in VMware itself with the minimum requirements to run Ubuntu 9.04 desktop and run Firefox there.

General steps:

• Configure networking so it is available from workstation via SSH.
• Enable X11 Forwarding with SSH. (-X/-Y commandline options, or ForwardX11/ForwardX11Trusted ~/.ssh/config options)
• ssh to the 'desktop' VM.
• Run firefox, it should display on your local system.

This is about the best work around, unfortunately. Modifying the Firefox plugin XPI is pretty much out of the question, it is compiled GTK specifically against Linux, IIRC.

Minimum requirements for Ubuntu 9.04:

• 300 MHz x86 processor
• 64 MB of system memory (RAM)
• At least 4 GB of disk space (for full installation and swap space)
• VGA graphics card capable of 640x480 resolution
• CD-ROM drive or network card

(using an alternate install CD). Or you can install a server version and just install ubuntu-desktop metapackage :-).

Answer 2

I've always ended up caving and using a Windows desktop... There's so much that can only be done quickly (if at all, like licensing and mounting virtual DVDs) with the VI3 client and that piece of .NET2 trash is dog-slow. By far the weakest point of the ESX system.