Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

VMware Workstation & Ubuntu ctrl-alt-ins not working?

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I just noticed that when running a VM on VMware Workstation 6.5 and Ubuntu 8.10(but this problem probably also occurs on other non-Windows OS’es), you can’t use the arrow keys. But also ctrl-alt-ins isn’t working, which is annoying cause you would have to do it with the mouse. And no arrow keys also means that you can’t browse through your command-line history in Windows or Linux for that matter. Luckily there are two work arounds:

  1. sudo gedit /etc/vmware/config
  3. If that doesn’t work try adding the following:
    xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
    xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
    xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
    xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
    xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
    xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
    xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
    xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
    xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
    xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
    xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
    xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
    xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
    xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
    xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
    xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
    xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
    xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
    xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

Thanks goes out to AlexPX and Johannes for pointing us out to this solution. There’s also a KB article on this one I just noticed.

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Comments

  1. Cool.
    Could not have come in a better time.
    I have just installed Workstation 6.5, since i read about your good experience with it, and were just installing my first Guest OS.
    And what better thing to do, while its installing, then to optimize my Workstation.

    Thanks for the tip 🙂

  3. That’s what I did as well. I added
    xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

    Works fine on my stinkpad T61p with Ubuntu 8.10 and WS 6.5

  4. Tnx! In my VMware Server Consol ver. 1.0.7 build-108231 with Ubuntu 8.10 64 bit I added only xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true and now work!

    Thanks!

  6. Just thanks for this solution which works fine on my ubuntu 9.04 with VMWareServer2 (keymap FR)

    Christophe, FR

  9. If this problem was known in 8.10 why wasn’t it fixed in 9.04. I have the additional problem of all full screen VM’s jumping to the active desktop and stay where they are opened.