Broken Arrow Keys during an Ubuntu 9.04 install on Vmware Server 1.X

Background

Recently I was trying to create a Ubuntu 9.04 vmware image using Vmware Server 1.08, but I was doing it remotely from my Fedora 10 laptop which was running Vmware Server 1.06. This can normally be done by using Vmware Server’s ability to remotely connect to other Vmware Servers.

VMware Server Console

Here’s my work flow. NOTE: Ubuntu 9.04 will be running on the vmware server on CentOS 5.4.

VMware Workflow

Problem

While going through the setup I encountered a problem I hadn’t seen before where the arrow keys didn’t appear to be working within GRUB while I was installing Ubuntu 9.04.

broken arrow keys

Solution

Turns out there is an option you can enable (i.e. set to TRUE) in the $HOME/.vmware/preferences file which fixes this.

1

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = "TRUE"

NOTE: This change was made to the Vmware Server that was running on the Fedora 10 box.

I did not need to restart the vmware service, /etc/init.d/vmware, for this change to get picked up, however I did need to restart the vmware server GUI that was running on Fedora 10.

working arrow keys

This link on the vmware communities forum proved helpful in figuring out this workaround.