I recently had to do a install of VMWare server with 4 guest operating systems and once I got it all going I found that the arrow keys were not working. On some hosts they were mapped to control or shift and on the other hosts they just did not work. After a little searching I found a simple solution. Below I outline how to fix this small issue.
First of all make sure all you Virtual Machines are shut down and you are logged out of the VMware console.
You need to locate the home directory of which ever user you are running the server under and then:
- cd /home/$user/.vmware
Where $user is the name of your user, for me it was /home/vmware/.vmware
Once you get in there you need to issue the command:
- ls -la
And look for a file called config. If the file is present then open it in a file editor and remove everything and replace it with the following code:
- 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
If there is no file called config just create one and add the preceding code.
This will tell VMWare server how to map the keys on start up and should correct the problem.