Cursor keys not working in Ubuntu 8.10 VMWare client

After last week’s problem with the Terminal Services client, I also experienced problems with the cursor keys in the VMWare client for Ubuntu 8.10. This was particularly annoying, since I use Quicken in a VMWare machine, and the selection of categories is much easier with the cursor keys than with the mouse.

It turns out that this is a bug in Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10. None of the patches since October 2008 have addressed this issue, but the manual fix is very simple:

• Open a terminal window
• Type the following in the terminal:
  

  echo ‘xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true’ > ~/.vmware/config

After entering this you have to restart your VMWare client session. If it doesn’t work, try restarting the VMWare server, however, since this is a client setting, it shouldn’t affect the server or be affected by server settings.

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