New in Version 6.0.3

Workstation 6.0.3 adds full support for the following operating systems:

* 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.10 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Asianux Server 3 as a guest operating system
* 32-bit and 64-bit Turbolinux 10 Server as a guest operating system

Note: The Eclipse Integrated Virtual Debugger is not yet supported on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 hosts.

Workstation 6.0.3 addresses the following security issues:

* On Windows hosts, if you have configured and enabled a shared folder, it is possible for an attacker to write arbitrary content from a guest system to arbitrary locations on the host system (CORE-2007-0930). (bug 200360)
* An internal security audit determined that a malicious user could attain and exploit LocalSystem privileges by causing the authd process to connect to a named pipe that is opened and controlled by the malicious user. (Foundstone CODE-BUG-H-001) In this situation, the malicious user could successfully impersonate authd and attain privileges under which Authd is executing. (bug 193049)
* This release updates the libpng library to version 1.2.22 to remove various security vulnerabilities. (bug 224453)
* This release updates the OpenSSL library to address various vulnerabilities to denial-of-service attacks and buffer overflows. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) assigned the following names to these issues: CVE-2006-2940, CVE-2006-2937, CVE-2006-4343. (bug 216493)
* Workstation 6.0.2 allowed anonymous console access to the guest by means of the VIX API. This release, Workstation 6.0.3, disables this feature. This means that the Eclipse Integrated Virtual Debugger and the Visual Studio Integrated Virtual Debugger will now prompt for user account credentials to access a guest. (bug 187785)

Workstation 6.0.3 is also a maintenance bug fix release to improve VMware Workstation 6.0.2. See Fixed Bugs for information about additional bug fixes.


Fixed Bugs

Fixed in 6.0.3 | Fixed in 6.0.2 | Fixed in 6.0.1

Known Issues Fixed in Workstation 6.0.3

* On openSUSE Linux 10.3 hosts, USB devices cannot be used in a virtual machine unless you plug the USB device in to the host before powering on the virtual machine. (bug 177615)
* With Workstation 6.0.2 the iPhone could be seen as a camera device by a Windows guest but iTunes did not list the device in its device list. In this release, Workstation 6.0.3, the iPhone is usable and visible in iTunes for Windows guests. (bug 191214)
* On 64-bit Windows Vista hosts, if the guest has a USB controller and you attempt to connect or disconnect a USB device, occasionally the guest crashes to blue screen with a "USBPROT.SYS" error. (bug 219224)
* For Windows guests, if a filename inside a shared folder includes any extended ASCII characters (that is, characters whose ASCII code is above 128), then you cannot view any of the files in the shared folder. The folder looks empty when you access it from the guest operating system. The value of such characters could not be converted to UTF-8. (bug 222397)
* For Windows guests, if you configured the virtual machine to connect to a specific physical floppy drive instead of using auto-detect, and if you then start the virtual machine without having a floppy disk in the drive, you might see a "Windows - No Disk" error message. (bug 217782)
* On Windows guests, you cannot access files that are cached for offline access. This means that if you have set up the system to mount a network drive and enable the option to cache files for offline access, you still will not be able to access the files unless the remote server is available. (bug 201758)
* On Linux guests that use X.Org Server 1.3, which includes Fedora Core 7 guests, you receive the following error message when installing VMware Tools: "Detected X.org 1.3. No drivers for X.org version 1.3." (bug 185281)
* On some 64-bit Windows hosts, the host sometimes crashes when starting up a Linux virtual machine that has paravirtual kernel support enabled. (bug 192011)
* If you install Workstation on a Linux host that uses kernel version 2.6.23 or newer, the necessary kernel modules do not build. Therefore, Workstation is installed but cannot start. (bug 200828)
* On Windows Vista hosts and Windows guests, if you swap the left and right mouse button functions, as many left-handed people do, dragging and dropping files does not work correctly. (bug 188997)
* Occasionally on Windows guests, the guest crashes when you use the multiple-monitor feature and view streaming video. This issue might arise if you have two monitors arranged one on top of another and you launch a media player from the secondary monitor. (bug 189779).
* In some newer Linux guest operating systems, the mouse pointer becomes unusable after you install VMware Tools. (bug 156988)
* Hardware breakpoints set in applications that run inside guest operating systems are lost occasionally. (bug 199267)

Bugs Reported in Workstation 6.0.1 and Fixed in Workstation 6.0.2

* Hosts with AMD Duron processors might not be able to power on virtual machines. This problem resulted because Duron processors that are based on Athlon do not have Intel SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions). (bug 183866)
* Ubuntu 7.04 virtual machines sometimes power off unexpectedly if paravirtual kernel support is enabled. (bug 190499)

Bugs Reported as Known Issues in Workstation 6.0 and Fixed in Workstation 6.0.1

* If you attempt to install a guest operating system by using a PXE boot with ZENworks Imaging, the installation process hangs. (bug 159455)
* Occasionally, graphics are not displayed correctly in the guest. For example, bitmap graphics in edit mode in PowerPoint, graphs in Quicken, and graphics elements in Microsoft Word might not display at all. (bug 164981)
* On Linux hosts, the Favorites list might get erased if you exit Workstation and manually choose to run some virtual machines in the background. (bug 162623)
* On Windows Vista hosts, you might not be able to view or select physical disk partitions when creating a virtual machine. (bug 156997)
* If you are using multiple monitors and manually configure the display resolution in the guest to a combined size that is larger than the guest VRAM supports, you might get a blue screen or crash the guest. (bug 161721)
* On Windows hosts, if you want to create and run applications with the VMCI SDK, you need to rename vmci.dll to crosstalk.dll. (bug 162620)
* On Windows hosts, there is no command-line option for starting the a virtual machine in quick switch mode. You can now use the -m command-line option with vmware.exe. Workstation will then start the virtual machine in quick switch mode. Previously, this option was available only on Linux hosts. (bug 177609)

Bugs Reported as Known Issues in Workstation 5.5.3 and Fixed in Workstation 6.0

* On Linux guests that have SELinux enabled, accessing shared folders (/mnt/hgfs) fails with kernel oops error messages. (bug 131213)
* In guests running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 or Ubuntu Linux 6.10 (or any Linux guests that use Xorg X Windows system versions 7.1 or higher) the Workstation 5.5.x VMware Tools installer does not install drivers for X Windows, and consequently the mouse does not perform correctly (bug 124689). The version of VMware Tools included with Workstation 6.0 does install the correct drivers.
* Workstation 5.5.3 does not support USB for Solaris guests. Workstation 6.0 does support USB for Solaris guests.