VMware Remote Console Plug-in – Firefox 3.0.x hack

Today I was in a bad need of VMWare Server as I wanted to test VMWare products and I also had to test an operating system. I had downloaded VMWare Server 2.0 RC2 Beta couple of weeks back for testing purpose which didn’t get installed pretty easily for me earlier as I had old VMWare installation which was kinda screwed up. I cleared up all old mess and installed VMWare Server 2.0 Beta freshly and found that it comes with VMWare Infrastructure Management web console for managing the VMWare Servers and other infrastructure. Its pretty cool to run and manage the complete IT infrastructure via a single console and that is what I’m trying to achieve.

Though things went on smooth, bad luck stuck me when I was supposed to be using the software which I had just installed. VMWare Remote Console plug-in which gets installed on to your browser while you try accessing a new server which you create via web interface didn’t work and I learned that it was not compatible with Firefox 3.0.1.

To get this issue resolved, you need to wait for VMWare team to release the new plug-in (for which you might have to download the software completely if they don’t made this plug-in available separately) or you got to hack into the plug-in your self. Guess what, I choose the second path.

Downloaded the plug-in to my local directory.

links https://localhost/ui/plugin/vmware-vmrc-linux-x86.xpi

Unzipped the xpi file

unzip vmware-vmrc-linux-x86.xpi

Edit install.rdf to change the Versions supported by this plugin. Check for the following lines. (I have changed the MaxVersion to 3.0.* instead of 3.0.0.*)

{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}
1.0
3.0.*

Remove the xpi file

rm -f vmware-vmrc-linux-x86.xpi

Repack the content with the new install.rdf

zip -r vmware-vmrc-linux-x86.xpi *

Now drag and drop this file to Firefox browser to get it workinig.

If you want this file to be available for others also, make it available in the server on which VMWare server is running. This can be done by copying the fresh .xpi file to following location :

cp vmware-vmrc-linux-x86.xpi /usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.16/webapps/ui/plugin

Now when others try accessing the web console from their browser new plugin will be downloaded and they will never come to know that the original plug-in had any issue with compatibility.

Here I go with VMWare on my Firefox. Use this hack and enjoy VMWare web access on new browser releases. Don’t wait for things to happen. Make it happen.