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Enabling a serial port device from a virtual machine
You can have up to four serial or COM ports in a virtual machine. A serial port
may be used by the host operating system and one or more guest operating
systems running in virtual machines. By default, the configured serial port is
enabled when the virtual machine is powered on. These devices output to serial
ports, files, or named pipes.
To add a serial connection:
- Select File > Open and open the virtual machine
configuration file
(.cfg) you want to
modify.
- Select Settings > Configuration Editor from Workstation.
- Click the
+ sign next to "Serial Ports".
- Select a
device node where you want to create a virtual serial port. If a slot is not
currently configured, the description reads "Not Installed".
- In the "Serial Port" window,
select the "Start Connected" option
if you want the serial port device to be available as soon as the virtual
machine powers on.
Note:
If the serial port device may be inaccessible to the guest operating system
when the virtual machine is powered on, deselect this option. For example, an Iomega
ZSip drive might not be connected when the virtual machine powers on. In this
case, you can enable access to the serial port after startup using the
"Devices" menu.
- In the "Type"
field, make a selection:
-
Device. Select this option
to connect the virtual serial port to a physical serial port on the host
machine. Then
enter the path to the physical
serial port to which the device is connected
in the "Path" field.
-
File. Select this option to
connect the virtual serial port to an output file. Click
Choose to select the file
that should be used to store the output from the virtual serial port device.
-
TTY. Select this option to
connect the virtual serial port to a named pipe. Enter the location
of the serial port in the "Path" field.
- Click
Install.
- Click OK.
- Power on the virtual machine.
Note: Serial port performance in the host operating system may suffer when a
virtual machine is running. This is because Workstation may disable
interrupts on the host for a long period of time, resulting in host UARTs
dropping characters intermittently. No corruption will occur, but retries in
the software controlling the UARTs will reduce the transfer rate of the host.
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