VMware
Related articles
This article is about installing VMware in Arch Linux; you may also be interested in VMware/Installing Arch as a guest.
Contents
- 1 Installation
- 2 Configuration
- 3 Launching the application
- 4 Tips and tricks
-
5 Troubleshooting
- 5.1 /dev/vmmon not found
- 5.2 /dev/vmci not found
- 5.3 Kernel headers for version 4.x-xxxx were not found. If you installed them[...]
- 5.4 USB devices not recognized
- 5.5 The installer fails to start
- 5.6 Unable to download VMware Tools for Guests
- 5.7 Incorrect login/password when trying to access VMware remotely
- 5.8 Issues with ALSA output
- 5.9 Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is running
- 5.10 Segmentation fault at startup due to old Intel microcode
- 5.11 Guests have incorrect system clocks or are unable to boot: "[...]timeTracker_user.c:234 bugNr=148722"
- 5.12 Networking on Guests not available after system restart
- 5.13 Kernel modules fail to build after Linux 4.9
- 5.14 vmplayer/vmware fails to start from version 12.5.4
- 5.15 vmplayer/vmware fails to start from version 12.5.3
- 5.16 vmware 12 process terminates immediately after start, no GUI is launched
- 6 Uninstallation
Installation
Install the correct dependencies:
- fuse2 - for vmware-vmblock-fuse
- gksu - for root operations (memory allocations, registering license, etc.)
- gtkmm - for the GUI
- linux-headers - for module compilation
-
ncurses5-compat-libsAUR - needed by the
--console
installer - libcanberra - for event sounds
Download the latest VMware Workstation Pro or Player (or a beta version, if available).
Start the installation:
# sh VMware-edition-version.release.architecture.bundle
For the System service scripts directory
, use /etc/init.d
(the default).
Configuration
Kernel modules
VMware Workstation 12.5 supports kernels up to 4.8 out of the box.
systemd services
(Optional) Instead of using /etc/init.d/vmware
(start|stop|status|restart
) and /usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator
directly to manage the services, you may also use .service
files (also available in the vmware-systemd-servicesAUR package, and also included in vmware-patchAUR):
/etc/systemd/system/vmware.service
[Unit] Description=VMware daemon Requires=vmware-usbarbitrator.service Before=vmware-usbarbitrator.service After=network.target [Service] ExecStart=/etc/init.d/vmware start ExecStop=/etc/init.d/vmware stop PIDFile=/var/lock/subsys/vmware RemainAfterExit=yes [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
/etc/systemd/system/vmware-usbarbitrator.service
[Unit] Description=VMware USB Arbitrator Requires=vmware.service After=vmware.service [Service] ExecStart=/usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator ExecStop=/usr/bin/vmware-usbarbitrator --kill RemainAfterExit=yes [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
Add this service as well, if you want to connect to your VMware Workstation installation from another Workstation Server Console:
/etc/systemd/system/vmware-workstation-server.service
[Unit] Description=VMware Workstation Server Requires=vmware.service After=vmware.service [Service] ExecStart=/etc/init.d/vmware-workstation-server start ExecStop=/etc/init.d/vmware-workstation-server stop PIDFile=/var/lock/subsys/vmware-workstation-server RemainAfterExit=yes [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
After which you can enable them on boot.
Workstation Server service
The vmware-workstation-server.service
calls wssc-adminTool
in its command chain, despite having been renamed to vmware-wssc-adminTool
.
To prevent the service startup, this can be fixed with a symlink:
# ln -s wssc-adminTool /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-wssc-adminTool
Launching the application
To open VMware Workstation Pro:
$ vmware
or Player:
$ vmplayer
Tips and tricks
Entering the Workstation Pro license key
From terminal
# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx-debug --new-sn XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
Where XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
is your license key.
From GUI
If the above does not work, you can try:
# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-enter-serial
Extracting the VMware BIOS
$ objcopy /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -O binary -j bios440 --set-section-flags bios440=a bios440.rom.Z $ perl -e 'use Compress::Zlib; my $v; read STDIN, $v, '$(stat -c%s "./bios440.rom.Z")'; $v = uncompress($v); print $v;' < bios440.rom.Z > bios440.rom
Extracting the installer
To view the contents of the installer .bundle
:
$ sh VMware-edition-version.release.architecture.bundle --extract /tmp/vmware-bundle/
Using the modified BIOS
If and when you decide to modify the extracted BIOS you can make your virtual machine use it by moving it to ~/vmware/Virtual_machine_name
:
$ mv bios440.rom ~/vmware/Virtual_machine_name/
then adding the name to the Virtual_machine_name.vmx
file:
~/vmware/Virtual_machine_name/Virtual_machine_name.vmx
bios440.filename = "bios440.rom"
Enable 3D graphics on Intel and Optimus
Some graphics drivers are blacklisted by default, due to poor and/or unstable 3D acceleration. After enabling Accelerate 3D graphics, the log may show something like:
Disabling 3D on this host due to presence of Mesa DRI driver. Set mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers = TRUE to override.
This means the following:
~/.vmware/preferences
mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers = TRUE
Troubleshooting
/dev/vmmon not found
The full error is:
Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory. Please make sure that the kernel module 'vmmon' is loaded.
This means that at least the vmmon
module is not loaded. See the #systemd services section for automatic loading.
/dev/vmci not found
The full error is:
Failed to open device "/dev/vmci": No such file or directory Please make sure that the kernel module 'vmci' is loaded.
Try to recompile VMware kernel modules with:
# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all
Kernel headers for version 4.x-xxxx were not found. If you installed them[...]
Install the headers (linux-headers).
USB devices not recognized
If not using the systemd service to automatically handle the services, you need to manually start the vmware-usbarbitrator
binary as root each time.
To start:
# vmware-usbarbitrator
To stop:
# vmware-usbarbitrator --kill
The installer fails to start
If you just get back to the prompt when opening the .bundle
, then you probably have a deprecated or broken version of the VMware installer and it should removed (you may also refer to the uninstallation section of this article):
# rm -r /etc/vmware-installer/
User interface initialization failed
You may also see an error like this:
Extracting VMware Installer...done. No protocol specified No protocol specified User interface initialization failed. Exiting. Check the log for details.
This can be fixed by either installing the ncurses5-compat-libsAUR dependency or temporarily allowing root access to X:
$ xhost + $ sudo ./<vmware filename>.bundle $ xhost -
Unable to download VMware Tools for Guests
To download the tools manually, visit the VMware repository.
Navigate to: "application name / version / build ID / linux / packages/" and download the appropriate Tools.
Extract with:
$ tar -xvf vmware-tools-name-version-buildID.x86_64.component.tar
And install using the VMware installer:
# vmware-installer --install-component=/path/vmware-tools-name-version-buildID.x86_64.component
If the above does not work, try installing ncurses5-compat-libsAUR.
Incorrect login/password when trying to access VMware remotely
VMware Workstation provides the possibility to remotely manage Shared VMs through the vmware-workstation-server
service. However, this will fail with the error "incorrect username/password"
due to incorrect PAM configuration of the vmware-authd
service. To fix it, edit /etc/pam.d/vmware-authd
like this:
/etc/pam.d/vmware-authd
#%PAM-1.0 auth required pam_unix.so account required pam_unix.so password required pam_permit.so session required pam_unix.so
and restart the vmware
systemd service.
Now you can connect to the server with the credentials provided during the installation.
Issues with ALSA output
To fix sound quality issues or enabling proper HD audio output, first run:
$ aplay -L
If interested in playing 5.1 surround sound from the guest, look for surround51:CARD=vendor_name,DEV=num
, if experiencing quality issues, look for front:CARD=vendor_name,DEV=num
. Finally put the name in the .vmx
:
~/vmware/Virtual_machine_name/Virtual_machine_name.vmx
sound.fileName="surround51:CARD=Live,DEV=0" sound.autodetect="FALSE"
OSS emulation should also be disabled.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is running
To disable KVM
on boot, you can use something like:
/etc/modprobe.d/vmware.conf
blacklist kvm blacklist kvm-amd # For AMD CPUs blacklist kvm-intel # For Intel CPUs
Segmentation fault at startup due to old Intel microcode
Old Intel microcode may result in the following kind of segmentation fault at startup:
/usr/bin/vmware: line 31: 4941 Segmentation fault "$BINDIR"/vmware-modconfig --appname="VMware Workstation" --icon="vmware-workstation"
See Microcode for how to update the microcode.
Guests have incorrect system clocks or are unable to boot: "[...]timeTracker_user.c:234 bugNr=148722"
This is due to incomplete support of power management features (Intel SpeedStep and AMD PowerNow!/Cool'n'Quiet) in VMware Linux that vary the CPU frequency. In March 2012, with the release of linux 3.3-1 the maximum frequency Performance governor was replaced with the dynamic Ondemand. When the host CPU frequency changes, the Guest system clock runs too quickly or too slowly, but may also render the whole Guest unbootable.
To prevent this, the maximum host CPU frequency can be specified, and Time Stamp Counter (TSC) disabled, in the global configuration:
/etc/vmware/config
host.cpukHz = "X" # The maximum speed in KHz, e.g. 3GHz is "3000000". host.noTSC = "TRUE" # Keep the Guest system clock accurate even when ptsc.noTSC = "TRUE" # the time stamp counter (TSC) is slow.
Networking on Guests not available after system restart
This is likely due to the vmnet
module not being loaded [1]. See also the #systemd services section for automatic loading.
Kernel modules fail to build after Linux 4.9
On VMware Workstation Pro 12.5.2, the module source needs to be modified to be successfully compiled under kernel 4.9 [2].
# cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source # tar xf vmmon.tar # mv vmmon.tar vmmon.old.tar # sed -i 's/uvAddr, numPages, 0, 0/uvAddr, numPages, 0/g' vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c # tar cf vmmon.tar vmmon-only # rm -r vmmon-only
# tar xf vmnet.tar # mv vmnet.tar vmnet.old.tar # sed -i 's/addr, 1, 1, 0/addr, 1, 0/g' vmnet-only/userif.c # tar cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only # rm -r vmnet-only
vmplayer/vmware fails to start from version 12.5.4
As per [3] the temporary workaround is to downgrade the package libpng
to version 1.6.28-1 and keep it in the IgnorePkg
parameter in /etc/pacman.conf.
An easier workaround is to make VMWare use the system's version of zlib instead of its own one:
# cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libz.so.1 # mv libz.so.1 libz.so.1.old # ln -s /usr/lib/libz.so.1 .
vmplayer/vmware fails to start from version 12.5.3
It seems to be a problem with the file /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libstdc++.so.6/libstdc++.so.6
, missing CXXABI_1.3.8
.
If the system have installed gcc-libs or gcc-libs-multilib, that library is already installed. Therefore, it's possible to remove that file and vmplayer will use the one provided by gcc-libs instead. As root do:
# mv /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libstdc++.so.6/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libstdc++.so.6/libstdc++.so.6.bak
Also there is a workaround:
# export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS='yes'
vmware 12 process terminates immediately after start, no GUI is launched
Registered bug at Mageia, but it seems that there are no error messages shown in terminal with arch. When inspecting the logs, which are in /tmp/vmware-<id>
, there are VMWARE_SHIPPED_LIBS_LIST is not set
, VMWARE_SYSTEM_LIBS_LIST is not set
, VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS is not set
, VMWARE_USE_SYSTEM_LIBS is not set
issues. Process simply terminates with Unable to execute /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-modconfig.
after vmware or vmplayer is executed. Solution is the same, as root do:
# mv /etc/vmware/icu/icudt44l.dat /etc/vmware/icu/icudt44l.dat.bak
Also there is a workaround:
# export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS='yes'
Uninstallation
To uninstall VMware you need the product name (either vmware-workstation
or vmware-player
). To list all the installed products:
$ vmware-installer -l
and uninstall with (--required
skips the confirmation):
# vmware-installer -u product --required
Remember to also disable and remove the services:
# rm /etc/systemd/system/vmware.service # rm /etc/systemd/system/vmware-usbarbitrator.service
You may also want to have a look at the module directories in /usr/lib/modules/kernel_name/misc/
for any leftovers.