VMware Workstation 7.1.2 on Meerkat 10.10

You probably have noticed: VMware did it again.

They ship a new version, it offers update, downloads fine, installs with a breeze and
... zilch ...
crashes on restart.

vmmon and vsocks do not compile.

How many time does that have to happen?

Here is a patch:
patch-modules.sh
vmware-7.1-2.6.35-3-generic.patch

Download both. Then:

chmod u+x patch-modules.sh
sudo ./patch-modules.sh

This script will save the original driver tars, patch them and run the module installation script.

VMware Workstation should start fine.

VMware Workstation 7.0 works

Dedicated followers of this blog will remember my complaints about VMware never being able to provide a working installation.

After upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 I had to reinstall VMware. 6.5.2 did not work, 6.5.3 required a trick to circumvent the hangup in the installation procedure.

Two days after getting 6.5.3 installed, my VMware Workstation informed me that there was a new update out. Should I bother going through another hour of nightmare? I read release notes, nothing special: Windows 7 gaming support at the most. Who needs that?

I was reluctant to install. Finally I got myself up to get it over and done with:

Surprise, surprise.

VMware Workstation took longer than any other installation before but it worked out of the box (or installer bundle).

One gets modest over times: Thank you VMware for providing a software that installs, works and performs. (in fact, this is how it should have been all along).

VMWare Workstation 6.5.2 64 bit bundle

VMware download is still corrupted. I found some torrents around that work fine.

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 on 9.04

As described in several places VMware Workstation 6.5.1 does not work on Ubuntu 9.04 64bit edition.

This is due to the fact that autocreation of the modules breaks.

I found a script that is supposed to work in Fedora (which I doubt as the script has some flaws).

Here is a script that works on Ubuntu 9.04 (64bit and 32bit edition alike):

#!/bin/bash

cd ~
rm -rf vmware-modules
mkdir vmware-modules
cd vmware-modules
find /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source -name "*.tar" -exec tar xf '{}' \;
mkdir -p /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc
rm -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc{vmblock.ko,vmci.ko,vmmon.ko,vmnet.ko,vsock.ko}
rm -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc{vmblock.o,vmci.o,vmmon.o,vmnet.o,vsock.o}
cd vmblock-only; make; cd ..
cd vmci-only; make; cd ..
cd vmmon-only; make; cd ..
cd vmnet-only; make; cd ..
#cd vmppuser-only; make; cd ..
cd vsock-only; make; cd ..

cp *.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/.
cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/

ln -s vmblock.o vmblock.ko
ln -s vmci.o vmci.ko
ln -s vmnet.o vmnet.ko
ln -s vmmon.o vmmon.ko
#ln -s vmppuser.o vmppuser.ko
ln -s vsock.o vsock.ko

depmod -a
service vmware restart

cd ~
rm -rf vmware-modules

Copy it to a text file "vmware-build-module", set permissions to execute:

chmod u+x vmware-build-module

and execute it:

sudo ./vmware-build-module

The script creates a directory, extracts the module sources, makes them, copies the kernel modules to the right directory in the /lib tree, sets symbolic links (which the original script laked and it did not work without). It then rebuilds the module dependencies, restarts the vmware service and deletes the directory with the compiled modules.

Once done, you should be able to start VMware Workstation 6.5.1 without problems. If you have, let me know.

Note: There is no error checking whatsoever. At least, the script does not remove any other files in the misc directory if there are any.
Note: Sorry there is no download. I wish there was something like the image upload here.

VMware Workstation 6.5 on Ubuntu 8.10

VMware Workstation 6.5 comes in 32bit and 64bit flavours. If you download, you can either get RPMs or installable files, that end in the extension .bundle. These are combined shell scripts with embedded binaries.

Installation works fine. First I had to chmod the file to be executable, then sudo ran it. Ths installation starts a graphical installer that does the rest. If you have Eclipse installed, you can accept the path to the debugger. Other than that, no excitement.

The installer copies both VMware Workstation 6.5 as well as VMware Player 2.5 onto the machine. It recognises and takes over the old settings (both network and VM favorites). Also the software recognises fingerprint readers as well as bluetooth devices.

The installation still requires vmware-config.pl if you change kernel modules.

Unity

A new feature in VMware Workstation 6.5 is Unity. It allows guest applications to run in parallel with native host applications.

In practice this means, I can run Visual Studio side by side to my native OpenOffice or Geany IDE.

If nothing else, this feature is the reason to upgrade.

Other than that, there are background snapshots, background operation, enhanced settings on VMs, etc.

VMware Server 2.0 changes some things

VMware Server 2.0 is out and installing it changes some things.

First, installing over a running VMware Server 1.0.7 did not work. The installation routine complained about a running instance of the server:

vmrun stop /path/to/vm/file.vmx

solves the issue. I installed over the previous version (the installation routine deinstalled 1.0.7 for me).

No problems installing, however, the installation routine asked for a http port and suggested port 80. Port 80 is taken by apache and the installation routine acknowledges this. I also run MUI (the web frontend for 1.0.x) on port 8333. This does not work either.

One can choose any free port (as there will be a Tomcat server be installed).

VMware Server 2.0 comes with its web interface integrated (as mentioned, Tomcat). There is a browser based console window that installed without any problems.

VMware Server Console for the client provides an error:

Unable to connect to the remote host: 501 Global command GLOBAL server-vmdb to non-host agent targets not supported.

I did not find a version of the linux client that works with 2.0 yet. However, it's not neccessary either. The built in browser console does the job nicely.

Upgrade VMware Tools in virtual machines

I strongly recommend updating the VMware Tools in Windows VMs. Much to my surprise, the visual performance and speed increased significantly. Also I could adjust my screen resolution to fit the size of my monitor.

VMware Server 2.0 offers another nice feature that I missed previously: Administration of user rights via the graphical interface (remember, you had to set file access rights to allow for different user rights in the VMware Server).

After installation of VMware Server 2.0 I deinstalled the MUI on the server and the client console on my client machines. I don't need them.

Updating VMWare Server, MUI and Console

Updating VMware Server 1.0.5 to 1.0.6 works fine. However, installing VMware MUI afterwards breaks with VMware MUI 1.0.6.

VMware Server must be installed on this machine for the VMware Management Interface to work

Installation aborts.

In order to fix this I had to remove the library libgcc_s.so.1 in /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1:

mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1_orig

Installation of MUI worked fine afterwards.

In order to start the management interface during the next reboot one has to add a few lines at the beginning of /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware:

RUNDIR="/var/run/vmware/httpd"
OWNER="www-data"
GROUP="www-data"

/usr/bin/test -d "$RUNDIR" || \
/bin/mkdir -p "$RUNDIR" && /bin/chown "$OWNER:$GROUP" "$RUNDIR"

Now, the management interface survives a reboot.

This workaround fixed the installation problem of the server console on the workstation as well.

VMware 6.03 on Ubuntu 8.04 compile error

After upgrading Ubuntu to 8.04, I ran into an error reconfiguring VMware with vmware-config.pl:

include/asm/bitops_32.h:9:2: error: #error only can be included directly, and vmmon-only compile failes

I found a helpful blog describing 10 easy steps to fix the problem. Here is the list of steps (security issues corrected)

1. cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
2. cp vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.orig
3. sudo tar xvf vmmon.tar
4. cd vmmon-only/include/
5. sudo vi vcpuset.h
6. change line 74 from: #include “asm/bitops.h” to: #include “linux/bitops.h”
7. rm vmmon.tar
8. sudo tar cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only/
9. sudo rm -rf vmmon-only/
10. sudo vmware-config.pl

After this, I could start VMware. Robert, thank you.

VMware Server console in 8.04

After upgrading Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 my VMware Server console would not start:

wolf@wb:~$ vmware-server-console
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.6)

I found a helpful link here. The resolution would not work for me (as you can see in the error messages above. However, removing the library libgcc_s.so.1 did the trick.

root@wb:/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1# mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1_orig

Now the console works fine.

VMWare Workstation & Server console

VMware Workstation prerequisites:

• You need the linux headers installed
• also install build-essential package (this has the C compiler and make utility required for the vmware modules)
  

Installing VMware Workstation is straight forward:

• Download the installation package from VMwares webpage.
• Unpack the zip-file in a directory
• sudo ./vmware-install.pl and answer the questions about directory location
• confirm that you want to run the vmware-configure.pl script as well
• add bridged, NATed and host network adapters. I chose the ones suggested

You will get a working installation with icons available under Applications -> System Tools. Start the Workstation and enter a license. Viola, you are ready to go.

There is also a VMware Player installed which is free of charge and does not require a license.

If you run into trouble the most likely causes are that you do not have the latest VMware build. On several occasions I found that there was a newer build on the web. Incidences included:

• Could not compile vmnet and vmmon utilities (I tried the vmware_any_any_update113 patch and it worked partly but not on every machine, so I could not recommend it)
• Installation routine finds wrong network adapter. This is the case when you work with a notebook connected to you LAN via wireless adapter. The scripts suggests eth0 as the default bridge. This is no good if you use eth1 or wlan0 to connect to you LAN.
• Wrong set of kernel module drivers. I tried to install the kernel module drivers that come with Ubuntu. They never worked for me.

To fix problems, run sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl and recompile the kernel modules. You can keep the network settings by skipping network discovery.

VMware Server console:

• Same prerequisites as with VMware Workstation.
• Decompress the vmware_server_linux_client archive. Take the vmware_server_console archive and decompress it in a directory
• in the vmware-server-console-distrib run sudo ./vmware-install.pl
• again answer the questions. You can change the port the client communicates with the server. But this has to be done on the server as well. I recommend you don't change this.
• The installation script asks whether you want to run the configuration, which you want to do.

After the installation, you are left without any menu entry. I manually added a lauch icon under Applications -> System Tools and chose the icon that comes in the /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/share/pixmaps directory.

Most likely errors are:

• Your server does not run the console service (default on port 902)
• You haven't installed the prerequired components
• You do not run the latest vmware build (in 7.10 only 1.0.4 build 56528 worked on my machines)

To fix problems, run sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config-server-console.pl and recompile the kernel modules if required.

During the latest updates I got a vmware kernel components from the Ubuntu repository. They prevent you having to recompile kernel modules after each kernel update.