VMware

This article is about installing VMware in Arch Linux; you may also be interested in Installing Arch Linux in VMware.

Note: This article supports only the latest major VMware versions, meaning VMware Workstation 8 and VMware Player 4.

Installation

Note: VMware Workstation/Player will not be manageable with pacman as the files are not installed with it.

1. Download the latest VMware Workstation or VMware Player (you may also try the testing (Beta/RC) versions).

2. Start the installation (--console uses terminal instead of the GUI):

# chmod +x VMware-<edition>-<version>.<release>.<architecture>.bundle
# ./VMware-<edition>-<version>.<release>.<architecture>.bundle --console

3. Read & accept the EULA to continue.

4. Set System service scripts directory to /etc/rc.d

5. (Optional) If Eclipse is installed, enter the directory path to the Integrated Virtual Debugger.

6. You will now get an error about the "rc*.d style init script directories" not being set. This can, however, be safely ignored.

7. Create links for the daemons:

# ln -s /etc/init.d/vmware /etc/rc.d/
# ln -s /etc/init.d/vmware-workstation-server /etc/rc.d/

Configuration

Tip: There is also a package called vmware-patch^AUR in the AUR with the intention of trying to automate this section (it also supports older VMware versions).

Module tool paths

Note: As of kmod 5-2 the locations of lsmod, modinfo, etc. have changed from /bin/ to /usr/bin/.

8. To make use of the module tools of updated kmod in VMware Workstation you need to either change the binary paths of all the *mod* stuff (excluding modprobe) in /etc/init.d/vmware and /usr/bin/vmware from /sbin/ to /usr/bin/:

# perl -p -i -e 's|/sbin/(?!modprobe)|/usr/bin/|g' /etc/init.d/vmware
# sed -i "s|/sbin/|/usr/bin/|g" /usr/bin/vmware

with VMware Player you need to edit /usr/bin/vmplayer instead:

# sed -i "s|/sbin/|/usr/bin/|g" /usr/bin/vmplayer

Note: You will need to redo this upon every update.

As a long-term solution you can also just create symlinks with:

# for i in {ins,ls,rm}mod modinfo; do ln -s /usr/bin/$i /sbin/$i; done

VMware module patches and installation

VMware Workstation 8 and Player 4 only support kernels up to 3.0. Any later requires patching of the VMware modules. These patches will also install the modules afterwards by executing vmware-modconfig --console --install-all.

Note: Due to different VMware versions, you may need to set the vmreqver or plreqver variable for VMware Workstation or Player respectively in the patch-modules_3.X.0.sh script.

Note: The latest Technology Preview of VMware Workstation (July 2012) supports kernels up to 3.5.

3.5 / 3.4 kernels

The patch for 3.4 kernels is available here:

$ cd /tmp
$ curl -O http://weltall.heliohost.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/vmware802fixlinux340.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf vmware802fixlinux340.tar.gz
$ sed -i "s|0.2|0.4|g" patch-modules_3.4.0.sh
# ./patch-modules_3.4.0.sh

3.3 / 3.2 kernels

The patch for both 3.2 and 3.3 kernels is available here and here:

$ cd /tmp
$ curl -O http://weltall.heliohost.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz
# ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

The patches for older VMware Workstation 8 and Player 4 versions can be found here and here.

3.1 kernels

The patch for 3.1 kernels is available here:

$ cd /tmp
$ curl -O http://weltall.heliohost.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/vmware8linux31fix.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf vmware8linux31fix.tar.gz
# ./patch-modules_3.1.0.sh

Finishing up

9. (Optional) Add vmware to the DAEMONS array in /etc/rc.conf so that the service is started automatically on boot.

10. Now, open your VMware Workstation (vmware in the console) or VMware Player (vmplayer in the console) to configure & use!

Warning: When upgrading the kernel you will have to rebuild the VMware modules with the following command:

# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

Failure to do so may result in a system crash upon powering up virtual machines.

Tips & Tricks

Entering the Workstation 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.

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

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"

Troubleshooting

Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.

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 VMware service is not running. All VMware services can be started with:

# rc.d start vmware

Kernel headers for version 3.x-xxxx were not found. If you installed them[...]

Install them with:

# pacman -S linux-headers

Note: Upgrading the kernel and the headers will require you to boot to the new kernel to match the version of the headers. This is a relatively common error.

USB devices not recognized

For some reason, some installations are missing the vmware-USBArbitrator script. To readd it manually see this forum post.

You may also manually extract the VMware bundle and copy the vmware-USBArbitrator script from <destination folder>/vmware-usbarbitrator/etc/init.d/ to /etc/rc.d/ (which seems to be its default installation folder instead of /etc/init.d/):

$ ./VMware-<edition>-<version>.<release>.<architecture>.bundle --console --extract /tmp
# cp /tmp/vmware-usbarbitrator/etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator /etc/rc.d/

process XXXX: Attempt to remove filter function[...]

The full error is, for example:

process 6094: Attempt to remove filter function 0xadcc96f0 user data 0xb795aba0, but no such filter has been added
  D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace
Aborted

This means that the hal daemon is not running. Install hal^AUR from the AUR and start the daemon with:

# hald

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 you should remove it (you may also refer to the uninstallation section of this article):

# rm -r /etc/vmware-installer

Incorrect login/password when trying to access VMware remotely

VMware Workstation 8 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 VMware services with:

# rc.d restart vmware vmware-workstation-server

Now you can connect to the server with the credentials provided during the installation.

Note: libxslt may be required for starting virtual machines.

Issues with ALSA output

The following instructions from Bankim Bhavsar's wiki show how to manually adjust the ALSA output device in a VMware .vmx file. This might help with quality issues or with enabling proper HD audio output:

1. Suspend/Power off the VM.
2. Run aplay -L
3. If you are interested in playing 5.1 surround sound from the guest, look for surround51:CARD=vendor-name,DEV=num. If you are experiencing quality issues, look out for a line starting with front.
4. Open the <Virtual machine name>.vmx config file of the VM in a text editor, located under ~/vmware/<Virtual machine name>/, and edit the sound.fileName field, e.g.: sound.fileName="surround51:CARD=Live,DEV=0". Ensure that it also reads sound.autodetect="FALSE".
5. Resume/Power on the VM.

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:

# vmware-installer -u <vmware-product>

Manually included symlinks have to be removed manually in /etc/rc.d/ and /sbin/:

# rm /etc/rc.d/vmware /etc/rc.d/vmware-workstation-server /sbin/insmod /sbin/lsmod /sbin/modinfo /sbin/rmmod

Remember to also remove vmware from the /etc/rc.conf DAEMONS array.