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 9 and VMware Player 5.

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/init.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.

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

7. The module tool paths of certain Workstation scripts now need to be pointed to /usr/bin/ instead of /sbin/. These include the service script in /etc/init.d/ and some other ones in /usr/bin/.

1) A short-term solution

A short-term solution consists of editing the files directly. You will need to redo this upon every update.

• For Workstation:

# perl -p -i -e 's|/sbin/(?!modprobe)|/usr/bin/|g' /etc/init.d/vmware /usr/bin/vm-support /usr/bin/vmplayer /usr/bin/vmware /usr/bin/vmware-hostd /usr/bin/vmware-wssc-adminTool

• For Player:

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

2) A long-term solution

You could 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

Both VMware Workstation 9 and Player 5 support kernels up to 3.7. However, the required header version.h was relocated with 3.7 and needs to be symlinked.

3.7 kernels

With the arrival of 3.7 the directory structure of the uapi sources (and thus the headers) has changed. The missing kernel header version.h can be symlinked with:

# ln -s /usr/src/linux-$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h

You can replace "$(uname -r)" with any kernel not currently running.

3.5 / 3.6 kernels

Note: Required only for VMWare Workstation 9.0.0 and Player 5.0.0

A change in the format of the kernel exception table introduced back in April affecting the vmmon module is known to cause crashes in Fedora guests. The patch here creates a portable exception table (packaged together with the script in here) and will also install the modules afterwards by executing # vmware-modconfig --console --install-all (this will also reload the vmmon module):

$ cd /tmp
$ curl -O http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/2103172-94260/vmware9_kernel35_patch.tar.bz2
$ tar --strip-components=1 -xvf vmware9_kernel35_patch.tar.bz2  # The "--strip-components=1" flag extracts the files only
# ./patch-modules_3.5.0.sh

Finishing up

8. (Optional) Instead of using # /etc/init.d/vmware {start|stop|status|restart} directly to manage the services you may also create a .service file (or files):

/etc/systemd/system/vmware.service

[Unit]
Description=VMware daemon
[Service]
ExecStart=/etc/init.d/vmware start
ExecStop=/etc/init.d/vmware stop
PIDFile=/var/lock/subsys/vmware
TimeoutSec=0
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To start the .service on boot:

# systemctl enable vmware

9. 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"

Copy-On-Write (CoW)

CoW comes with some advantages, but can negatively affect performance with large files that have small random writes. It is recomended to disable CoW for database files and virtual machine images. To disable CoW for the whole file system it should be mounted with the nodatacow flag. To disable CoW for single files/directories:

$ chattr +C [file/directory path]

Note: From the chattr man page: "For btrfs, the C flag should be set only on new or empty files. If set on a file which already has data blocks, it is undefined when the blocks assigned to the file will be fully stable. If set on a directory, only new files will be affected."

Using DKMS to manage the modules

The Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) can be used to manage Workstation modules and to void from re-running vmware-modconfig each time the kernel changes. The following example uses a custom Makefile to compile and install the modules through vmware-modconfig. Afterwards they are removed from the current kernel tree.

Preparation

First install dkms from the Community repository:

# pacman -S dkms

then create a source directory for the Makefile and the dkms.conf.

# mkdir /usr/src/vmware-modules-9

Build configuration

Gather the files from git or use the ones described below:

$ cd /tmp
$ git clone git://github.com/djod4556/dkms-workstation.git
# cp /tmp/dkms-workstation.git/Makefile /tmp/dkms-workstation.git/dkms.conf /usr/src/vmware-modules-9/

The dkms.conf describes the module names and the compilation/installation procedure. AUTOINSTALL="yes" tells the modules to be recompiled/installed automatically each time:

/usr/src/vmware-modules-9/dkms.conf

PACKAGE_NAME="vmware-modules"
PACKAGE_VERSION="9"

MAKE[0]="make all"
CLEAN="make clean"

BUILT_MODULE_NAME[0]="vmmon"
BUILT_MODULE_LOCATION[0]="modules"

BUILT_MODULE_NAME[1]="vmnet"
BUILT_MODULE_LOCATION[1]="modules"

BUILT_MODULE_NAME[2]="vmblock"
BUILT_MODULE_LOCATION[2]="modules"

BUILT_MODULE_NAME[3]="vmci"
BUILT_MODULE_LOCATION[3]="modules"

BUILT_MODULE_NAME[4]="vsock"
BUILT_MODULE_LOCATION[4]="modules"

DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[0]="/extra/vmware"
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[1]="/extra/vmware"
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[2]="/extra/vmware"
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[3]="/extra/vmware"
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[4]="/extra/vmware"

AUTOINSTALL="yes"

and now the Makefile:

/usr/src/vmware-modules-9/Makefile

KERNEL := $(KERNELRELEASE)
HEADERS := /usr/src/linux-$(KERNEL)/include
GCC := $(shell vmware-modconfig --console --get-gcc)
DEST := /lib/modules/$(KERNEL)/vmware

TARGETS := vmmon vmnet vmblock vmci vsock

LOCAL_MODULES := $(addsuffix .ko, $(TARGETS))

all: $(LOCAL_MODULES)
        mkdir -p modules/
        mv *.ko modules/
        rm -rf $(DEST)
        depmod

/usr/src/linux-$(KERNEL)/include/linux/version.h:
        ln -s /usr/src/linux-$(KERNEL)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-$(KERNEL)/include/linux/version.h

%.ko: /usr/src/linux-$(KERNEL)/include/linux/version.h
        vmware-modconfig --console --build-mod -k $(KERNEL) $* $(GCC) $(HEADERS) vmware/
        cp -f $(DEST)/$*.ko .

clean:
        rm -rf modules/

Installation

The modules can then be registered:

# dkms -m vmware-modules -v 9 -k `uname -r` add

built:

# dkms -m vmware-modules -v 9 -k `uname -r` build

and installed:

# dkms -m vmware-modules -v 9 -k `uname -r` install

If everything went well, the modules will now be recompiled automatically the next time the kernel changes.

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. If using the .service file from step 8. all VMware services can be started with:

# systemctl start vmware

otherwise use:

# /etc/init.d/vmware start

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

1) The vmware-USBArbitrator script is missing

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/init.d/:

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

2) The vmware-usbarbitrator binary is segfaulting

This could also mean that the vmware-usbarbitrator binary called in the script is segfaulting:

# vmware-usbarbitrator --info -f

VTHREAD initialize main thread 2 "usbArb" pid 6426
Segmentation fault

This is caused by an empty /etc/arch-release (owned by filesystem). It is used by the service to alter its behavior based on the distribution's release version.

To fix it, add a version string in the form of <year>.<month>(.<day>) (e.g. 2012.12.01).

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 9 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:

# systemctl restart vmware

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 /sbin/:

# rm /sbin/insmod /sbin/lsmod /sbin/modinfo /sbin/rmmod

Remember to also remove the .service file:

# systemctl disable vmware
# rm /etc/systemd/system/vmware.service