VMware
Related articles
This article is about installing VMware in Arch Linux; you may also be interested in Installing Arch Linux in VMware.
Contents
- 1 Installation
- 2 Configuration
- 3 Launching the application
- 4 Tips and tricks
-
5 Troubleshooting
- 5.1 /dev/vmmon not found
- 5.2 Kernel headers for version 3.x-xxxx were not found. If you installed them[...]
- 5.3 USB devices not recognized
- 5.4 The installer fails to start
- 5.5 Incorrect login/password when trying to access VMware remotely
- 5.6 Issues with ALSA output
- 5.7 Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is running
- 5.8 Guests have incorrect system clocks or are unable to boot: "[...]timeTracker_user.c:234 bugNr=148722"
- 6 Uninstallation
Installation
1. Install the correct dependencies:
-
fuse - the
vmware-vmblock-fuse
service is favored over thevmblock
module, which is not built anymore without disabling fuse in the kernel - gtkmm - for the GUI
- linux-headers - for module compilation
2. Download the latest VMware Workstation or VMware Player (Pro) (or a beta version, if available).
3. Start the installation (--eulas-agreed
skips the EULAs):
# sh VMware-edition-version.release.architecture.bundle --eulas-agreed
4. For the System service scripts directory
, use /etc/init.d
(the default).
Configuration
VMware Workstation 11.0.0 and Player (Pro) 7.0.0 support kernels up to 3.18.
3.19 kernels
Since 3.19 kernel the vmnet
module will fail to build.
A patch is available at [1]:
$ curl http://pastie.org/pastes/9934018/download -o /tmp/vmnet-3.19.patch
Extract the vmnet
module sources:
$ cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source # tar -xf vmnet.tar
Apply the patch:
# patch -p0 -i /tmp/vmnet-3.19.patch
Recreate the archive:
# tar -cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
Remove leftover:
# rm -r *-only
Rebuild modules:
# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all
systemd services
6. (Optional) Instead of using /etc/init.d/vmware
and /etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator
(start|stop|status|restart
) directly to manage the services, you may also use .service
files:
/etc/systemd/system/vmware.service
[Unit] Description=VMware daemon Requires=vmware-USBArbitrator.service After=vmware-USBArbitrator.service [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
/etc/systemd/system/vmware-USBArbitrator.service
[Unit] Description=VMware USB Arbitrator [Service] ExecStart=/etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator start ExecStop=/etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator stop RemainAfterExit=yes [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
After which you can enable them on boot, with:
# systemctl enable vmware # systemctl enable vmware-USBArbitrator
Launching the application
To open VMware Workstation:
$ vmware
or VMware Player (Pro):
$ vmplayer
Tips and 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.
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
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"
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 official repositories.
Then create a source directory for the Makefile
and the dkms.conf
:
# mkdir /usr/src/vmware-modules-11/
Build configuration
Fetch the files with git or use the ones below.
1) Using Git
$ cd /tmp $ git clone git://github.com/bawaaaaah/dkms-workstation.git $ sed -i 's/9/11/' dkms-workstation/dkms.conf # cp dkms-workstation/Makefile dkms-workstation/dkms.conf /usr/src/vmware-modules-11/
2) Manual setup
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-11/dkms.conf
PACKAGE_NAME="vmware-modules" PACKAGE_VERSION="11" 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-11/Makefile
KERNEL := $(KERNELRELEASE) HEADERS := /usr/lib/modules/$(KERNEL)/build/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 $(HEADERS)/linux/version.h: ln -s $(HEADERS)/generated/uapi/linux/version.h $(HEADERS)/linux/version.h %.ko: $(HEADERS)/linux/version.h vmware-modconfig --console --build-mod -k $(KERNEL) $* $(GCC) $(HEADERS) vmware/ cp -f $(DEST)/$@ . clean: rm -rf modules/
Installation
The modules can then be installed with:
# dkms install vmware-modules/11 -k $(uname -r)
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
VMware service is not running. If using the systemd service from step 6. it should be (re)started.
Kernel headers for version 3.x-xxxx were not found. If you installed them[...]
Install the headers (linux-headers).
USB devices not recognized
If VMware services are running (see step 6. for a systemd service), your installation is 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/
:
$ sh VMware-edition-version.release.architecture.bundle --extract /tmp/vmware-bundle/ # cp /tmp/vmware-bundle/vmware-usbarbitrator/etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator /etc/init.d/ # chmod +x /etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator
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/
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
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.
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 vmware
service:
# systemctl disable vmware # rm /usr/lib/systemd/system/vmware.service
You may also want to have a look at the module directories in /usr/lib/modules/kernel_name/misc/
for any leftovers.