Arch Linux User Repository

After the first installation, please:

1) install the appropriate headers package(s) for your installed kernel(s): linux-headers for default kernel, linux-lts-headers for LTS kernel...

2) reboot or load vmw_vmci and vmmon kernel modules (modprobe -a vmw_vmci vmmon)

3) Enable the services you need (using .service units to activate them during boot or .path units to activate them when a VM is started) :

• vmware-networks: to have network access inside VMs

• vmware-usbarbitrator: to connect USB devices inside VMs

@ridge Thanks for the time passed to investigate! I totally forgot that I have already seen this problem during the upgrade to VMware 16 and this time I didn't take the time to test the behavior of the program without license key.

Now the package is "fixed" with the change in /etc/vmware/config (it may need a manual intervention if the file has been changed by the user, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Pacnew_and_Pacsave).

Hi @jihem I'm having the same issue, hopefully this can be of help. The command "vmplayer" opens Workstation and asks me if I want to use the 30-day trial, if I accepted that it asks for my root password, which I somewhat reluctantly hand over (but hey, science) and it opens VMWare Player after that. It goes through that same process every time, but VMWare Player does work once I get past that.

• MD5 sum: e5235e47a5f05af75b68aef9e05e08bd /usr/bin/vmplayer
• Contents of /etc/vmware/config: https://www.klgrth.io/paste/t3q6b
• Launching /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmplayer gives me the same Workstation trial path as simply typing "vmplayer" in a terminal does

Edit: Changing "VMWare Workstation" in /etc/vmware/config to be "VMWare Player" works for me o_O

@lfom No idea, it works for me. To help me investigate, can you give me:

• the result of the command md5sum $(which vmplayer)
• the content of the file /etc/vmware/config
• check if /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmplayer starts workstation or player

Hello, there! Thanks for creating and maintaining the AUR package for VMWare. But for some reason, I cannot start vmplayer anymore, it always launches workstation instead. Launching from the terminal shows no error. I tried to remove the package and install again, same problem. Any idea about what is going on? Thanks again.

@normalalkene

I use Wayland, and my kernel models load. Try using ibt=off on the kernel command to see if they compile if using hybrid graphics.

@NormalAlkene I don't use Wayland and I don't know how well VMware supports it, but I am sure this is not related to your problem.

I don't know why the command never returns, I never had this kind of problem. If you use a custom kernel, you can try to install the official linux/linux-headers packages instead and see if that fixes it. You can also simply check if the VMware upgrade (version 17.0.0) fixes it.

The command modprobe -a vmw_vmci vmmon still does not return after hours of wait. And there are no outputs.

Does it have anything to do with Wayland and Sway?

@jihem Thanks. I haven't poked at it, I was hoping the .bundle was like others I've seen (essentially a shell script with a huge binary blob at the end), but that maybe allowed to configure the tmpdir via an env var or an argument.

Both workarounds you describe are better than remounting /tmp , thanks.

The use of the /tmp/vmis.* directory is "hardcoded" inside the .bundle file, when calling mktemp binary. One workaround is to modify the bundle to use another directory instead, for example with the following command line, before starting makepkg (of course, the checksum of this file will become wrong):

sed -i -e "s|mktemp -d /tmp/vmis.XXXXXX|mktemp -d ~/AUR/vmware-workstation/tmp/vmis.XXXXXX|" VMware-Workstation-Full-*.x86_64.bundle

Another workaround is to create a new mktemp binary, for example in /usr/local/bin (to take precedence over /usr/bin/mktemp), with the following content:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/mktemp -d ~/AUR/vmware-workstation/vmis.XXXXXX

But this binary should be created only during the build of this package.

Unfortunately, I do not see any way to automate this work in the PKGBUILD (except by copying the bundle before patching it, but I prefer avoiding to copy a file of 500MB during the build process).

Thanks for packaging this. Having issues with 16.2.4 when the bundle extracts stuff to /tmp and tries to execute :

~/AUR/vmware-workstation/VMware-Workstation-Full-16.2.4-20089737.x86_64.bundle: line 288: /tmp/vmis.pgU4Bl/install/vmware-installer/vmware-installer: Permission denied

This is of course because /tmp is noexec, as generally recommended.

Any ideas for a workaround, besides remounting /tmp ?