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

I got an error while installing: error: could not extract /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/VirtualPrinter-Windows.iso (Truncated zstd input)

What can be wrong?

No idea why gorgiaxx didn't have the libdir variable set, but I can confirm that AUR packages are generating .pacnew files; actually AUR packages work exactly like official packages, the only difference is that they are not built and distributed by official maintainers.

@class101 To explain my choices, I finally didn't use the PathModified variable because it triggers not only file creation, but also file deletion and modification. During some tests, on one moment I wanted to "reset" my environment by stopping VMware services and removing /run/vmware directory; I realized that removing this directory restarted VMware services, which was clearly not the expected behavior. I know it's not a big deal because probably nobody will touch this directory in real conditions, but I find the PathExistsGlob solution more adapted: when a directory of this pattern is created, I am sure that it correspond to the start of a VM. Also, if a VMware service is stopped whereas at least one VM is still running, the corresponding directory still exists so the service is restarted immediately.

I admit I haven't thought about the performance cost of using regular expressions, but in my opinion it is not significant (systemd probably check a filename matching only when there is a change in /var/run/vmware folder, which happen only when a VM is started or stopped).

About services handling, I just follow what is generally made by maintainers which is to not start services by default (except for some core components). It's especially relevant here because these services are not required for VM execution and some users could want to let them disabled. As you said in a previous message: "It is a good practice under Linux to have the fewest permanent services running" :)

@gorgiaxx

If you look at the sources, this is already the case https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/config?h=vmware-workstation

I think you have old configuration in /etc/vmware/config and/or maybe a configuration update waiting in /etc/vmware/config.pacnew (not sure if AUR packages are generating .pacnew files, but but these files are good to watch every now and then as they may contain important updates)

@jihem Ty for sharing this idea with others, cool from you ;)

But I haven't used your implementation yet, I doubt that PathExistsGlob= is necessary over PathModified=. The *Glob variable has its own variable name because it make uses of regular expressions, and they have a performance cost over regular methods.

If it was up to me I would have not used PathExistsGlob if there is no specific reasons to use over the regular method.

But that's just different way of thinking anyway, not a big deal, I see you prefer to let the user to handle all the servicing stuff, while for me this is to the package responsability to install and remove the necessary files, I would hate to uninstall a systemd package that would leave behind a whole bunch of installed service, same rule for vmware, Arch Way :s

VMware workstation 16 start failed after install.

2021-06-24T14:28:00.148+08:00| appLoader| I005: Log for appLoader pid=10417 version=16.1.2 build=build-17966106 option=Release
2021-06-24T14:28:00.148+08:00| appLoader| I005: The host is 64-bit.
2021-06-24T14:28:00.148+08:00| appLoader| I005: Host codepage=UTF-8 encoding=UTF-8
2021-06-24T14:28:00.148+08:00| appLoader| I005: Host is Linux 5.12.12-arch1-1 Arch Linux
2021-06-24T14:28:00.177+08:00| appLoader| I005: Invocation: "/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware
2021-06-24T14:28:00.177+08:00| appLoader| I005: "
2021-06-24T14:28:00.177+08:00| appLoader| I005: Calling: "/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware
2021-06-24T14:28:00.177+08:00| appLoader| I005: "
2021-06-24T14:28:00.177+08:00| appLoader| I005: VMDEVEL not set.
2021-06-24T14:28:00.177+08:00| appLoader| I005: Using configuration file: /etc/vmware/config
2021-06-24T14:28:00.178+08:00| appLoader| E002: The "libdir" entry was not present in configuration file.
2021-06-24T14:28:00.178+08:00| appLoader| I005: Use library directory: (null)

Append this line to the vmware configuration file.

echo 'libdir = "/usr/lib/vmware"' >> /etc/vmware/config

Thank you jihem.

You simply need to do systemctl disable --now vmware-networks.service && systemctl enable --now vmware-networks.path. After that the service will be launched only when a VM is started. Unfortunately it is not a perfect solution because the service won't be stopped when the VM is shutdown.

would someone care to explain how do i implement this new .path units solution? when i first installed vmware,i ran systemctl enable vmware-networks.service and now i can see i have vmnet processes running even though Vmware is closed. so how can i have them start only when a vm is launched?

@idanyadgar I've tested with the official VMware installer on Fedora 34, same problem (with similar logs). Probably a new library version that break something. I won't investigate more time because it's not a packaging problem, but if you find a workaround I can try to implement it.

@class101 Thanks, it's implemented, juste a little bit differently.

I still let the possibility to launch services at boot time (and of course, to keep them completely disabled, because I totally agree with crdx).

@class101, Great response.