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

After messing with it, it seems the previous version of this package works with the latest 6.9.10-zen1-1 kernel, but upgrading vmware to the latest 17.5.2-2 version makes vmware crash:

[  +7.225343] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000
[  +0.000004] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
[  +0.000002] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
[  +0.000001] PGD 0 P4D 0 
[  +0.000003] Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI
[snip]
[  +0.000001] RIP: 0010:VNetBridgeReceiveFromVNet+0x136/0x3f0 [vmnet]

Same as max.bra. Those tips didn't help, but I appreciate it. I'm going to roll back my vmware.

I am running on [testing] and after todays upgrade, i can no longer use any VM with GUI, no matter if 3D Acceleration is enabled or not.

Starting Windows 11 works up until the second he starts the GUI. It just freezes the exact moment before the login manager should show up :( (the whole VM, nothing works anymore, not even stopping. I have to kill vmware-vmx to get rid of it).

hi all and thanks to maintainer:
nope, with 6.9.10 that patch seems to be not so good:

[   84.752212] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000
[   84.752216] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
[   84.752218] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
[   84.752219] PGD 0 P4D 0
[   84.752221] Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI
[   84.752226] RIP: 0010:VNetBridgeReceiveFromVNet+0xf2/0x390 [vmnet]

edit: 6.9.10
edit 2: reverting to 17.5.2-1 all is fine

forgot: standard arch kernel here

side note on 17.5.2-1 to: the vmware gui is anyway a bit freezy, there is lag and sometimes it's difficult to switch from a vm to another. only me?

I've applied a new patch that fixes network configuration problems on Linux 6.9. Everything seems to work fine on Linux 6.10 too.

look https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/vmware-host-modules-dkms-git

Hello Julian,

This is an upstream issue. VMware used to provide a separate free server package for Linux and Windows. But at the same time they started to develop dedicated cloud solutions, they had integrated the server package into VMware Workstation, hence discontinued a separate free server product. But after a while they completely discontinued and stopped shipping it, even inside a VMware Workstation, advising users to consider some of their cloud solutions.

While it's a completely marketing policy decision, because VMware LLC, like any private software company, tries to maximise profits from their proprietary technologies. And it will be hard for them to justify dedicated cloud project price tags while still shipping the free server product. But these server technologies aren't discontinued, they just continue to evolve in other projects.

Hello, thank you very much for providing this package. I was trying to follow this part of the guide https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VMware#systemd_services but I got stuck in finding out the server binaries are no more there. May I ask what happened to them? I saw you had them included until workstation 15 and then eventually disappeared in 16 and now 17. Is there any plan on bringing them back? Thank you in advance.

@BryanLiang Yes, I have the same problem and it's not specific to this package: see https://github.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules/issues/253 and last comments of https://github.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules/issues/239.

VMware Workstation is still not fully compatible with Linux 6.9, if you need to change your network configuration I suggest to switch on linux-lts.

@ihipop Yes, I have read the instruction. If you go to check the vmware-networks.service, you will find that the service wants vmware-networks-configuration.service, which will run the configuration service first.

And I also tried stopping the services, deleting the configuration files generated before, and followed the instructions. But that was still not working for me.