vmware not present in gutsy

[Oscar]

In feisty there was both vmware player and vmware server if you enabled the "commercial" repos. After upgrading to gutsy my vmware machines didn't function anymore. I tried removing the vmware -server to be able to reinstall it, just to find out that vmware-server don't exist for gutsy, nor is there a vmware-player anywhere to be found. My vmware-machines are now more or less just wasted space on my disk.

Will there be a vmware-server for gutsy and if so, when?

[Yan Li (yanli)]

Yes, same problem for me. I used vmware-server in Feisty on all machines. Hope it would be in Gutsy soon.

[Oscar (osh-nbit)]

Since we're atleast two that has seen this I'll confirm the bugreport.

[jon (jonathan-w-mcmanus)]

I've had the same issue, I ran the upgrade at 22:30 UK time on the 21st of Oct 07

[Oscar (osh-nbit)]

I just noticed that the tone in the original bugreport is slightly agressive. This wasn't the intention and I hope that noone is offended by it. I do appreciate all the hard work that everyone is doing and I am thankful for it.

[SilverWave (silverwave)]

Yes no equivalent to "http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu feisty-commercial main".
e.g. no "http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu gusty-commercial main".

feedback would be appreciated.

[Matt Adams (frak10)]

The repos were changed to
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu gutsy partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu gutsy partner

[Darik Horn (dajhorn)]

Note that Canonical partner repo for Gutsy does not contain the VMware Server packages.

However, the upstream VMware Server 1.0.4 tarball installs properly on Ubuntu Gutsy, but it is not managed by the packaging system, so you'll need to run the vmware-config.pl script manually after each kernel upgrade.

[SilverWave (silverwave)]

"VMware Server 1.0.4 tarball installs properly on Ubuntu Gutsy"

Confirmed - Thanks for the information :)

Download VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz from www.vmware.com/download/server/
Then issue these commands:
aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential
aptitude install xinetd
cd /home/YOU/MyDownloads
tar -vxzf VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz
cd /home/YOU/MyDownloads/vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

defaults are ok.

[Veloce (kerry-mayes)]

Note that you need to uninstall the "feisty" version of vmware server before installing the tarball version.

Unfortunately, synaptic doesn't remove everything - which prevents you from installing the new version.

I had to delete the /etc/vmware directory to allow the new version to install. This meant I needed to supply the license again.

[MankyGitt (dnadruff)]

I too would like to add that I feel this is an important omission in Gutsy.

In order to move closer to defeating BUG #1 we need to be able to convince the market that they can viably do away with a windows boot up. Part of that journey is to take users on the comfortable journey where they still have access to that old familiar OS until they realise they don't need it. - Virtualisation is one option, dual booting is another.

Having upgraded and tested all other features I had made the important decision to do away with a dual-boot configuration where Windows still played a major role. This is an important step, as it helps me demonstrate to the Australian Local Government market that Linux for the desktop is ready.
Sadly, I still need to run some things under a windows environment, but now happy to do this as a VM environment.

Of course, today is the day I started with the VMConverter process to turn the windows partition into a VM - only to discover that the upgrade had KO'd the VMPlayer. .. one thing lead to another which lead me here...

Of course an open VM solution that is well supported would be preferred, but I've not found any that offer the ability to convert a Windows desktop to a VM - they all start with ".. .and now install windows..." This is not an option where laptops are supplied to the company "pre-imaged" from the manufacturer.

"VirtualBox.org" do not appear to have a conversion process, and I've not found any other option that appears to be more than "proof-of-concept-ware"

Any suggestions would be received gratefully.

[Florian Jensen (florian.jensen)]

Yeah, it would be nice if vmware-server would be in the repos. It's really missing.

[Ricardo Romão (ricardo-romao)]

Same problem, without the vmware-server-kernel-modules is impossible run VmWare Server

[MankyGitt (dnadruff)]

You can run VMWare Server in Gutsy if you download and manually install it.
There is some information in various forums about what worked for different people.

I can verify that if you have upgraded from Feisty where you already had VMWare Server installed and configured, the manual installation process described at
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/09/26/how-to-install-vmware-server-on-ubuntu-710/
works just fine.

However when trying the same process on a brand new cleanskin machine with a fresh Ubuntu 7.10 installation I found that there were extra steps required.
After installation, when you try to run VMWare Server and start a VM, you will get errors such as: "Unable to change virtual machine power state: The process exited with an error: End of error message.". You will also get Version Missing error messages when starting the server via the terminal console.

I found that this occurred regardless of the nature of the VM - I created new VMs designed to boot off the live CD, and WIndows VMs and the errors were the same. Many forums reported that the problem was specific to Windows VMs, but none of the Authors mentioned whether they had tried to power on alternative VMs to test the problem.

Problem 1: Console Error:
===================
Occurs when launching vmware from terminal: >vmware or >sudo vmware
Symptom:
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)

This appears to be a bug in the VMWare installer process.

Solution(s)
========
Solved by the following commands:
>sudo cp /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/
       - OR -
better still, create a link to the file
>sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/ (please check before running this!! - My memory aint so grand)

Problem 2: Permissions Error - Unable to change virtual machine power state...
==========================================================
Occurs when attempting to power on ANY VM

Symptom:
========
Dialog appears: "Unable to change virtual machine power state: The process exited with an error: End of error message."

Solution
======
This thread provides some steps and clues
http://communities.vmware.com/message/696730#696730
I found that my installation problem was solved by setting permissions on /home/<user>/.vmware directory and contents to allow the current user to have read-write permissions. Being somewhat a recent user of linux systems, I'm still a bit on my console commands for things like CHMOD and CHOWN, so I fell back to the GUI:
>gksudo nautilus
will enable you to run the file browser as super-user and set permissions (sometimes). Perhaps someone else will supply an appropriate console command to achieve the desired result.