Monday, October 01, 2012

VMware Workstation 8.0.4 installation on Ubuntu 12.04

After doing a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04, I had problems installing and running VMware Workstation 8. It was because it failed to build the network module (vmnet) during kernel modules build process. After some googling around I found a fix to patch the kernel modules of Ubuntu 12.04.
This is how it was done.

1. Download the VMware Workstation 8 from VMware site into your home folder. You will notice that the application was downloaded as a text file while using chrome.

2. So you need to change the extension to .bundle.
# sudo mv VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.4-744019.x86_64.txt VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.4-744019.x86_64.bundle

3. Next is you have to make it executable.
# sudo chmod +x VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.4-744019.x86_64.bundle

4. Next is you have to download the required patch to fix the kernel from here.

5. Now install the VMware Workstation 8.
# sudo ./VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.4-744019.x86_64.bundle

6. Unzip the patch file in your home directory.
# tar xzvf vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz

7. Check if the extracted patch file (patch-modules_3.2.0.sh) is executable, or else make it executable using the below command
# sudo chmod +x patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

8. We have to edit the script a bit to make our workstation work.

You would find the script similar to below shown screenshot

Just change the values of 'vmreqver' and 'plreqver' as shown in below screenshot.



9. Now run the script to patch the modules.
# sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

When I ran the script it tried to build the modules and the next time I ran workstation again it built them and loaded the modules successfully without any problems.

Note: If you have upgraded your vmware workstation from 8.0.3 to 8.0.4, you just need to remove the old patch-flag file and rerun the patch with necessary editing in the 'vmreqver' and 'plreqver' values' as shown earlier.
# sudo rm /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched
# sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

To uninstall VMware Workstation
# sudo vmware-installer --uninstall-product vmware-workstation

Enjoy !!!

11 comments:

  1. Thank you from Perillo (A Coruña) - Spain

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  2. Will these steps work for VM Workstation 9 as well?

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  3. Same question, will it work for Workstation 9 as well?

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  4. hi i install. now i can't launch it. its asking serial key.Can u tell how i can find serial key???

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  5. Hi
    Referring to the other post do you know how can I install the vmw8 on 3.10 kernel?
    Thanks.

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  6. apppppaaaaaaaa.......gangnum style ! :D thanks man

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  7. Hello,

    It asked me the licence key to power on my virtual workstation (winXP) although I followed all the steps above! I don't understand, can you please help?

    P.S :

    there is an error in the terminal after installing and patching vmware:

    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module": libcanberra-gtk-module.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    is this normal?

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