VMWare on Gutsy

[martianc]

Does VMWare work in Gutsy? I recently upgraded from Feisty and my virtual machines no longer boot. This is very frustrating, as you might imagine, as I need to work with Windows for my job.

The error message I get when attempting to boot a virtual machine is "Unable to change virtual machine power state: The process exited with an error: End of error message."

I just checked Synaptic, and I'm definitely using the latest version of VMWare provided in the repositories. When I start VMWare, I get a message saying that there's a new version available on the VMWare website, but I don't want to do a manual configure/install.

Any help would be great, thanks!!

[zvacet]

Try to boot in old kernel and see if it is work.Maybe that is it,because when you installed VMware you used Feisty kernel and kernel moduls,and now you have different kernel.Let somebody correct me if I´m wrong.

[Green_Star]

Yup, that is correct.

I am not longer using VMware, I moved to Virtual box.

The days when I was using VMware, when ever the kernal updates then I have to re-compile the moudles, I do not remember the process but you can google it with keywords something like this "new kernal vmware not working"

[martianc]

Thanks for the tips.

@zvacet: I'm still learning Linux, so could you give me some direction on how to boot into the old kernel?

@Green_Star: Virtual box sounds interesting. I presume it doesn't have these upgrade issues like vmware? Googling it seems like I can convert vmware images to virtual box images.

[kuja]

Very frustrating indeed I'm sure. It seems it isn't in the canonical repositories either. It seems it's not in the canonical repository, so you're best off installing from upstream. Here's what I would do (the manual install, seeing as you *need* to build the kernel modules yourself, seeing as it's also missing from the repo!!):

sudo apt-get remove --purge vmware-server
sudo rm -rf /etc/vmware

Next, download the vmware .tar.gz file from www.vmware.com/download/server/

Then

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential
sudo apt-get install xinetd
cd
tar -xf VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz
cd vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

(at least most of the defaults should be okay)

[zvacet]

When you start your comp you see grub from wich you can choose wich OS you want to run(if you have two),or wich kernel you want to run.If your grub is show just for feew seconds press esc and that willl stop it.Select kernel with lower number(2.6.20-16).

@ kuja

I don´t use Gutsy but isn´t Vmware server in synaptic?It is easyer to install it from synaptic,don´t you think.You are basicly tell him to reinstall.I don´t have expirience with Virtual box,but if it doesn´t make this kind of problem why not try it?

[dabl]

VMWare Player 2.0 (downloaded) installed flawlessly on my Kubuntu Gutsy 64-bit system. Upon inviting it to open my Player 1.5.whatever version .vmx machine, it asked if I want to "move" it and I said "yes", and VOILA it's now working perfectly -- did not need to re-install the OS or the applications that are on it. Very cool.

I know it will be less cool when the next kernel upgrade breaks it ... but I spent an evening fidding with Virtual Box and never did get it working right, so I dunno.

[fjgaude]

The same for me with 64-bit Gutsy using an old vmx file from my 32-bit Feisty. It worked perfectly after I downloaded the VMware Server from their site, unpacked, did the no-brainer install. Bravo! It's so wonderful to be able to re-use vmx folders, and not have to re-install the OS and all the apps for it.

[kuja]

@ kuja

I don´t use Gutsy but isn´t Vmware server in synaptic?It is easyer to install it from synaptic,don´t you think.You are basicly tell him to reinstall.I don´t have expirience with Virtual box,but if it doesn´t make this kind of problem why not try it?

No, it's not in the repositories for gutsy, and seeing as it requires a kernel module (which of course only works for the kernel you're using), using the feisty package won't work.

[martianc]

@kuja & @fjgaude: Tell me if I'm wrong.. but doesn't the manual install make it harder to keep the software up-to-date? I must say I love synaptic and ubuntu's auto-updating features...

re: Virtual box, I'm having some trouble getting the conversion from VMware files to Virtual box files. Maybe the upgrade to Vmware 2.0 would be simpler at this point...

I wish this were all a little easier... sigh.

Thanks for all your help thus far.