8.04 Upgrade-Vmware Stopped Working

[Daddyo-613]

I upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04 Hardy Heron and my vmware player stopped working. The o/s seems to be working fine. No problems on the conversion. I have Windows 2000 running inside a vmware player. It was working before the upgrade but now it won't load. I checked and the directory and files are still there and tried to run the .vmx file directly from its resident directory but all I get is a message on the task bar "opening *.vmx" and the wait symbol. It times out and nothing happens.

Any suggestions?

[colorcol]

the suggestion is: do not update a version to another directly!!!
had you updated from 6.06 to 7.10? it could not work too!

[Daddyo-613]

I'm not sure what the previous post was trying to tell me but in my search for solutions I found this "how to" at:

http://linhost.info/index.php/archives/166

It sounds good and I'd like to try it but I don't want to loose the data and the programs that I've been running in the old version of VMware Player.

Can anyone tell if I run the risk of losing the existing partitions and files in my old VMware Player if I install the latest VMware Player 2.03-80004.i386 and then try to configure it?

[WrathofthePenguin]

I'm not sure what the previous post was trying to tell me but in my search for solutions I found this "how to" at:

http://linhost.info/index.php/archives/166

It sounds good and I'd like to try it but I don't want to loose the data and the programs that I've been running in the old version of VMware Player.

Can anyone tell if I run the risk of losing the existing partitions and files in my old VMware Player if I install the latest VMware Player 2.03-80004.i386 and then try to configure it?

The virtual machines you had are each separate from the VMware player program itself. Usually they are located in the "/home/myusername/VMware Virtual Machines" directory unless you moved them (note - "myusername" should be changed to the username you log in with). They should not be lost, as the installation of VMware player doesn't go in and delete them. If you are really paranoid about it, you can copy them elsewhere.

A good analogy is that you don't lose all your Microsoft Word <Shudders> documents when you install a new version of Word in XP <Shudders and wails>.

[Daddyo-613]

Thanks to WrathofthePenguin. I was able to locate the directory that contained my critical files in VMware format and backed them up. I then followed the instructions on the web page above:

http://linhost.info/index.php/archives/166

and everything worked fine. My files inside VM were intact and life is good. I didn't have to resort to my backups. You were right, but even "paranoids have real enemies" :)

To all others who may read this...always backup first!

Thanks again.

[pppluka]

Greetings.

I also confirm, that solution at:

http://linhost.info/index.php/archives/166

works fine and well!

[Daddyo-613]

Greetings.

I also confirm, that solution at:

http://linhost.info/index.php/archives/166

works fine and well!
I came back to this thread to find the url for the howto. The host web site has changed the location of the posting so I thought it might be helpful to add the text of the howto here. The date of the posting is listed. Allways check for a newer version of the tar.gz. In fact as of the date of this reply VMWare Player 2.0.4, Build 93057 is available since 5/29/2008


June 5, 20080
Install VMware Server 1.0.6 in Ubuntu 8.04

VMware Server 1.0.6 will not work out of the box with Ubuntu 8.04, in this how-to I will use the normal installation procedure but with a few tweaks at the end to make it work with Ubuntu 8.04.

Download VMware server, I prefer to download the tar.gz for Linux or you can use wget.

wget -c http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.6-91891.tar.gz

Then request your serial number by completing the form, the serial number is required during the installation.

http://register.vmware.com/content/registration.html

Install the development tools needed to complete the installation.

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-devel linux-headers-generic xinetd

Untar the archive, the version may vary.

tar xf VMware-server-1.0.6-91891.tar.gz

Move in to the recently created directory named “vmware-server-distrib”.

cd vmware-server-distrib

Use sudo to invoke the installer and complete the installation like always.

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Now if you try to run VMware Server it will either give you error messages or not start all, the solution is to bring in the cairo libraries and gcc redirect by means of a simlink.

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.2.3/libgcc_s.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0

Now VMware Server should be able to start without a problem, if it helps you let me know.

Note*
After moving from VMware Player to VMware Server I noticed the following error when trying to run some of my virtual machines.

Unable to add virtual machine “/home/ls354/VM/xp/Clone of Windows XP Home Edition.VMX” to the inventory: Configuration file was created by a VMware product with more features than this version

I will have a fix in my next post, which is http://linhost.info/?p=92"


I hope the article will be of some help to you. TTFN