Installing VMware Player

on Ubuntu 10.04 and above

1. Install required packages build-essential and linux-headers:
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

2. Download the latest VMware player e.g. VMware-Player-6.0.21744117.x86_64.bundle (download the bundle version, not the rpm one) and run it as
root using gksudo. You'll get a graphical installer that installs VMware player for you.
gksudo bash ~/Downloads/VMware-Player-6.0.2-1744117.x86_64.bundle

Note: this assumes the location of your Downloads folder is /home/$USER/Downloads. *If
nothing appears, you may need to make the file executable. You can do so with this command:
chmod +x ~/Downloads/VMware-Player-6.0.2-1744117.x86_64.bundle

(again, with the assumption of your Downloads folder location). After completion, VMware
player is installed and should show up in the menu under Applications System Tools
VMware Player (for Unity users, it should come up in the search results for vmware player).
As well, you may notice that when trying to create a new virtual machine, vmware player will
complain on the terminal output(if it was started from the terminal as vmplayer) that:
VMware Player is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured for
your running kernel. To (re-)configure it, your system administrator must find
and run "vmware-config.pl". For more information, please see the VMware Player
documentation.

is not present anymore in the latest vmware-player versions (seems to have

been superseded by vmware-modconfig). If you have this problem you may instead need to
check if you have a /etc/vmware/not_configured file and, if so, delete it.
vmware-config.pl

Installing VMware Player on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

1. Install required packages build-essential, linux-kernel-headers and linux-kernel-devel
sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-headers linux-kerneldevel

2. Download the latest VMware player e.g. VMware-Player-2.5.1-126130.i386.bundle

(download the bundle version, not the rpm one) and run it as root using gksudo. You'll get
a graphical installer that installs VMware player for you.

gksudo bash ./VMware-Player-2.5.1-126130.i386.bundle

If nothing appears, you may need to make the file executable. You can do so with this
command:
chmod +x ./VMware-Player-2.5.1-126130.i386.bundle

After completion, VMware player is installed and should show up in the menu under
Applications System Tools VMware Player.

Uninstalling VMware Player

Uninstalling on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS via GUI
1. Run the following command to get to the graphical installer:
gksudo bash ./VMware-Player-2.5.1-126130.i386.bundle

The graphical installer will automatically uninstall VMware Player. NOTE: It doesn't
look like this approach works on the newest version of VMware Player i.e. 3.0. I
personally am not able to uninstall this latest version using this method but it does work
on earlier versions. Great, I just found this working solution:
sudo vmware-installer -u vmware-player

2. When the uninstall process is finished, the graphical installer will present the
option to re-install VMware Player. Just press the Cancel button to quit the
graphical installer and the VMware Player uninstall process is done.

Manually uninstalling VMware Workstation from Linux

hosts
1. If you try uninstalling using half baked advice like I did you may be stuck but here is the
really manual way of uninstalling. This article provides steps for manually removing
VMware Workstation when the uninstaller script or RPM package fails to remove the
product automatically. So, first Log on to the host as the root account to execute the
Terminal commands in this article. If running Ubuntu, the root account is not available by
default. Prepend all commands with sudo or switch to the root using the command:
sudo su -

This command provides unrestricted access to the operating system. It is possible to

cause damage to the system when using this access level. Open a command prompt. For
more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892). Type the
commands as indicated in the following steps.

2. Shutdown all VMware applications and services.

/etc/init.d/vmware stop

3. Verify that all processes have stopped:

lsmod | grep vm

Note: A zero must be listed beside VMware related modules to indicate that
they are no longer running.

4. Move the VMware libraries to the /tmp directory:

5. cd /lib/modules/<kernel_version>/misc
mv vm* /tmp

Note: If the kernel has ever been updated you must check and move the files
from multiple paths. Substitute the kernel version where indicated above.

6. Unload the kernel modules:

7. rmmod vmnet.o
8. rmmod vmmon.o
9. rmmod vmci.o
10. rmmod vmblock.o
rmmod vmppuser.o

11. Remove the VMware startup scripts. RedHat and Most Distributions:
12. rm /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc2.d/*vmware
13. rm /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc3.d/*vmware
14. rm /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc5.d/*vmware
rm /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc6.d/*vmware

Ubuntu:
rm
rm
rm
rm

/etc/rc2.d/*vmware
/etc/rc3.d/*vmware
/etc/rc5.d/*vmware
/etc/rc6.d/*vmware

Note: If you are using a different Linux distribution, substitute the correct
path in above commands.

15. Remove the remaining VMware files and directories:

16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.

rm -rf /etc/vmware*
rm /usr/bin/vmware*
rm /usr/bin/vmnet*
rm -r /usr/lib/vmware-installer
rm -r /usr/lib/vmware-vix
rm -r /usr/lib/vmware
rm -r /usr/share/doc/vmware

22. If an RPM package was used to install the VMware product, complete these steps to
delete the RPM database entry:
rpm -qa | grep VMware

A list of VMware packages is presented. Copy the exact package name for the
next step and paste it into the command where indicated.

23. Remove the VMware packages:

rpm --erase --nodeps <VMware_Package_Name>

Creating other images

To create your own blank images - perhaps with more RAM, or to install a different OS,
visit http://www.easyvmx.com. Choose the OS you want to run, an amount of RAM, and
save and unzip the resulting zip file provided by the website. Then pop the CD for the OS
you'd like to install in your CD drive. You may also be interested a selection of images at
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/.

Improving Performance
1. You can improve performance by using the VMware/Tools.
2. Download the latest VMware Workstation for Linux from
http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/ and extract the windows.iso file containing the
VMware tools.
3. Edit your .vmx file pointing the CD-ROM to the windows.iso, start the OS, and an
automated setup will guide you inside windows.

Installing Ubuntu inside VMware Player on a

non-Ubuntu OS

Have you been thinking about running Ubuntu, but are afraid to take the "plunge"? Fear
not, for you can use Ubuntu without installing it and without even rebooting! You can
either use a VMWare appliance, or use an install .iso file with the "Create a New Virtual
Machine" option of VMware Player (at least, in version 3.0.0). Like any other VMware
Player appliance, Ubuntu appliances are just a couple of files on your PC. All of your
Ubuntu software will be contained within these files and not on your PC. It is possible to
copy files to your PC or to save them to your PC from a program running under the
appliance, but you must specifically do so. For more information on using a VMware

appliance, please consult VMware's documentation at

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/player_pubs.html.

Downloading an Official Ubuntu "Appliance" to use Ubuntu

as a virtual machine on a non-Ubuntu OS

Official Ubuntu VMware Player appliances are available for download. They are not very
well documented in the download page, but are available on Ubuntu's ISV-Image server:
http://isv-image.ubuntu.com/vmware/. The Ubuntu 8.04 appliance is available from
VMware's appliance site. You will, of course, need to have VMware Player installed to
run the appliance. Once you've downloaded the (compressed) Ubuntu appliances, unzip
them using the unzip software of your choice, double-click and enjoy! Please note that,
as mentioned above, all of the files you save under the Ubuntu appliance and not on your
PC will be contained within the appliance and will go away if you delete the appliance!

Using an .iso file with the "Create a New

Virtual Machine" option of VMWare
Player

(This has only been tested with VMware Player 3.0.0, but probably works with
other versions.) If you have an Ubuntu .iso file (the file that you use to make
an Ubuntu install disk), you can make a new Ubuntu Virtual Machine with the
free (in cost) VMware Player. When VMWare opens, just use the "Create a
New Virtual Machine" option on the first screen. When VMware asks for the
.iso file, browse to the .iso file you downloaded from the Ubuntu download
page. VMware asks for some other information and then happily hums away
installing the program. It's not entirely the same as installing Ubuntu from a
CD, but it's free (in cost) and it works to get an Ubuntu VM on your windows
machine! (I used an install option called "Easy Install". It let me type in full
name, username, password, desired maximum hard-drive size, and then it
automatically filled out the forms in the install process. I do not remember
how I selected "Easy Install," perhaps it is the only choice for "Create a New
Virtual Machine". But it prints "Easy Install is installing Ubuntu" on the bottom
of the screen while it is working).

Enabling sharing between (Non-Ubuntu) host

and (Ubuntu) guest OS

After following the instructions in VMWare to set up a new Shared folder, I needed to
run:
sudo vmware-config-tools.pl

If you are having trouble getting it to work, try this. (In my case, it was necessary to run
this to install the kernel module vmhgfs).
Source: http://www.laotudou.com/vmware-player-share-folder.html.

Troubleshooting

If Ubuntu hangs when trying to suspend, try adding the following to

/etc/pm/config.d/unload_modules:
SUSPEND_MODULES="$SUSPEND_MODULES vboxdrv vboxnetflt vboxnetadp vboxpci
"

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013 After updating and installing security updates on
raring ringtail, vmplayer launched the "vmware kernel module update" and
hung there waiting. To fix this:
sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

vmplayer will start normally after this fix.

* = really important