VMware

Related articles
Category:Hypervisors
/Install Arch Linux as a guest
Moving an existing install into (or out of) a virtual machine
This article is about the latest major
VMware
versions, meaning
VMware Workstation
Pro and Player 17, 16, 15, 14 and 12.5.
You may also be interested in
/Install Arch Linux as a guest
.
Installation
Note
VMware has dropped support for a number of CPUs including early Intel Core i7 CPUs since version 14. Check the
Processor Requirements for Host Systems
and make sure that a virtualization technology for your CPU (AMD-V or VT-x) is enabled in your BIOS/UEFI firmware. If your CPU is not supported in the newer releases then you can use
vmware-workstation12
AUR
.
Install
the
vmware-workstation
AUR
package.
It is also necessary to install the appropriate headers package(s) for your installed kernel(s): for example
linux-headers
or
linux-lts-headers
.
Start
vmware-networks-configuration.service
first to generate
/etc/vmware/networking
.
Then, as desired, enable some of the following services:
vmware-networks.service
for guest network access (otherwise you will get an error
could no connect 'ethernet 0' to virtual network
and you will not be able to use
vmware-netcfg
)
vmware-usbarbitrator.service
for connecting USB devices to guest
vmware-hostd.service
for sharing virtual machines (not available since version 16)
Lastly, load the VMware modules:
# modprobe -a vmw_vmci vmmon
If it loads for too long without response, try
#Cannot load module vmmon
.
Usage
To open VMware Workstation Pro:
$ vmware
or Player:
$ vmplayer
Tips and tricks
Entering the Workstation Pro license key
From terminal
# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx-debug --new-sn XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
Where
XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
is your license key.
Note
The
-debug
binary informs the user of an incorrect license.
From GUI
If the above does not work, you can try:
# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-enter-serial
Extracting the VMware BIOS
$ objcopy /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -O binary -j bios440 --set-section-flags bios440=a bios440.rom.Z
$ perl -e 'use Compress::Zlib; my $v; read STDIN, $v, '$(stat -c%s "./bios440.rom.Z")'; $v = uncompress($v); print $v;' < bios440.rom.Z > bios440.rom
Extracting the installer
To view the contents of the installer
.bundle
:
$ sh VMware-
edition
-
version
.
release
.
architecture
.bundle --extract
/tmp/vmware-bundle/
Using the modified BIOS
If and when you decide to modify the extracted BIOS you can make your virtual machine use it by moving it to
~/vmware/
Virtual_machine_name
:
$ mv bios440.rom ~/vmware/
Virtual_machine_name
/
then adding the name to the
Virtual_machine_name
.vmx
file:
~/vmware/
Virtual_machine_name
/
Virtual_machine_name
.vmx
bios440.filename = "bios440.rom"
Enable 3D graphics on Intel, Optimus and AMD
Some graphics drivers are blacklisted by default, due to poor and/or unstable 3D acceleration. After enabling
Accelerate 3D graphics
, the log may show something like:
Disabling 3D on this host due to presence of Mesa DRI driver.  Set mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers = TRUE to override.
The configuration file where you can set this setting is
~/.vmware/preferences
.
VMware Workstation 16.2 switched from OpenGL to Vulkan, so the setting is a bit different. If your driver is unsupported, you might see a message like this in the log:
mks Vulkan Renderer: Only the AMDVLK driver is supported at this time.
mks Vulkan Renderer: No supported Vulkan device/driver found (See mks.vk.allowUnsupportedDevices or mks.vk.forceDevice configuration options).
If your Vulkan driver is blacklisted, you might have to add
mks.vk.allowUnsupportedDevices = "TRUE"
to
~/.vmware/preferences
or switch to a supported driver - check
vmware.log
in the VM's directory if unsure.
Note
You might need to add the
mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers = "TRUE"
inside the
.vmx
file for the specific virtual machine as well, for 3D acceleration with
intel
drivers to be enabled.
When using Vulkan with multiple graphics adapters (GPUs) a specific device can be chosen by examining
mksSandbox.log
to retrieve the correct adapter string then placing it into the VM's
.vmx
file.  Example from
mksSandbox.log
:
mks Vulkan Renderer: Name: 'AMD Radeon RX 570 Series (RADV POLARIS10)'
Then to the VM's
.vmx
file we would add:
mks.vk.ForceDevice = "AMD Radeon RX 570 Series (RADV POLARIS10)"
Suspend virtual machines before host suspend/hibernate
Create an
executable
file:
/usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/vmware_suspend_all.sh
#!/bin/bash

set -eu

if [[ $# -ne 2 ]]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <period> <action>"
    exit 1
fi

period=$1
action=$2

echo "vmware system-sleep hook argv: ${period} ${action}"

if ! command -v vmrun &>/dev/null; then
    echo "command not found: vmrun"
fi

if [[ "${period}" = "pre" ]]; then
    readarray -t vms < <(vmrun list | tail -n +2)

    echo "Number of running VMs: ${#vms[@]}"

    if [[ ${#vms[@]} -eq 0 ]]; then
        exit
    fi

    for vm in "${vms[@]}"; do
        echo -n "Suspending ${vm}... "
        vmrun suspend "${vm}"
        echo "done"
    done

    sleep 1
else
    echo "Nothing to do"
fi
See also
Power management/Suspend and hibernate#Hooks in /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep
,
suspend all virtual machines with vmrun
and
Support for hibernation
.
System speedup tricks
See also
Improving performance
.
Disable transparent hugepages
This article or section is a candidate for merging with
Improving performance
.
Notes:
Not specific to VMware. (Discuss in
Talk:VMware
)
If you notice the guest and/or the host frequently freezing when running a VM, you may want to disable transparent hugepages. To disable them for the current session, run (on the host):
# echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
To make the change persistent across boots, add the
kernel parameter
transparent_hugepage=never
.
You can also use
madvise
instead of
never
to still allow applications that are optimized for transparent hugepages to obtain the performance benefits
[1]
. This does the same for vmware as above.
Ensure direct RAM access
By default, VMware writes a running guest system's RAM to a file on disk. If you are certain you have enough spare memory, you can ensure the guest OS writes its memory directly to the host's RAM by adding the following to the VM's
.vmx
:
Virtual_machine_name
.vmx
MemTrimRate = "0"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"
mainmem.backing = "swap"
Choppy/Slow Chromium Browser Graphics in VM Guests
Browse to
chrome://flags
and enable "Override software rendering list" then restart the browser.
Performance tips
To improve the performance of your virtual machine, try the following tips:
Paravirtual SCSI adapter
VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters
are high-performance storage adapters for VMware ESXi that can result in greater throughput and lower CPU utilization. PVSCSI adapters are best suited for environments, where hardware or applications drive a very high amount of I/O throughput.
The SCSI adapter type
VMware Paravirtual
is available in the Virtual Machine settings.
If these settings are not in the virtual machine's configuration, the paravirtual SCSI adapter can still be enabled. Ensure that the paravirtual SCSI adapter is included in the kernel image by modifying the
mkinitcpio.conf
:
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
...
MODULES=(... vmw_pvscsi)
...
Regenerate the initramfs
.
Shut down the virtual machine and change the SCSI adapter: set the
.vmx
to the following:
scsi0.virtualDev = "pvscsi"
Paravirtual network adapter
VMware offers
multiple network adapters
for the guest OS.  The default adapter used is usually the
e1000
adapter, which emulates an Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet NIC.  This Intel adapter is generally compatible with the built-in drivers across most operating systems, including Arch.
For
more performance and additional features
(such as multiqueue support), the VMware native
vmxnet3
network adapter can be used.
Arch has the
vmxnet3
kernel module available with a default install.  Once enabled in
mkinitcpio
(or if it is auto-detected; check by running
lsmod | grep vmxnet3
to see if it is loaded), shut down and change the network adapter type in the
.vmx
file to the following:
ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"
After changing network adapters, the network and
dhcpcd
settings will need to be updated to use the new adapter name and MAC address.
# dhcpcd
new_interface_name
# systemctl enable dhcpcd@
new_interface_name
.service
The new interface name can be obtained by running
ip link
.
Virtual machine settings
These settings could help improve the responsiveness of the virtual machine by reducing disk I/O, at the expense of using more host memory.
Vmware's KB1008885
provides the following optimizations:
mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"
MemTrimRate = "0"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
mainMem.useNamedFile
: This will only work for Windows hosts and this parameter can be used if high disk activity is experienced upon shutting down the virtual machine. This will prevent VMware from creating a
.vmem
file. Use
mainmem.backing = "swap"
on Linux hosts instead.
MemTrimRate
: This setting prevents that memory which was released by the guest is released on the host also.
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize
: Unfortunately there does not seem to exist a proper explanation for this setting; it seems to prevent the host system from swapping parts of the guest memory.
MemAllowAutoScaleDown
: Prevents VMware from adjusting the memory size of the virtual machine if it cannot allocate enough memory.
sched.mem.pshare.enable
: If several virtual machines are running simultaneously, VMware will try to locate identical pages and share these between the virtual machines. This can be very I/O intensive.
The following settings can also be set in the configuration dialog of VMware Workstation(
Edit -> Preferences... -> Memory/Priority
).
prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"
mainMem.partialLazySave = "FALSE"
mainMem.partialLazyRestore = "FALSE"
prefvmx.minVmMemPct
: Sets amount of RAM in percent which should be reserved by the virtual machine on the host system. If this is set to a lower value it is possible to assign the virtual machine more memory than is available in the host system. Be careful though, as in this case it will most likely lead to excessive hard drive usage. If enough RAM is on the host system, this value should be left at 100.
mainMem.partialLazySave
and
mainMem.partialLazyRestore
: These two parameters will prevent the virtual machine from creating partial snapshots for suspends. When these parameters are used, virtual machine suspension will take slightly longer, but there should be less hard disk activity from VMware trying to store this information.
Troubleshooting
Kernel headers for version x.y-zzzz were not found. If you installed them[...]
Install the headers (
linux-headers
).
Note
Upgrading the kernel and the headers will require you to boot to the new kernel to match the version of the headers. This is a relatively common error.
Cannot load module vmmon
As
VMware Comunity
explained, please disable
Secure Boot
to use
vmmon
to load the VMware module.
Incorrect login/password when trying to access VMware remotely
VMware Workstation provides the possibility to remotely manage Shared VMs through the
vmware-workstation-server
service. However, this will fail with the error
"incorrect username/password"
due to incorrect
PAM
configuration of the
vmware-authd
service. To fix it, edit
/etc/pam.d/vmware-authd
like this:
/etc/pam.d/vmware-authd
#%PAM-1.0
auth
required       pam_unix.so
account
required       pam_unix.so
password
required       pam_permit.so
session
required       pam_unix.so
and restart the
vmware
systemd
service.
Now you can connect to the server with the credentials provided during the installation.
Note
libxslt
may be required for starting virtual machines.
Issues with ALSA output
To fix
sound quality issues or enabling proper HD audio output, first run:
$ aplay -L
If interested in playing 5.1
surround sound
from the guest, look for
surround51:CARD=
vendor_name
,DEV=
num
, if experiencing quality issues, look for
front:CARD=
vendor_name
,DEV=
num
. Finally put the name in the
.vmx
:
~/vmware/
Virtual_machine_name
/
Virtual_machine_name
.vmx
sound.fileName=
"surround51:CARD=Live,DEV=0"
sound.autodetect=
"FALSE"
OSS emulation
should also be disabled.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is running
To disable
KVM
on boot, you can use something like:
/etc/modprobe.d/vmware.conf
blacklist kvm
blacklist kvm-amd   # For AMD CPUs
blacklist kvm-intel # For Intel CPUs
Tip
If
kvm
modules continue to load, despite being blacklisted, and you are running a system with integrated Intel graphics (i915,i965), it may be necessary to blacklist the
kvmgt
kernel module directly from the kernel command line options. See
Kernel module#Using kernel command line_2
for more details.
Icons and padding in VMware application UI are not scaled properly on HiDPI display
See
HiDPI#VMware
.
Wayland issues
Keyboard capture does not work on GNOME
VMWare Player/Workstation 17.5 (and older) have issues
discussed here
.
To allow the user interface to capture the keyboard:
$ gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.wayland xwayland-allow-grabs "true"
$ gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.wayland xwayland-grab-access-rules "['vmplayer','vmware-vmx','mksSandbox']"
As an alternative, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts in Windows:
Super+Alt+Tab
instead of
Alt+Tab
for the task switcher
Ctrl+Esc
for the Start menu
Module issues
/dev/vmmon not found
The full error is:
Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.
Please make sure that the kernel module 'vmmon' is loaded.
This means that at least the
vmmon
module is not loaded.
Enable
the services (see
#Installation
) for automatic loading.
Another possible reason is Indirect Branch Tracking on 11th Gen and later Intel processors and starting from kernel 5.18.
Add
ibt=off
to your
kernel command line
. See
[2]
for more details.
/dev/vmci not found
The full error is:
Failed to open device "/dev/vmci": No such file or directory
Please make sure that the kernel module 'vmci' is loaded.
First, try to manually load the modules
# modprobe -a vmw_vmci
Try to recompile VMware kernel modules with:
# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all
VMware fails to start
Module CPUIDEarly power on failed
Version 14 has stricter CPU requirements than version 12. If you try to start a virtual machine with an affected CPU, the following message will appear:
This host does not support virtualizing real mode.
 The Intel "VMX Unrestricted Guest" feature is necessary to run this virtual machine on an Intel processor.
The solution is to uninstall version 14 and install version 12 (
vmware-workstation12
AUR
).
When VMware was usable and this error suddenly appears it could be due to a warm/soft boot or after suspending the system. Please try a cold boot (shutting the system down and starting it again).
Segmentation fault at startup due to old Intel microcode
Old Intel microcode may result in the following kind of segmentation fault at startup:
/usr/bin/vmware: line 31: 4941 Segmentation fault "$BINDIR"/vmware-modconfig --appname="VMware Workstation" --icon="vmware-workstation"
See
Microcode
for how to update the microcode.
vmplayer/vmware version 14 fails to start
On systems with
librsvg
version 2:2.44.0 and above, the log files (located in
/tmp/vmware-<id>
) show several instances of the following error:
appLoader| I125+ undefined symbol
A workaround is to downgrade
librsvg
to earlier version, or more preferably, force VMware to use its own shipped version of
librsvg
:
# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib/vmware/lib/librsvg-2.so.2:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
VMware also has a
VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS
variable:
$ env VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS=1 vmware
vmplayer/vmware fails to start from version 12.5.4
As per
[3]
the temporary workaround is to downgrade the package
libpng
to version 1.6.28-1 and keep it in the
IgnorePkg
parameter in
/etc/pacman.conf
.
An easier workaround is to make VMWare use the system's version of zlib instead of its own one:
# cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libz.so.1
# mv libz.so.1 libz.so.1.old
# ln -s /usr/lib/libz.so.1 .
vmplayer/vmware fails to start from version 12.5.3 to version 12.5.5
It seems to be a problem with the file
/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libstdc++.so.6/libstdc++.so.6
, missing
CXXABI_1.3.8
.
If the system have installed
gcc-libs
, that library is already installed. Therefore, it is possible to remove that file and vmplayer will use the one provided by gcc-libs instead. As root do:
# mv /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libstdc++.so.6/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libstdc++.so.6/libstdc++.so.6.bak
Also there is a workaround:
# export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS='yes'
vmware 12 process terminates immediately after start, no GUI is launched
Registered bug at
Mageia
, but it seems that there are no error messages shown in terminal with arch. When inspecting the logs, which are in
/tmp/vmware-<id>
, there are
VMWARE_SHIPPED_LIBS_LIST is not set
,
VMWARE_SYSTEM_LIBS_LIST is not set
,
VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS is not set
,
VMWARE_USE_SYSTEM_LIBS is not set
issues. Process simply terminates with
Unable to execute /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-modconfig.
after vmware or vmplayer is executed. Solution is the same, as root do:
# mv /etc/vmware/icu/icudt44l.dat /etc/vmware/icu/icudt44l.dat.bak
Also there is a workaround:
# export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS='yes'
Despite setting the VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS variable, VMWare may still fail to find certain libraries. An example is the libfontconfig.so.1 library. Check vmware logs in the tmp directory to see which libraries are still not found. Copy them to the appropriate path with libraries existing on the system:
# cp /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libfontconfig.so.1/
Instead of copying all these files manually, you may want to try exporting an additional setting:
# export VMWARE_USE_SYSTEM_LIBS='yes'
On systems with fontconfig version
2.13.0
and above, it may be needed to force VMware to use the shipped libfontconfig file instead of the newer system file. In such case, it is also necessary to provide a shared object library file
libexpat.so.0
for the shipped fontconfig. This applies for at least VMware version
12.5.9
. As root do:
# ln -s /usr/lib/libexpat.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libfontconfig.so.1/libexpat.so.0
# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libfontconfig.so.1:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Guest issues
Unable to download VMware Tools for guests
To download the tools manually, visit the
VMware repository
[
dead link
2025-04-06—domain name not resolved]
.
Navigate to: "
application name
/
version
/
build ID
/ linux / packages/" and download the appropriate Tools.
Extract with:
$ tar -xvf vmware-tools-
name
-
version
-
buildID
.x86_64.component.tar
And install using the VMware installer:
# vmware-installer --install-component=
/path/
vmware-tools-
name
-
version
-
buildID
.x86_64.component
If the above does not work, try installing
ncurses5-compat-libs
AUR
.
Networking on Guests not available after system restart
This is likely due to the
vmnet
module not being loaded
[4]
.
Enable
the services (see
#Installation
) for automatic loading.
Mouse issues
Mouse buttons above 5 do not work
If your mouse's thumb buttons or other additional buttons do not work,
set guest to use advanced mouse
.
Strange mouse wheel behavior on Guest
This is related to the current Xorg keyboard layout on Host system. Keep primary layout (e.g., English) selected on Host while working on Guest.
No IP address and network access for nested VMs
This issue is related to promiscuous mode which, following standard Linux practice, can only be enabled by the root user. To work around these limitations, the permissions for the networking device in question have to be changed.
Give permissions to one group:
# chgrp
group
/dev/vmnetX
# chmod g+rw /dev/vmnetX
Give permissions to all users:
# chmod a+rw /dev/vmnetX