Workstation 7 Linux Unable to start VM due to /dev/vmmon error

[daycom]

When starting a VM in VMware Workstation 7 for Linux I receive the following errors:

• Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory. Please make sure that the kernel module "vmmon" is loaded.

• Failed to initialize monitor device.

• unable to change virtual machine power state: Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to

I am using CentOS 5.3 (Final)

Please let me know if anyone has any information regarding this issue.

Thank you for your help

I found the answer please see blow or click here

[Borja_Mari]

Hi,

just try to do this (as root user):

/etc/init.d/vmware restart

This command maybe fix your issue. It should load the vmmon kernel module.

Then you should to be able to power on vm's.

Let me know if this doesn't work

Regards/Saludos,
Pablo

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[daycom]

I did as suggested and vm monitor failed.

[Borja_Mari]

Hi,

is running this command as root doesn't fix the issue:

modprobe vmmon

Then maybe the last option is to reinstall workstation (uninstall & install)

Maybe the vmmon doesn't exist, it's corrupt o doesn't fit the running kernel.

You can compare the kernel versions between the vmmon module (modinfo vmmon) and the the running kernel (uname -r)

Hope this helps

Regards/Saludos,
Pablo

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any helpful or corrrect answer. Thanks!! -

Por favor considera premiar

cualquier respuesta útil o correcta. ¡¡Muchas gracias!!

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[Noel]

The error generally means that vmmon is not loaded. Run lsmod | grep -F vm and see which modules are loaded. And what happens if you run service vmware restart (as root)?

[daycom]

I tried runnning modprobe vmmon and this was the result:

Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory. Please make sure

that the kernal module "vmmon" is loaded.

I uninstalled with this procedure "sudo vmware-installer -u

vmware-workstation"

I re-installed with this procedure "sudo ./vmware.bundle"

After re-installing same issue

Here are the results when running modinfo vmmon & uname -r:

They are both the same version

Any other ideas?

[daycom]

Here is the output when run the command that you mentioned:

1. lsmod | grep -F vm

vmnet 50368 13

vmblock 18336 3

vmci 55512 1 vsock

Here is the output when restarting vmware:

1. service vmware restart

Stopping VMware services:

VMware USB Arbitrator

VM communication interface socket family

Virtual machine communication interface

Virtual machine monitor

Blocking file system

Starting VMware services:

VMware USB Arbitrator

Virtual machine monitor

Virtual machine communication interface

VM communication interface socket family

Blocking file system

Virtual ethernet

Please me know if you have any other ideas, thanks for the help,

[louyo]

From a previous post:

You may want to have a look here:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1439885#1439885

"# mknod /dev/vmmon c 10 165"

Lou

[daycom]

I tried mknod /dev/vmmon c 10 165 command, I am now getting the following errors

• Too many virtual machines are running. The maximum number of running virtual machines is 64.

• failed to initialize monitor device.

• Unable to change virtual machine power state: cannot find a valid peer to process to connect to.

I also tried to restart vmware service and it still says vm monitor failed, even though I'm recieving different errors now.

[louyo]

>>I tried mknod /dev/vmmon c 10 165 command, I am now getting the following errors

Did you run as su? What do you see from "ls -al /dev/vm*" ?

I see:

lou:~$ ls -al /dev/vm*

crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 10, 55 2010-08-20 09:37 /dev/vmci

crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 165 2010-08-20 09:37 /dev/vmmon

crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 119, 0 2010-08-20 09:37 /dev/vmnet0

crw------- 1 root root 119, 1 2010-08-20 09:37 /dev/vmnet1

crw------- 1 root root 119, 8 2010-08-20 09:37 /dev/vmnet8

You might also try running (as was suggested above):

/etc/init.d/vmware start

or even try a re install of workstation now that /dev/vmmon is in place

Lou

[daycom]

OMG this is getting ridiculous....

Here is what happened when I followed what you suggested:

"ls -al /dev/vm*"

crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 10, 61 Aug 20 09:16 /dev/vmci

crw-rr 1 root root 10, 165 Aug 20 09:16 /dev/vmmon

crw------- 1 root root 119, 0 Aug 20 09:16 /dev/vmnet0

crw------- 1 root root 119, 1 Aug 20 09:16 /dev/vmnet1

crw------- 1 root root 119, 8 Aug 20 09:16 /dev/vmnet8

I un-installed re-installed once again and still recieve the same errors

• Too many virtual machines are running. The maximum number of running
  virtual machines is 64.

• failed to initialize monitor device.

• Unable to change virtual machine power state: cannot find a valid
  peer to process to connect to.

I did notice once I re-installed that my permissions were different that what you listed. Could this be a problem?

I also ran /etc/init.d/vmware start and now vm mon and virtual ethernet are failing.

Starting VMware services:

VMware USB Arbitrator

Virtual machine monitor

Virtual machine communication interface

VM communication interface socket family

Blocking file system

Virtual ethernet

Please help......

[louyo]

It isn't supposed to be this hard..

Yes, permissions can make a difference.

Did you try running vmware as root (sudo or just su into root)?

In the good old days, It seems like I had to run vmware as root (after an install) and then close it down and run as a user.

I run Ubuntu here but that shouldn't matter.

Lou

[louyo]

It isn't supposed to be this hard..

Yes, permissions can make a difference.

Did you try running vmware as root (sudo or just su into root)?

In the good old days, It seems like I had to run vmware as root (after an install) and then close it down and run as a user.

I run Ubuntu here but that shouldn't matter.

Lou

[louyo]

It isn't supposed to be this hard..

Yes, permissions can make a difference.

Did you try running vmware as root (sudo or just su into root)?

In the good old days, It seems like I had to run vmware as root (after an install) and then close it down and run as a user.

I run Ubuntu here but that shouldn't matter.

Lou

[daycom]

I was able to resolve my issue, I found that I was having so much trouble becasue I was using Xen Kernel. Which isn't compatiable with VMware Workstation or VMware Server.

I removed Xen Kernal and installing Kernel by following these steps below:

To do this, you first need to install the kernel.

yum

makes this easy:

yum install kernel

Then remove xen and the kernel-xen packages:

yum remove xen kernel-xen

Then you have to specify which kernel you want to run in

sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

.

In that file there’s a list of kernels available to boot from:

#boot=/dev/sda
default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title CentOS (2.6.18-92.1.10.el5)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.1.10.el5 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.18-92.1.10.el5.img
title CentOS (2.6.18-92.1.10.el5xen)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/xen.gz-2.6.18-92.1.10.el5
        module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.1.10.el5xen ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
        module /boot/initrd-2.6.18-92.1.10.el5xen.img

The line that says

default=

specifies which kernel to
load, where 0 is the first one listed in the file. In my case, I had to
change the line that says

default=1

to

default=0

to specify the non-xen kernel.

Reboot, and you’re good to go – the VMware RPM will install, and

VMware Workstation/server runs just fine.