Unable to start services for VMware Tools

[apesaa]

I am demoing a current version of vmware workstation downloaded last week and running on Windows 7 64 bit Host with an Ubuntu 11.04 32 bit guest. I went through the easy install using a current iso off the ubuntu site. Once installed and booted into the ubuntu guest I noticed the vmware tools were not running. Upon digging around I found the service failed. I went ahead and ran the vmware-config-tools.pl script again and posted the last bit of relevant output. I also dug through the syslog and found the output where the service failed.

I also noticed in 2 days of searching for answers that this comes up a lot, but I never see any resolution in the posts. Anyhow I am considering turning the debug flag on in tpvmlpd.conf but want to know more about where the debug output would end up.

*******

Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic
initctl: Job failed to start
Unable to start services for VMware Tools

*****

SYSLOG OUTPUT after logon and vmware service failure.

Jun 21 17:44:33 ubuntu tpvmlpd[17011]: bad device "/dev/**" given
Jun 21 17:44:33 ubuntu init: vmware-tools pre-start process (16816) terminated with status 1

*****

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Pat

[bcraun]

Hi,

Did you ever resolve this? I have the same exact issue and there is absolutely _nothing_ I can find that describes a resolution to this issue which evidently is quite common.

Thanks.

[apesa]

Try this, I posted this same question on StackExchange and this is what I got. I have not had a chance to try it so please let me know.

The error in question is from the ThinPrint service, which you most likely (99% of cases) don't need at all. You can easily (and safely) disable it. Edit /etc/init.d/vmware-tools using your favorite text editor (which we all know is Vim) and comment out /usr/bin/tpvmlpd. Then restart it by running/etc/init.d/vmware-tools restart.

[bcraun]

Yeah I actually saw that post on SE. I was hopeful, but, alas, that file was not present on my machine so nothing to try there. I can definitely see the syslog output indicating the VMware driver issue. Some other posts I've read seem to indicate that it won't work without a great deal of tweaking. I'm thinking about trying another Linux distro to see if it will work. Not having the tools is a real pain and I'd be willing to give up Ubuntu for that.

[DSTAVERT]

openvm tools were available in earlier versions of Debian and Ubuntu and installed quite easily. 11.04 is not yet officially supported and I have seen Linux kernel bug reports related to VMware so that might be related. http://blogs.vmware.com/guestosguide/ You might have a look at adding the VMware repo to Ubuntu and just use apt or whatever you for updating/installing. http://www.vmware.com/pdf/osp_install_guide.pdf  and http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html

[apesa]

I ran openvmware tools on 10.04LTS and still could not get graphics support working as it should. It also had buggy mouse control at least for me. This is the way it used to be when you had to jump through hoops to get software running correctly. Its hard to pay real money for this level of patform integration.

[bcraun]

FYI, VMware tools were installed automatically during a Fedora 15 install and appears to be working fine with no further gymnastics required. Sadly, I don't like Fedora much, but if this is the only way to get shared folders then I guess it's a wash.

[dmwheel1]

I had this smae problem with Ubuntu 10.4 Server.

Turns out that I had open-vm_tools installed. I uninstalled it with:

sudo apt-get remove open-vm-tools

and then reinstalled the VMWare tools from the CD ROM and it installed properly.

My guess is that the installation of init.d scripts were failing due to other VM-type tools already being in the system.

[JWeier]

Turned out I also had Open VM Tools installed and removing them fixed this issue for me.

Thanks for the suggestion!!

[ketilf]

Removing the open-vm-* packages solved this for me too, but I also had to run "apt-get autoremove" afterwards to get rid of the dependencies as well. It was first then that the installation worked for me.

Thanks.

[kg4afy]

If open-vm is not the issue and you cannot find /etc/init.d/vmware-tools, then check this post out.  Worked for me: http://www.utterlyforked.com/vmware-fusion-5-and-cent-6-4/

I see it says Fusion, but it worked for me on Workstation.

[lihkin]

I faced the same issue for several days and with frustation, I tried the following to resolve the issue:

1. Uninstall vmware-tools

    sudo <path to vmware-tools-distrib>/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl

2. Remove vmware-tools related folders in /etc, /usr/sbin, /usr/sbin and /var/lib

3. Install vmware-tools

   sudo <path to vmware-tools-distrib>/vmware-install.pl

4. Hopefully, this fixes your issue

5. You may need to reboot

[joeshestak]

Check your extract file before installing again. It might be corrupt. So you can't solve your problems. Using Vmware monitoring tool is the best option to resolve such type of issues. I suggest to use MindArray IPM's VMware monitoring tools without any issues.

[steve13565]

Removing the vmware related folders was what finally did the trick.  I have spent days and days trying to get this fixed.

[Mattiaz]

I was able to make it work by chosing no to run vmware-config-tools when installing. Instead I ran it after the installation had finished. I had also enabled the root account, and used that while installing and configuering. I had furtermore set all installation files with chmod 777.

[gapthemind]

I just had to deal with the same problem and thought I'd add to this long-ago thread; if I got here, someone else might benefit. I was using the minimal install, then the network install of CentOS 6. Both installed fine, until it got to the point where vmtools did its automatic install. A few error messages and then install would hang.

I gritted my teeth and downloaded the full install, and it worked. So I'm assuming in my case vmtools was expecting some packages to be there that were missing.

[Susie201110141]

Could you please share us your workstation build version?

You can click the "Help" Menu -> About VMware Workstation.

Thanks a lot!

[gapthemind]

I'm using VMWare Player (not workstation).

7.1.0 build-2496824

[DodgeDeBoulet]

I'm experiencing this problem with VMware Workstation 11.1.1 build-2771112, hosted on Windows 7 Pro x64. The Guest experiencing the issue during vmware-tools installation is Ubuntu 14.04LTS x64, running kernel 3.13.0-54.

The version of VMware Tools is 9.9.2-2496486.

[yoni386]

Hello,

Run this /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl, kb in the bottom.

This time, disable shared directories and all the features except kernel startup.

VMware KB: VMware Tools fail to start after a Linux guest operating system kernel upgrade