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An_tony
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Workstation 8 quit working - libgio undefined symbol

Workstation 8 had been working (Arch Linux 64-bit) but quit working (wouldn't start), presumably after a glib2 update to version 2.30.  The cause of the problem was found in /tmp/vmware-<userid>/apploader-xxxx.log:

2011-10-12T14:58:34.650-07:00| appLoader| W110: Unable to load libspi.so.0 from /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libspi.so.0/libsp
i.so.0: /usr/lib/libgio-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_cclosure_marshal_VOID__VARIAN
T

Using:

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgio-2.0.so.0/libgio-2.0.so.0 && vmware

got it working again.

I posted this in case others experience the same issue, and to see if others have an alternate/better solution.

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4 Replies
RuiEvora
Contributor
Contributor

Hello;

No words....after a lot of debuging and forum search you have resolved my issue.

Thanks a lot;

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Jared201110141
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the post, saved me a lot of time in finding a solution.

Any idea on how to fix this issue so that Workstation will launch via the Icon in Gnome 3 or Ubuntu Unity? I've tried adding the following line to ~/bashrc:

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgio-2.0.so.0/libgio-2.0.so.0

I can now start vmware by just typing 'vmware' in a terminal session, but the lcon in Gnome or Unity still doesn't work.

Thanks, Jared

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An_tony
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'd guess that VMware works in a terminal session because .bashrc is processed when opening a new terminal shell, but not when invoking a Gnome icon.

It might work to modify the .desktop file that Gnome uses to start VMware.  On Fedora (I'm hoping that Ubuntu is the same) it is:

/usr/share/applications/vmware-workstation.desktop, and contains:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=VMware Workstation
Comment=Run and manage virtual machines
Exec=/usr/bin/vmware
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=vmware-workstation
StartupNotify=true
Categories=System;
MimeType=application/x-vmware-vm;application/x-vmware-team;application/x-vmware-
enc-vm;

The change would be to the "Exec" statement.  Unfortunately, one can't simply prefix  "export ..." to the statement because there isn't an associated interpreter for the Gnome invocation.  One can, though, create a bash script and specify it as the "Exec" statement's target.

(Tested with Fedora 17)

Create a file in your home directory with your preferred text editor (vi shown):

vi ~/gnome_vmware

containing:

#!/usr/bin/bash

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgio-2.0.so.0/libgio-2.0.so.0 && /usr/bin/vmware

save it, and make it executable:

chmod +x ~/gnome_vmware

then copy the distribution .desktop file to your custom applications directory:

cp /usr/share/applications/vmware-workstation.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

edit the copied .desktop file:

vi ~/.local/share/applications/vmware-workstation.desktop

and change the "Exec" statement to read:

Exec=/home/<user-id>/gnome_vmware

(you have to specify a fully-qualified path name, the ~ doesn't resolve to your home directory)

save the desktop file and see if that helps.

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Jared201110141
Contributor
Contributor

Hi An_tony,

Thanks for the detailed response. I had to make one small change to the bash script '#!/bin/bash' instead of '#!/usr/bin/bash', launching the icon now works perfectly. Appreciate your help.

Cheers Jared

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