Problems while installing vmware tools on linux: "Mounting HGFS shares" and "VGAuthService" failed

[robert170]

Hello,

I tried to update an existing SUSE-Linux 9 on vmware Fusion 11 on High Sierra. The vm-machine was running fine with vmware 6 on macOS 10.10.

I logged in as root and ran ./vmware-install. This worked, but at some point I got the following messages, like shown in the screenshot.

I am not a total linux expert, but I need this old Linux mainly because of an perfectly working Lyx.

Thanks for all support!

EDIT: Would it make a difference, to start to install SUSE-Linux from scratch on Fution 11? (I would have do get an external DVD-Player first, that's why I am asking and not trying immediately...)

[wila]

Hi,

Is that SUSE Linux 9.0 or 9.4? (or one inbetween?)

It's quite an old Linux as you know and from what I see it still runs on kernel 2.6.x and unlike for example Red Hat 6.x it is no longer supported.

So for such an old Linux you might need to install an older vmware-tools in the guest as what VMware currently supplies with Fusion.

Personally I would try to get up-to-date as that old distribution carries a lot of security issues by now.

PS: No, I doubt that installing from scratch is going to help you.

PS2: You said it is for running Lyx, from what I can see at their website they have current releases, can't you use those?

If that was a typo and you meant Lynx, then I would expect it to work better on a current Linux version as well. Last release for Lynx is July 2018. Worst case scenario you download it from the project website and install manually (I know that that isn't preferred, but I think all major distributions include it)

--

Wil

[robert170]

It is a SUSE 9.1.

The reason why I' sticking to this is the following: I work with a lot of documents which habe around 250 pages and many figures. And the really old Lyx .1.3.4 creates the pdf in abut 7 to 10 seconds (afaik due to the LaTeX version 1.xxx) All newer versions take about 20 to 30 seconds. When you are formatting 10 or 12 documents, this is a very big difference which easily adds to a working day. I discussed this in various forums years ago and then decided to stick to the well functioning version (never touch a running system...) Of course I have a Lyx 2.2 and a up-to-date LaTeX on my Mac, but I still work roughly twice as fast with the old system.

The problem is: vmware Fusion 7.1.1 works perfectly with my macOS 10.10. But some other software requires 10.12 or 10.13. And as far as I could find out, only vmware 10 or 11 works fine with macOS 10.13. (I tried vmware Fusion 7.1.1 with macOS 10.13: I could not open the virtual machines)

So what I will try is to install Linux 9.1 from scratch, but as you said it works on kernel 2.6, so I do not put to much hope into this.

I can try with older vmware tools but I could not find a way to download these seperately from the whole installation.

Thanks for helping!

Robert

[wila]

Hi,

Older Fusion Tools can be found here:

CDS Repository - vmw-desktop/fusion

The latest from Fusion 7 would be this one:

CDS Repository - vmw-desktop/fusion/7.1.3/3204469/packages

--

Wil

[robert170]

... well, I installed the older tools for 10.0.12 and now at least the mouse-integration and hgfs is working. drag & drop doesn't work but that's no big deal....

So thanks for the help!

[robert170]

... strange enough: It worked fine and now it doesn't work at all anymore. The vms seem to loose the tools when they are copied to another drive. I didn't know this. So now I' trying again systematically with the different vmware tools...