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thirdnormal
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-10-2011 08:38 PM

Guest Machines Do Not Show in VMPlayer Library

My vmware player does not show gest machines in the library. My troubleshooting suggests its a permissions error on whereever the library data is stored.

When I try to open a guest machine  the player does not show the  guest in the inventory pane of the  player. However I can run  vmplayer /path/to/machine.vmx and the machine  will open execute  properly.

When  I run vmware player as root (or even a regular user) it works   correctly - so it seems clearly tied to my user account. I have tried rm  -rf ~/.vmware and rerunning the player but I  get the same behavior.

The problem happens with all guest machines - so it does not appear to be related to anything about a machine itself.

Does anyone know where vmware player stores the inventory data? Nothing in the  ~/.vmware directory seems to be related to this, but the library data must be persisted somewhere. Where is this file?

I'm running vmware player 3.1.3 build-324285 on Ubuntu Linux  2.6.31-22-generic-pae Ubuntu 9.10.

Thanks for any help.
22 Replies
Mark_T1
Contributor
Contributor
‎11-07-2018 07:09 AM

Worked for me on Linux Mint Debian

OS: LMDE 3 Cindy

Cinnamon: 3.8.9

Kernel: 4.9.0-8-amd64

VMware® Workstation 15 Player 15.0.0 build-10134415

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KonaanTheDestro
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-17-2019 04:01 PM

In Mint turning the option to remember recent files and not deleting old files worked for me as well, but I find that a poor solution for a stand alone app. If I wanted to remember old files I opened up, I would have left that on. VMWare Player shouldn't use that setting for its internal list. It should be standalone and separate.

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bb09
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-17-2024 11:51 PM

@dsy72 wrote:

 

This behavior still exists in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and VMware Player 7.1.2. The file /home/user/.local/share/recently-used.xbel will be emptied from time to time and every time you log out, thus the library / list of VMs will be lost.

This only happens if you have deactivated 'Record file & application usage' in Ubuntu System Settings 'All Settings / Security & Privacy / Files & Applications'.

If you activate 'Record file & application usage' your list of VMs will not be lost anymore, as the file 'recently-used.xbel' will no longer be emptied. I'm actually very happy to have discovered this, because before I had to manually restore the list of VMs dozens of time.


dsy72, you are a hero... It is still a problem on Linux Mint 21.3, vm Player 17.5, but it works!

In the meantime, it's a shame, that bug still exists, since the OP happened 13(!) years ago...wow

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