Can't start vmplayer 16 as non-root on Ubuntu 18

[ttabi]

I've installed vmplayer 16 on my Ubuntu 18 box.  The installation went fine.  When I try to launch vmplayer, however, I'm prompted to enter a license key.  I select "use vmplayer for free for non-commercial use" and then on the command line, I'm prompted for my password.  However, my password is rejected and I cannot user vmplayer:

$ vmplayer
[AppLoader] Use shipped Linux kernel AIO access library.
An up-to-date "libaio" or "libaio1" package from your system is preferred.
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "/etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml"
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.policykit.exec ===
Authentication is needed to run `/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-setup-helper' as the super user
Authenticating as: Timur Tabi,,, (ttabi)
Password:
polkit-agent-helper-1: error response to PolicyKit daemon: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1.Error.Failed: No session for cookie
==== AUTHENTICATION FAILED ===
Error executing command as another user: Not authorized

This incident has been reported.

[RaSystemlord]

Not sure why that happens, but two different (speculative) possibilities come first to my mind.

First, did you download VMware from vmware site or from somewhere else?

1. Did you install in "admin-mode" ... that is using sudo in front of your install?

In principle, it should not succeed without that.

2. Are you sure that the question by VMware uses the same keyboard layout than you have? 

If you have special characters in your password, they might fail, depending on the difference in keyboard layout between American and yours (whatever that might be). In Nordic, only " . " and " , " are in the same place than in American keyboard - everything else is somewhere else, even the physical keys themselves are not the same in the keyboard.

[ttabi]

I downloaded it from vmware and installed it using this command:

sudo bash VMware-Player-16.1.2-17966106.x86_64.bundle

My password is just some letters.

[RaSystemlord]

Is bash the default shell with Ubuntu? I cannot immediately check since I use Kubuntu nowadays.

I have used just something like "sudo  ./VMware*.bundle" in the default terminal sitting in the Downloads folder, also in Ubuntu.

... probably not the reason, but rather quick to rule out anyways. There may be some profound reason, unknown to me, why this fails in 18.04, but check anyway if you don't get other suggestions.

[ttabi]

Kubuntu is just Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome.  Everything else is the same, so yes, Bash is the default shell. 

Anyway, I uninstalled and reinstalled vmware without "bash", and the problem remains.

The only thing I can think of is that I'm ssh'ing into the system that has vmware installed, so it's a remote X session. 

[RaSystemlord]

OK, I don't know how ssh would influence this matter. Not sure if you mean that you are doing nested virtualization with VMware or not. Either way, somebody else?

(Kubuntu is much more than just the different desktop. It has, in my opinion, much better default applications, like text editor, file explorer, system settings ... which you would not associate with a difference between Gnome and KDE, even if some of them kind of are.)

[wila]

Hi,

Remote X via SSH certainly can be the issue.
The error message does mention the lack of a session cookie.

If I am understanding your report correctly then you _can_ actually run vmplayer when you run as root?

Only when starting as non root, the license key part is preventing you from running vmware player?

You might want to try and see if you can get past that by temporarily configuring vnc to that you can actually login to the desktop. That should be the easiest workaround...

Otherwise this might help:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/113735/what-is-xdg-session-cookie-who-use-it-and-is-it-usef...

--
Wil