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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

Copy/paste and drag/drop doesn't work

I'm using VMware Workstation 11.1.2 with Windows 7 x64 Enterprise as host and Ubuntu Mate 15.10 and cannot get the above to work.

I've tried to uninstall and install VMWare Tools twice and it seems to succeed but those features still doesn't work.

They are both checked in Guest Isolation.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Well you had open-vm-tools installed before you started this topic..

open-vm-tools has a few gaps in functionality still at this time, so no I do not recommend using that.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

Ok, installed it without -d switch and just accepted all the defaults and rebooted.

Still not working. Though I never got the error message.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Hmm.. really starting to run out of options here I'm afraid.

One other possibility is that the install of VMware Workstation itself is botched or that something at the host is preventing it from working properly.

For example if you have an antivirus/antimalware solution that you use, realize that it might interfere with this.

These if interfering -more often then not- have to be temporarily uninstalled in order to exclude them from causing your issues.

Another options is to try to uninstall - reboot - reinstall VMware workstation itself?

As mentioned in an earlier reply to you I had no problem whatsoever to get this to work in Workstation 12.

I really would expect the same experience in Workstation 11 if there is no errors reported on installing vmware tools within the guest.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

I'd pass on uninstall and install again as I'll probably get version 12 in January.

So, no other suggestions?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

What is the output from?

ldd /usr/lib/vmware-tools/sbin64/vmtoolsd

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

-- ldd /usr/lib/vmware-tools/sbin64/vmtoolsd
linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007ffed07f1000)
libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f2a8ddb3000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f2a8dbaf000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f2a8d990000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f2a8d779000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f2a8d3af000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x0000562e55447000)

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Sorry for the delay, still sick and had to get to another machine in order to verify.

As mentioned I had installed ubuntu mate here, found out that it actually used open-vm-tools here. so,..

I removed open-vm-tools using "apt-get purge" and then installed vmware-tools 10.1 instead and the output is the same.

What is curious is that copy&paste worked for me when using open-vm-tools and now I see the same kind of behavior as you are reporting, no working copy & paste between guest and host.

sudo ps -ax | grep vmtools

does show that vmtoolsd is running.

Trying to run vmtoolsd as I suggested you to do earlier on does result in a "core dumped" and complains about a "free" operation with invalid size.

So looks like I can at least reproduce your issue.

So far I have no answer as I really need to get back to work instead of playing around, but will follow this up later.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Right.. burned some more time on this.

I removed the /etc/vmware* folders and reinstalled .. same problem

Then I tried to use the clobber-kernel-module options only to be told that it can't be used because my kernel is >= 3.10

It seems VMware has dropped the ball here in an attempt to mop up the mess that vmware-tools is and created more problems instead, at least for ubuntu mate.

Don't see how you can fix it if open-vm-tools isn't working.

You might be able to get it to work by using an older kernel, but ... really ... that is not a proper solution.

edit:

FWIW, on my VM I was able to install open-vm-tools back, and copy&paste works, however shared folders is broken.

I ran the following commands (as root)

# vmware-uninstall-tools.pl

# rm -rf /etc/vmware-*

# apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

That worked for me also. Though I stumbled upon this bug, Bug #1500581 “open-vm-tools-dkms fails to build on kernel 4.2 (W...” : Bugs : open-vm-tools package ..., during install.

How can we raise this problem with VMware?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Well there's no need to raise the problem at VMware, if you look at the bug report it says "in progress", so somebody is working on resolving this.

It was also raised for debian and there -apparently- it is fixed already.

That actually is the advantage of open-vm-tools, the responsibility of fixing this by breakage has moved down the chain to Ubuntu.

So one of the updates on ubuntu should resolve this.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

I meant the initial issue, that it doesn't work at all if you install the vmware tools included in vmware workstation.    

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,


Ahh.. my bad, read through the ubuntu issue and saw you replied there as well.

Um.. you can try to submit a bugreport here: VMware Workstation Support  but you need to have a support contract for that

Which for Workstation usually means within 30 days of buying.

The thing is however that the normal workstation vmware tools now depend on the kernel modules as supplied by the linux distribution and if there's a problem on that end, then there's not much that vmware tools can do to fix it (as they refuse to compile kernel modules for your kernel) Of course the problem might lie in the user land, so yes I would like to see a bugreport filed on it as well.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hello Daniel,

Just bumped into this in the release notes on VMware Fusion 8.0.2 under known issues.

VMware Fusion 8.0.2 Release Notes

A similar note might exist in the Workstation release notes (too busy now to go verify that)

But the workaround notes do not appear to be Fusion specific.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

Ah, interesting.

That sounds like my problem.

No worries, take you time looking through release notes.

I'm still trying to open a support ticket.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

For the record, nowadays for open-vm-tools there's apparently also another package called open-vm-tools-desktop that you have to install.

That's new (it used to be part of open-vm-tools AFAIK) and it contains the component for the copy&paste integration, while one might expect it to also be installed by default, I think  it is not. So run:

  sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop

See here for more info on it:

VMware KB: VMware support for open-vm-tools

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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daniel341
Contributor
Contributor

Yeah, that package was installed with open-vm-tools in my case.

Unfortunatley I wasn't able to open an ticket against VMware through my corporate license.

Did you have any luck?

Though I upgraded to 12.1.0 but got a new issue, see Cannot install VMware Tools

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Unfortunately I cannot file tickets, forum moderators do not have that privilege and it did not come with my workstation license either.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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