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HenryK_09
Contributor
Contributor

Error "Unable to Connect to MKS" after upgrade to VMware Workstation 15.5.5

Hello,

I upgraded my workstation to latest version 15.5.5. Now I cannot connect to shared VMs on another VM Workstation (V12.9) anymore.

The following error message appears (image type forbidden?):

"Unable to connect to the MKS:

vim.fault.GenericVmConfigFault."

The log file of the remote VM indicates:

  • Failed to start server on WebSocket pipe, error 1: Asyncsocket error
  • Expiring webmks ticket ....

Can anyone help? Thank you in advance

69 Replies
dejanrodiger
Contributor
Contributor

Hmm, it doesn't work for me.

I changed it on the client and host in user folder ~./vmware/preferences.

On Host, VMWare Workstation is not started by user XX, it is started by vmware-workstation-server service and any VM is running by this service, which is getting info from /etc/vmware.

Unless it is getting info from /root/.vmware/preferences ?

-- Dejan
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Pheckphul
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Try this...

edit ~/.vmware/preferences on your HOST machine.

Add the below lines to the "preferences" file.

pref.preferWebMKS = "FALSE"

pref.preferWebRemoteDevice = "FALSE”

Restart host services.

So, where did you get this idea from? I just modified the preferences.ini on my Windows client running v15.5.6, which is connecting to a Linux v12.5.9 host, and restarted the VMware Workstation Server service and now I can connect to the Linux host without getting the damn MKS error.

Also, VMware Workstation on my Windows client removed the pref.preferWebRemoteDevice = "FALSE" line from my preferences.ini.

Thanks!

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Pheckphul
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

As I noticed. V16 was released and they removed Remote Management support:

Product Support Notices

  • Removal of Shared VM feature
    Shared virtual machines (Workstation as server) has reached end of life and been removed from VMware Workstation 16.
  • Removal of restricted virtual machines
    Restricted virtual machine has reached end of life and been removed from VMware Workstation 16.

So, is this in a roadmap somewhere that this feature was going to be discontinued by a certain date? It sure as hell isn't EOL as it is still a useful feature; VMware just decided it wasn't in their interests to maintain.

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0WayneH0
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Thanks Max3141; modifying preferences on the client machine seems to have solved the problem for me too.

Max3141
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Great,

Glad it worked.

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Max3141
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yeah, it's definitely a slap in the face from Vmware.  Really the only thing that differentiates Vmware workstation pro from the free version is literally just that -- shared VM's.

Because why bother with Pro if no shared VM's?  I mean you might as well run just a bunch of Vmware player instances on a machine -- at that point why not Virtualbox?

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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Player isn't free if used in a commercial context, so it's a "Player vs Pro" comparison rather than a "free vs paid". Here's a comparison: Windows VM | Workstation Pro | VMware

Many would say snapshots are the biggest benefit of Pro, but there's more as you'll see.


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Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
VMware Training & Certification blog
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Super_Kevin
Contributor
Contributor

Hi folks,

The vmware-workstation-server service uses libpam to do authentication on Linux.

It seems that Ubuntu 20.04 did some changes to its libpam and libcap2 library, which needs more thread stack space.

Could you try to edit /etc/vmware/hostd/config.xml and change the value of ThreadStackSizeKb from 256 to 384?

After edit the config file, you need to restart vmware-workstation-server service or reboot your host.

Best regards,

Kevin

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dejanrodiger
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare Workstation 15.5.7 is released with a fix for this problem.

It took them only ~5 months 😮

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/15.5/rn/VMware-Workstation-1557-Pro-Release-Notes....

 

  • Not able to power on the virtual machine that is running on the old version of VMware Workstation or VMware ESXi Server by connecting to the server

    When connecting to old version of VMware Workstation or VMware ESXi Servers to power on a remoting virtual machine, the following error displays:

    Unable to connect to the MKS: vim.fault.GenericVmConfigFault.

    This issue is resolved.

  • The VMware Workstation shared virtual machine cannot work on the Ubuntu20.04 host

    The VMware Workstation UI crashed on the Ubuntu20.04 host when receiving remoting connection request to access the shared virtual machine.

    This issue is resolved

 

 

-- Dejan
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dejanrodiger
Contributor
Contributor

And it works.

-- Dejan
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