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FrozenToes
Contributor
Contributor
‎07-27-2019 10:32 AM

Running VMWare workstation on Ubuntu 18.04 error - cannot open display

I'm trying to run vmware workstation 15 on a Ubuntu 18.04 box with Mint installed. I've got the VM set up and working, but when i - from the command line - type

vmware -x "path to vmx" nogui

I get "Gtk Warning Cannot open display"

Shouldn't nogui take care of the display issue?

Thanks!

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FrozenToes
Contributor
Contributor
‎07-28-2019 05:37 AM

Scratch that. I just rolled back to 12.5 and all is good. Not a fan of the new "You need to buy new hardware to run VMware" in v14 and up or your VMs will be ultra slow"

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Susie201110141
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎07-29-2019 01:33 AM

You may use "vmrun -T ws start "path to vmx" nogui " to launch your VM .

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bonnie201110141
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎07-30-2019 11:02 PM

I just tried the command on a Ubuntu 18.04 host. I can start VM successfully.

Let me confirm your environment. Your host os on your physical machine is Mint or Ubuntu 18.04? And will you please attach vmware-ui-*.log from /tmp/vmware-$user directory?

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bonnie201110141
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎07-31-2019 02:20 AM

A couple of more questions:

  1. Do you execute the command in the host terminal or in a ssh client in another machine?
  2. If in the terminal, could you please let me know the result “echo $DISPLAY”
  3. Do you work on Wayland desktop or Xorg desktop?
  4. Is the user to execute “vmware” same as the user to log in the ubuntu desktop? (For example, you login with a normal user, but execute the command with “sudo”, or you has already changed the user to root with “su” in the terminal.)

Thanks a lot!

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