VMWare 15.5.7 Stopped Loading/Running Under Ubuntu 20.04

[pinrod]

Hi!

   I have been successfully running VMWare 15 (VMware-Workstation-Full-15.5.7-17171714.x86_64) under ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS for several months without problems. Today when I attempted to start VMWare, it gave me a spinning ubuntu symbol and then just stopped. I went through updating ubuntu and any other packages I have loaded, but it didn't help. I attempted to remove VMWare (keeping my configuration files) and reinstall it. That did not help. I tried again, this time removing the configuration files (I think! The script is a little unclear about that!). That did not work. This installation is for Workstation Pro, so I also tried to start VMWare workstation. No joy. Any ideas?

   Thanks!

   k

[ct7lh1]

You probably received an update to 5.8.0 kernel at that time, as two of my machines did.

Quick googling shows that Workstation 15 does not properly support Linux 5.8 (ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/ib9top/vmware_workstation_15_unusable_on_linux_kernel_58/)

So, these are two solutions that have worked for me:

• Boot your Ubuntu 20.04 with older kernel (5.4.0)
• Update Workstation to 16 version

[pinrod]

Okay! I upgraded to 16... More expensive than I wanted, but it worked. Thanks! k

[jimblue1]

Use VMware Workstation 15.5.6 instead because the patch that is available works with Ubuntu 20.04 with older kernel version 5.4.  

VMware patch: https://github.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules/tree/workstation-15.5.6
Get older kernel version 5.4 by following this https://linuxhint.com/update_ubuntu_kernel_20_04/
This saved me 99 dollars to upgrade to VMware Workstation 16. 

[pinrod]

Ah! Well, I resolved the issue by upgrading to Version 16. I figured that was better because it will be supported through all the Ubuntu changes. At any rate, it's good to know there's an alternate solution! Thanks! kurtt

[Pheckphul]

@jimblue1 

Are you still using 15.5.x on 20.04? I was running 15.5.7 and all was fine until I updated to 20.04.4 (with 5.4-110 kernel) a couple of days ago and rebooted. Now I can't get VM sharing to work. I get "Unable to connect to the workstation server. Please ensure that the server is running and that you are authorized to connect." This is from the Workstation GUI on the localhost; I haven't bothered to try remotely. UFW is disabled, BTW.

It appears the Github repository you linked to only pertains to networking kernel modules, and I don't think they are my problem as both modules load and my VMs can connect to the outside world. My only problem is getting shared VMs to work. 

I've checked, and vmware-hostd is running and pegging a CPU to 100%; I just can't connect to it.

I tried reinstalling 15.5.7, but that didn't help. Additionally, I wasn't able to find where VMware stores the settings for the shared VM component (VMware Workstation Server) to verify that my settings were stored correctly during the new install. In the GUI the only field populated is the connection port. The storage location field is blank and not editable, neither when sharing is enabled or not.

Any insight or suggestions would be appreciated.