VMWare Workstation 5.5.3 permission problem (Ubuntu Host)

[getut]

I just installed Vmware Workstation 5.5.3 on Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10) and am having a permissions problem. I can run it wth sudo but I followed exactly the same steps I did on my other laptop, but on this one I get the following error from the icon:

Could not launch menu item: Failed to execute child process "vmware" (Permission Denied)

and this error from commandline:

bash: /usr/bin/vmware: Permission Denied

It works fine if I use sudo vmware from the commandline or if I edit the graphical icon to be gksudo vmware. I do not have to do this on my other Edgy Eft laptop.

I've seen various mention of this error in my forum searches but no one got it resolved that I can find. I uninstalled/reinstalled about 10 times and nothing I have tried has fixed it. I cleared leftover folders between each uninstall/reinstall. And each and every time, including the first, I took all defaults for the install locations.

[KevinG]

What happens if you open terminal window and type sudo /usr/bin/vmware

What are the permissions on the /usr/bin/vmware?

ls -l /usr/bin/vmware

[getut]

Thanks for the reply!

When I sudo vmware from terminal it works fine. When just doing vmware I get the bash error listed above.

The permissions printout from your command that you wanted is:

-r-xrr 1 root root 4570 2007-03-01 13:19 /usr/bin/vmware

I changed it to:

-r-xrw-rw- 1 root users 4570 2007-03-01 13:19 /usr/bin/vmware

And nothing changed. All the same errors in the same places, but it still runs fine as root with sudo or gksudo.

[getut]

One last bump on this one before I just give up and use it as is. Does anyone have any idea how to resolve this?

[KevinG]

Looks like you have been playing with the default permissions of the files that were installed by the VMware Installation because I believe that typically the /usr/bin/vm* files would have root, root r-xr-xr-x

[getut]

No playing. The first permissions change I made on any VMWare files was when I changed them for the post above.... and regardless I've uninstalled/reinstalled many times and that is the way they keep coming back.

How can I fix it? I change the permissions on every vm* file to everyone read/write and I still get that error message.