VMware emits "I/0" warning when launched from bash shell

[SomervilleTom]

When I run "vmware &" from either a root or user SSH command-line shell I get the same complaint in the shell while the GUI launches:

$ I/O warning : failed to load external entity "/etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml"

There is an entry in the log file that appears to correspond to the same complaint:

2021-10-05T17:38:31.041-04:00| vmui| I005: ReadProxyFile: Failed to read file: /etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml

I've attached the full log for your convenience.

This is a new install of VMware Workstation v16.1.2 build 17966106 on a newly-installed CentOS 8 system. I'm running KDE plasma on the system.

I'm not surprised that an attempt to read "/etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml" fails, since there is no "hostd" subdirectory of "/etc/vmware":

# ls -l /etc/vmware
total 20
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 236 Oct  5 12:13 bootstrap
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 925 Oct  5 13:28 config
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root  19 Oct  5 12:13 icu -> /usr/lib/vmware/icu
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root  58 Oct  5 12:13 installer.sh -> /usr/lib/vmware-installer/3.0.0/vmware-uninstall-downgrade
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 564 Oct  5 13:28 license-ws-160-e4-202001
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  54 Oct  5 12:13 locations
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 463 Oct  5 12:13 networking
-rw-r-----. 1 root root   0 Oct  5 12:13 usbarb.rules
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root  19 Oct  5 12:13 vmnet1
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root  45 Oct  5 12:29 vmnet8

I've searched the usual web sources for "proxy.xml", "vmui", and the other obvious strings with no relevant results.

Surely I'm not the first customer to encounter this -- any guidance is greatly appreciated.

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It is a common warning.. you can ignore it.

FWIW, the hostd component has been removed for Linux and won't return.
Apparently vmware still left some code in that looks for a config file for that component.
You can create an empty /etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml file if you want to get rid of the warning.

eg:

mkdir -p /etc/vmware/hostd
touch /etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml

--
Wil

[SomervilleTom]

Sigh. I'm disappointed by how many loose ends there are in a product this mature and at this price point.

It is what it is. I appreciate the timely and helpful reply.

[SomervilleTom]

It appears that a bit more is needed:

vmware &
[1] 4486
$ /etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml:1: parser error : Document is empty

I know it's a nit, but I'd like vmware to start silently.

I did the following to actually silence the complaint:

echo "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>" > proxy.xml

[ShyLion]

I also had to add dummy tag pair <tag></tag>

[Anissa69]

This script file may use bash only feature so we have detect the running shell is bash or not. For other shells that share common syntax with bash, for example, sh, zsh, ksh, I'd like to report a warning.

[shahzadmyousuf]

/etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml:2: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found

I am having this error while opening a vmplayer setup to install in RHEL 8.1.

however, I have followed the same steps as you mentioned in the chat that removed the message that was happening at the time to launch vmplayer. so i created a directory.

mkdir -p /etc/vmware/hostd
touch /etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml

and also added a line in echo "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>" > proxy.xml.

after that, it displayed this error.

[root@localhost hostd]# vmplayer
/etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml:2: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found

^
[root@localhost hostd]#

thanks.

[angel5225251]

Just put any tag and the warning goes away

example:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>

<something></something>