usbArb SOCKET connect failed, error 2: No such file or directory

[kyle_denver]

I've been running VMWare WS Pro 17 on Ubuntu/PopOS 22.04 for about 1 year w/o any issues. A couple days ago, VMWare can't start with the following message in /var/log/vmware/vmware-usbarb-*log:

usbArb SOCKET connect failed, error 2: No such file or directory

2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb DICT tag.memConfig = "configvm_memory.htm"
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb DICT tag.miscConfig = "configvm.htm"
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb DICT tag.usbConfig = "devices_usb.htm"
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb DICT tag.displayConfig = "configvm_display-problems.htm"
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb DICT tag.tools = "vmtools.htm"
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb USBArbRuleStore: Loading device rules from rules file '(null)'.
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb USBArb: VMware USB Arbitration Service Version 20.10.0
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(06) usbArb USBGL: USB Sysfs found at /dev/bus/usb.
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(06) usbArb USBArb: Attempting to connect to existing arbitrator on '/var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket'.
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb USBArbLib: USBArbLib initialized successfully, retryIntervalStart(5), retryIntervalMax(120), arbSocketName(/var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket), useLocking(yes), tryUpgrading(yes).
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb SOCKET creating new socket, connecting to /var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb SOCKET connect failed, error 2: No such file or directory
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z Wa(03) usbArb USBArbLib: Failed to connect to USB Arbitrator, arbSocketname(/var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket). Error(0x6): Connection error.
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z Wa(03) usbArb USBArbLib: Failed to register in usbarblib.
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb USBArb: No other USB arbitrator instance is currently running.
2023-11-07T03:02:33.649Z In(05) usbArb USBArbP: Listening socket(12) created successfully.

The issue is happening while starting vmware from /etc/init.d/vmware start. 

# /etc/init.d/vmware stop
Stopping VMware services:
VMware Authentication Daemon                            done
Virtual machine monitor                                 done

# /etc/init.d/vmware start
Starting VMware services:
Virtual machine monitor                                 done
Virtual machine communication interface                 done
VM communication interface socket family                done
Virtual ethernet                                        failed
VMware Authentication Daemon                            done

That is in "Virtual ethernet failed". That translates in ethernet0 not found in the VM (which is on Ubuntu), but also with other OSes.

I tried the usuals, i.e., rebooting, restarting VMWare, updating from 17.1.x to the latest 17.5, even uninstalling VMWare completely (while keeping the config files).

The only change I see that happened in between is a Linux kernel upgrade from 6.4.6 to 6.5.6 (current). So I reverted back to 6.4.6 and even back to 6.2.6, but no luck. It remains the same.

EDIT: There was also the fact that all of a sudden, VMWare crashed at startup and complained about libssl.so.1.1 was missing, which was weird, but after reinstalling it from 20.04 depository, it started again, then displayed this behavior.

The socket is there:

# ll /var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket
srw-rw-rw- 1 root 0 Nov 7 11:02 /var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket=

Anyone knows what's happening here?

Enclosed:

    - see USBarb logs
    - entries relevant to vmware in syslog