vmware-user fails on ubuntu-8.04 guest

[nigelito]

So I've just upgraded my VMware Workstation for Windows from 6.4.x to 6.5.0. It's running an 32-bit ubuntu-8.04 (hardy heron) guest OS.

It's progress at least that I can now install the suppled vmware tools on ubuntu-8.04, and the kernel modules at least seem to work. However when vmware-user is run I see two error messages. The first is non-fatal, and reading the forum suggests that it can be safely ignored:

(vmware-user:20698): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "ubuntulooks",

The second however appears to be fatal:

/usr/lib/vmware-tools/bin/xorg71/vmware-user: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/vmware-tools/bin/xorg71/vmware-user: undefined symbol: uriComposeQueryCharsRequiredA

From what I can see this symbol is supplied by liburiparser.so in the VMware tree (/usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/liburiparser.so.1/liburiparser.so.1), but is not present in the Ubuntu version in /usr/lib/liburiparser.so.1.0.0

According to http://uriparser.sourceforge.net/doc/html/_uri_8h.html#5d79be075b94fd3292844feb107e0b75 this symbol has only been present since version 0.7.0 of liburiparser, but ubuntu 8.04 has version 0.6.0.

So this appears to be an incompatibility between the version of Gtk used by the vmware-tools and the version supplied by ubuntu 8.04. Or am I missing something else? Does anyone have any clue how to work around this?

Thanks

[papillon]

I have the same problem. Therefore , I cannot use copy/paste between host-guest.

Thank bforehand for the help!

[nigelito]

Well, the fix that I eventually came up with was to download and build the latest version of the Open Virtual Machine Tools

But rather than installing all of the open tools and kernel modules, I left the originals VMWare Tools in place and "hand installed" the vmware-user, vmware-user-suid-wrapper and vmware-toolbox open tools in place of the originals. The following worked for me:

host$ cd open-vm-tools-2008.10.10-123053

host$ ./configure --disable-unity

host$ make

...

host$ sudo bash

host# cp vmware-user/vmware-user /usr/local/bin/

host# cp vmware-user-suid-wrapper /usr/local/bin/

host# cp toolbox/vmware-toolbox /usr/local/bin/

host# cd /usr/bin

host# for f in vmware-user vmware-user-wrapper vmware-toolbox; do mv $f $f.orig; done

host# ln -s /usr/local/bin/vmware-user-suid-wrapper vmware-user

host# ln -s /usr/local/bin/vmware-user vmware-user-wrapper

host# ln -s /usr/local/bin/vmware-toolbox .

host# exit

host$ vmware-user

[papillon]

Thank you for your instructions! But after performing everything you've listed, on calling vmware-user, I had "vmware-user failed to initialize blocking driver."

[nigelito]

I missed a step that may be important. Try this:

$ sudo chown root.root /usr/local/bin/vmware-user-suid-wrapper

$ sudo chmod a-w,u+s /usr/local/bin/vmware-user-suid-wrapper

$ /usr/bin/vmware-user

[papillon]

Thank you a lot, now the copy/paste between the machines is working fine!

Using the opportunity, I want to ask about another problem I met with VMWare. I started my exploration just with a player, after some fight, I managed to have a network connection with a network card (embedded). The next day (most probably after few restarts of the system I haven't noticed it before), the network card would not respond at all. Windows does not want to turn it on, does not accept renewal of drivers. But the card is still seen and working fine from linux (not the virtual one). Deinstallation of VMWare did not help.So far I am working with wireless connection, which is accessible from the virtual machine.

I would appreciate it a lot some advice on the issue. Thank you beforehand!

[nigelito]

That's off-topic, and beyond my level of expertise with vmware. So I suggest that you post that question again to a new thread, with a suitable subject line.