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JustinMercier
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Opening existing VMware Player 12.x Virtual Machines in VMware Player 14 fails

I recently upgraded to VMware Workstation Pro 14 from the latest version of 12.5.  I am running on a fully updated host running Ubuntu 16.04.03 LTS on a beefy Dell Precision 7710.

Virtual machines open fine in Workstation, but those that I was previously running without issue in VMware Player (VM HW version 12.x) now will not open in VMware Player 14.  This seems to be irrespective of the client OS as I have a Windows 7 and Ubuntu VM that now will not open in VMPlayer.  I get no obvious error unless I run from the command line, and when I do run from the command line I get a rather ambiguous "Fail to open executable: No such file or directory" error message.

So I turned to strace -eopen vmplayer to try and figure out what I am missing.  I got the normal errors but installed lzma and liblz1 due to the traced errors but nothing works.

I tried making a copy of the VMs and upgrading the VMware Tools and HW version in Workstation (then powering down and removing from inventory) but they *still * will not open in Player.

As a workaround I am running the VMs in VMware Workstation but a lack of forward compatibility in VMware Player is a concern.

I will update this topic if/as I find new data points or a solution.

29 Replies
JustinMercier
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have since rebooted my host: no improvement

I created a new test VM in VMware Player, it installed but after restart it does not appear in the VMPlayer inventory, nor will it open.  Attempts to open in Workstation fail unless I close Player.  Like there is a phantom filehandle on the vmx.

I have been very careful to ensure I do not have the vmx open in both applications, to the point of running workstation and player independently and exclusively of one another.

At this point it seems there is a serious regression or removed dependency in the v14 installer and I warn all users running on Ubuntu hosts to avoid this update until the next patch comes out or a month passes, whichever is later.

mhampto
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Maybe it's wort while to gather the Workstation Logs and further investigate from there. For more information, see Collecting diagnostic information for VMware Workstation (1346) | VMware KB . The vmware.log of the affected virtual machine should provide more details on what is causing the VM to not power on. 

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wangeryan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I want to confirm something about your problem:

1) When you try to open you VMs with HW version 12.x using VMware Player 14, did you close your VMware Workstation Pro application process?

2) What detail command did you run in the command line to open the VMs using VMware Player 14?

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JustinMercier
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Nothing gets printed to the VM's log file when I try and open it in Player.  Nothing seems to happen at all.

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JustinMercier
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

1)  Yes, as I mentioned previously I do not run VMs in both applications, and the VM in question was cleanly removed completely from Workstation before I tried to open it in Player.  Nor can I even run a VM I natively create in VMware Player after the initial session. IOW, if I create a VM in player then close player, it does not appear in the inventory later when I restart player, nor can I open it again.

2.  I am running strace -eopen /usr/bin/vmplayer which is a very simple way to monitor all the files it tries to open, such as libraries.  Simply running ldd /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmplayer didn't seem sufficient although all the linked libs are there.

This has all worked great since VMWS 10.  It suddenly doesn't work after upgrading to VMWS 14.  The problem isn't me or my machine, its clearly VMware.

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m00dawg
Contributor
Contributor

Managed to find this from an 'strace -f vmplayer':

[pid  1694] access("/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libvmware-unity-helper.so/libvmware-unity-helper.so", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Sure enough on my install, that library doesn't exist;

tim@lindawg /usr/lib/vmware/lib $ find ./ -name *unity*

EDIT: I couldn't find it in /usr/lib64 either and running either /usr/lib64/vmware/bin/vmware-unity-helper or /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-unity-helper causes the same error.

Not sure what to make of that other than looks like the installer either doesn't include the library at all or is, for whatever reason, not installing it. This has me out high and dry too since I can't use my Windows VM post upgrade and sort of had a desire to do some work with it.

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towo2099
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I can confirm that issue, no VM can be opened in the player.

Only thing works is, double click the vmx-file, or rightclick it ==> open in vmware-player, then the VM starts.

But so it's not possible to make changes in such vm.

That is with player on Linux, the player on Windows does not have that issue for me.

towo2099
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

And btw, before the install of Player 14, i had converted my vm's to v14 hardware compatibility with Workstation Pro testinstall.

Then i uninstalled WS and instzalled Player 14.

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m00dawg
Contributor
Contributor

Weirdly I couldn't do that when trying to run it via the command-line, but using your workaround does let me launch my VM. So that at least gets me up and running, thanks for that clever trick!

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JustinMercier
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

For the devs:

I *can* open a VM directly using a command such as:  /usr/bin/vmplayer /data/vmdata/VM_NAME/VM_NAME.vmx &

or even just: vmplayer /data/vmdata/vm_name/vm_name.vmx &

The problem is not running the VM, per se, but adding it to the inventory.

I would argue that most users would prefer to open/import/load the VMX into their inventory.  They don't want to create a command line process that opens a VMX every time they want to run a VM in Player.

ultimate_live
Contributor
Contributor

All my VM´s created with previous versions of VMware Workstation Player, also 12.5.7 worked fine and started them all without any issue. Today I updated to Workstation Player 14 and no VM can be opened. I just receive the message that my Computer suports AMD-V but must be enabled in BIOS.

Or I must update my BIOS version and other messages.

But why I get this probelm just with v14? So, I turned back to 12.5.7 and everything is working.

Why does this happen?

I´m using Windows 10 Fall Update (1709) 64-Bit fully updated.

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PedroSimoes
Contributor
Contributor

Same problem when starting Virtual Machines 14 in VMware Player 14

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marciopiva
Contributor
Contributor

I believe is not matter of Vmware guest version. I was using VMware Player 14 with 12.5.7 guest without any issues. After a Ubuntu auto-update (unfortunately) the problem has started. In that update was changed kernel version and GTK libs as well. The latter, in my opinion, is the problem.

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nicky2014
Contributor
Contributor

Had the same problem with a VM I built last week.

After a bit of debugging I found my solution to the problem so will post it here. Note that there may be other causes:

strace on vmplayer showed an error message to the effect of 'vmdk in use by vm or a snapshot'. There were no other VM active or any relevant lock files. Reviewed my VM settings and:

     The vm was a new build for an existing XP

     I added the old XP vmdk in the new VM to copy across files

     This copy was from an external disk that was no longer available

Hence, vmplayer complained that a disk was not available but the message did not seem indicative of the missing disk. Removed it from the settings and then it worked.

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marciopiva
Contributor
Contributor

I believe this is another problem. Even creating a new VM Guest (any) choosing "I will install the operating system later" the new one does not appear in VMware Player UI. My issue remains the same.

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skitheo1
Contributor
Contributor

I found the same behavior. 14.0.0 player:

user@HP-Z600 ~ $ lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.

Distributor ID:    LinuxMint

Description:    Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya

Release:    18.2

Codename:    sonya

user@HP-Z600 ~ $ uname -a

Linux HP-Z600 4.8.0-58-generic #63~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 26 18:08:51 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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dkebler
Contributor
Contributor

Just found this thread but had posted my own issue at VM Player 14 not listing VMs after open or creation

Same exact behavior and only in 14.

As others noted I can open vmx directly from file manager.

if the run the player from a terminal when I start the player I get this error yet the player opens

david@trantor:[~]$ vmplayer

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

then if I try to open a vmx file I get.

Fail to open executable: No such file or directory

which would explain why it doesn't add it to the list.  Why the player can't open it when it's file manager dialog has no problem finding it is a mystery.  As someone said might be gtk library.

I'll point my thread here in case others find my first.  In the meantime I'm downgrading.

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dkebler
Contributor
Contributor

To add to discussion here is what my terminal logs when starting 14.  As I said maybe a Gtk issue

(vmware-installer.py:15570): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",

Fontconfig error: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 72: non-double matrix element

Fontconfig error: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 72: non-double matrix element

Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 80: saw unknown, expected number

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BobTheBuilder14
Contributor
Contributor

They really need to push an update to fix this mess. -_-;

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