Error Installing Vmware Workstation On Ubuntu

To fix this we will need to apply this patch to filter.c in VMware Player module sources.

Step No 1

create a file in tmp directory name filter.c.diff and copy paste the following code init.

nano /tmp/filter.c.diff

205a206
> #if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(3, 13, 0)
206a208,210
> #else
> VNetFilterHookFn(const struct nf_hook_ops *ops,        // IN:
> #endif
255c259,263
<    transmit = (hooknum == VMW_NF_INET_POST_ROUTING);
---
>    #if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(3, 13, 0)
>       transmit = (hooknum == VMW_NF_INET_POST_ROUTING);
>    #else
>       transmit = (ops->hooknum == VMW_NF_INET_POST_ROUTING);
>    #endif

Step No 2

sudo -E -s

cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/ 

cp vmnet.tar vmnet.tar.original

tar xvf vmnet.tar vmnet-only/filter.c

patch vmnet-only/filter.c < /tmp/filter.c.diff

tar -uvf vmnet.tar vmnet-only/filter.c

rm -rf vmnet-only/

After that just run vmware and it will work fine.

   Starting VMware services:
   Virtual machine monitor                                             done
   Virtual machine communication interface                             done
   VM communication interface socket family                            done
   Blocking file system                                                done
   Virtual ethernet                                                    done
   VMware Authentication Daemon                                        done
   Shared Memory Available                                             done

Note : You also need to chown the .vmware directory otherwise your vmware changes will not save

example

sudo chown -R one:one .vmware

Where one is my username and one is my group. sudo chown -R $USER:$USER .vmware

HELP

To fix the issue on Ubuntu 14.10 kernel 3.17.2

Step No 1

curl http://pastie.org/pastes/9636106/download -o /tmp/vmware-3.17.patch

Step No 2

Rebuilding modules, Extract module sources:

cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
for i in vmci vmmon vmnet vsock; do tar -xf $i.tar; done

Step No 3

Apply the patch:

 patch -p1 -i /tmp/vmware-3.17.patch

Step No 4

Recreate the archives:

for i in *-only; do tar -cf ${i/-only}.tar $i; done

Step No 5

Remove leftovers:

rm -r *-only

Step No 6

Rebuild modules:

vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

HELP

To fix the issue on Ubuntu 14.x kernel 3.19.x, run the following steps as Root (in a terminal):

1. log in as root (e.g. sudo -s)

2. Enter your Root password.

3. Enter these commands:

curl http://pastie.org/pastes/9934018/download -o /tmp/vmnet-3.19.patch
cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
tar -xf vmnet.tar
patch -p0 -i /tmp/vmnet-3.19.patch
mv vmnet.tar vmnet.tar.SAVED
tar -cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
rm -r vmnet-only
vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

I just had this same problem. You can also just create a script containing this:

#!/bin/bash

cat << EOF > /tmp/filter.c.patch
--- vmnet-only/filter.c 2013-10-18 15:11:55.000000000 -0400
+++ vmnet-only/filter.c 2013-12-21 20:15:15.000000000 -0500
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@
 #include "compat_module.h"
 #include <linux/mutex.h>
 #include <linux/netdevice.h>
 +#include <linux/version.h>
 #if COMPAT_LINUX_VERSION_CHECK_LT(3, 2, 0)
 #   include <linux/module.h>
 #else
@@ -203,7 +204,11 @@
 #endif

 static unsigned int
+#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(3, 13, 0)
 VNetFilterHookFn(unsigned int hooknum,                 // IN:
+#else
+VNetFilterHookFn(const struct nf_hook_ops *ops,        // IN:
+#endif
 #ifdef VMW_NFHOOK_USES_SKB
                  struct sk_buff *skb,                  // IN:
 #else
@@ -252,7 +257,12 @@

     /* When the host transmits, hooknum is VMW_NF_INET_POST_ROUTING. */
    /* When the host receives, hooknum is VMW_NF_INET_LOCAL_IN. */
 -   transmit = (hooknum == VMW_NF_INET_POST_ROUTING);
 +   
+#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(3, 13, 0)
+    transmit = (hooknum == VMW_NF_INET_POST_ROUTING);
+#else
+    transmit = (ops->hooknum == VMW_NF_INET_POST_ROUTING);
+#endif

    packetHeader = compat_skb_network_header(skb);
    ip = (struct iphdr*)packetHeader;
EOF

cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
# untar the vmnet modules
tar -xvf vmnet.tar
#run a the patch you should have just saved earlier
 patch vmnet-only/filter.c < /tmp/filter.c.patch
# re-tar the modules
tar -uvf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
#delete the previous working directory
rm -rf vmnet-only

Just make sure you run it as root. Then start VMWARE again and it should compile and run again.

Thanks to http://fazlearefin.blogspot.ca/2014/03/vmware-workstation-10-not-working-on.html for creating this script.

This was also an issue in the kernel module source code delivered with VMware Player 6.0.1 when running on Linux 3.3.13.

VMware has fixed the issue on april 17th in VMware Player 6.0.2 (https://www.vmware.com/support/player60/doc/player-602-release-notes.html) and VMware Workstation 10.02 (https://www.vmware.com/support/ws10/doc/workstation-1002-release-notes.html).

Upgrading to the above releases will add support for Ubuntu 14.04 to VMware.

Mikkel