For VMware bundle versions, a collection of patches needed for the VMware host modules to build against recent kernels can be found from the vmware-host-modules GitHub repository. See the INSTALL document found on the repository for the most up-to-date module installation instructions for VMware Workstation versions from 12.5.5 and up.
By default, VMware writes a running guest system's RAM to a file on disk. If you are certain you have enough spare memory, you can ensure the guest OS writes its memory directly to the host's RAM by adding the following to the VM's .vmx:
VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters are high-performance storage adapters for VMware ESXi that can result in greater throughput and lower CPU utilization. PVSCSI adapters are best suited for environments, where hardware or applications drive a very high amount of I/O throughput.
If these settings are not in the virtual machine's configuration, the paravirtual SCSI adapter can still be enabled. Ensure that the paravirtual SCSI adapter is included in the kernel image by modifying the mkinitcpio.conf:
VMware offers multiple network adapters for the guest OS. The default adapter used is usually the e1000 adapter, which emulates an Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet NIC. This Intel adapter is generally compatible with the built-in drivers across most operating systems, including Arch.
Arch has the vmxnet3 kernel module available with a default install. Once enabled in mkinitcpio (or if it is auto-detected; check by running lsmod grep vmxnet3 to see if it is loaded), shut down and change the network adapter type in the .vmx file to the following:
VMware Workstation provides the possibility to remotely manage Shared VMs through the vmware-workstation-server service. However, this will fail with the error "incorrect username/password" due to incorrect PAM configuration of the vmware-authd service. To fix it, edit /etc/pam.d/vmware-authd like this:
If you just get back to the prompt when opening the .bundle, then you probably have a deprecated or broken version of the VMware installer and it should removed (you may also refer to the #Removal section of this article):
Registered bug at Mageia, but it seems that there are no error messages shown in terminal with arch. When inspecting the logs, which are in /tmp/vmware-, there are VMWARE_SHIPPED_LIBS_LIST is not set, VMWARE_SYSTEM_LIBS_LIST is not set, VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS is not set, VMWARE_USE_SYSTEM_LIBS is not set issues. Process simply terminates with Unable to execute /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-modconfig. after vmware or vmplayer is executed. Solution is the same, as root do:
Despite setting the VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS variable, VMWare may still fail to find certain libraries. An example is the libfontconfig.so.1 library. Check vmware logs in the tmp directory to see which libraries are still not found. Copy them to the appropriate path with libraries existing on the system:
On systems with fontconfig version 2.13.0 and above, it may be needed to force VMware to use the shipped libfontconfig file instead of the newer system file. In such case, it is also necessary to provide a shared object library file libexpat.so.0 for the shipped fontconfig. This applies for at least VMware version 12.5.9. As root do:
This issue is related to promiscuous mode which, following standard Linux practice, can only be enabled by the root user. To work around these limitations, the permissions for the networking device in question have to be changed.
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