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Installing vmplayer 5.0.2 on Slackware 14.1.

Installing vmplayer 5.0.2 on Slackware 14.1.

My power supply died recently and once recovered I found that I could not restart vmplayer virtual machines. After struggling for a day or so trying to get to the bottom of the problem (vmmon sockets weren’t being created) I reluctantly decided to go the Microsoft route and reinstall.

This was particularly irksome as I have a client in Newport Pagnel, near Milton Keynes, using Microsoft SBS and need a MS windows vm.

Now I don’t recall having these problems the first time around but I thrashed around for hours before I finally got the damned thing installed.

The first problem was what to do with the downloaded bundle. It took a while to discover that the bundle is a self extracting script. The file command was no help at all.

file VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.x86_64.bundle
VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.x86_64.bundle: data

The trick is to make it executable and to run it as root. Many attempts followed. After uninstalling the original installation the install was induced to run. Unfortunately after taking you through the licencing agreement and a couple of options, then unpacking the files and self configuring, the program completes with the word "unsuccessful".

Running with the -h option gives you the possible options.

I don’t even remember the install and uninstall options I tried before coming across a post on https://communities.vmware.com/message/2243668 where, in respect of a much more specific problem, rackzo advises using the --ignore-errors option.

I wasn’t getting any errors, other than the rather unhelpful "unsuccessful" but blow me down

sudo bash
chmod 755 VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.x86_64.bundle
./VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.x86_64.bundle --console \
--ignore-errors

worked a treat! I now have my virtual machines back.

Now it’s working I shall of course finally get round to getting rid of it and installing something more open.

Clifford W Fulford
22 April 2014.