Arch Linux

icarus81

Member

Registered: 2011-12-23

Posts: 5

Vmware only runs in root

Hi,

I followed the wiki for installing VMware
here

when I run as a normal user I get

ERROR: Module alias vmmon not found.

which the wiki has a solution for in the trouble shooting section

#rc.d start vmware

Everything starts fine but I am still prompted with the same error.

running

sudo vmware

works perfectly, obviously it is a permission issue but I am not sure what it is. Or the alias is bad.

Thanks for your time.

Gcool

Member

Registered: 2011-08-16

Posts: 1,456

Re: Vmware only runs in root

Have you added your user to the "vmware" group?

---

Burninate!

icarus81

Member

Registered: 2011-12-23

Posts: 5

Re: Vmware only runs in root

There was no "vmware" group. I added one and added myself no luck. Root is not in the vmware group. The only group my username is in is wheel and vmware.

mkudro

Member

From: Nijmegen, NL

Registered: 2011-09-19

Posts: 3

Website

Re: Vmware only runs in root

You shouldn't have to create any groups to run vmware. Daemon, obviously, can be started by root, but for the rest.... i am using vmware player and it can be started by normal user.
Anything in logs?

Last edited by mkudro (2012-04-13 10:39:11)

icarus81

Member

Registered: 2011-12-23

Posts: 5

Re: Vmware only runs in root

Here is the output of

 vmware 2>out.txt 

Pastebin

and I looked and vmmon is loaded.

lsmod |grep vmmon 

vmmon                  61083  0

you will notice in the pastebin their is a link to a log file.

here is that file

Pastebin

thanks again.

tranqil

Member

Registered: 2012-09-06

Posts: 31

Re: Vmware only runs in root

This problem is related to wrong permission of "/sbin/modinfo" from package "vmware-patch".

VMware executes the /sbin/modinfo -> /usr/bin/modinfo -> kmod with user permission and on "kmod" isn't set the suid bit for user root. This may a bug in kmod because it is executble with user rights but we doesn't get the right information as we can see here:

[~][$] /sbin/modinfo vmmon
modinfo: ERROR: Module alias vmmon not found.

[~][#] /sbin/modinfo vmmon
filename:       /lib/modules/3.6.10-1-ARCH/misc/vmmon.ko
supported:      external
license:        GPL v2
description:    VMware Virtual Machine Monitor.
author:         VMware, Inc.
depends:        
vermagic:       3.6.10-1-ARCH SMP preempt mod_unload modversions

[~][$] sudo chmod u+s /sbin/modinfo
[~][$] /sbin/modinfo vmmon
filename:       /lib/modules/3.6.10-1-ARCH/misc/vmmon.ko
supported:      external
license:        GPL v2
description:    VMware Virtual Machine Monitor.
author:         VMware, Inc.
depends:        
vermagic:       3.6.10-1-ARCH SMP preempt mod_unload modversions 

Alternative you can simply remove the aur/vmware-patch package and fix line 95 in /usr/bin/vmware
from:

if "$BINDIR"/vmware-modconfig --appname="VMware Workstation" --icon="vmware-workstation" &&
   /sbin/modinfo vmmon; then
   exec "$libdir"/bin/"vmware" "$@"

to:

if "$BINDIR"/vmware-modconfig --appname="VMware Workstation" --icon="vmware-workstation"; then
   exec "$libdir"/bin/"vmware" "$@"

Last edited by tranqil (2012-12-19 19:50:22)

dimm0k

Member

Registered: 2012-12-29

Posts: 1

Re: Vmware only runs in root

This problem is related to wrong permission of "/sbin/modinfo" from package "vmware-patch".

VMware executes the /sbin/modinfo -> /usr/bin/modinfo -> kmod with user permission and on "kmod" isn't set the suid bit for user root. This may a bug in kmod because it is executble with user rights but we doesn't get the right information as we can see here:

After making some changes to my system to better secure it, VMware stopped working for me unless I ran it as root.  I figured it was a permissions problem and that it had something to do with the kernel modules, but I couldn't figure out what...  until I came across this post!  I created an account just to say...  THANKS!  It's people like you who post informative and detailed responses that solve issues not only for the OP, but also others like myself stumbling across the Internet...