& How-to Install VMware Player in Ubuntu 12.04 & Precise Pangolin (Linux Kernel 3.2)

The latest version of VMware Player 4.0.3 the installation fails to install correctly within Ubuntu 12.04 LTS using the Linux Kernel 3.2.x due to a Virtual Network Device error, however you can successfully patch this issue using this tutorial.

Here is a quick overview of VMware Player.

VMware Player is a freeware virtualization software package from VMware, Inc. (a company which was formerly a division of and whose majority shareholder remains EMC Corporation). VMware Player can run existing virtual appliances and create its own virtual machines (which require a operating system to be installed to be functional). It uses the same virtualization core as VMware Workstation, a similar program with more features, and not free of charge. VMware Player is available for personal non-commercial use, or for distribution or other use by written agreement. No support is provided by VMWare, but there is an active community website for discussing and resolving issues.

After you create your VMPlayer virtually installed OS images you can then you export and migrate your completed installations up into the Cloud at Amazon EC, Rackspace Cloud Services, etc.. Here is a good example of how to set up a Rackspace Cloud Server, in case you would like to learn more about how something like that is easily done. Cloud servers are relatively inexpensive and usually depend on how much “use” or “visits” your cloud server generates, and CPU usage, etc.  Amazon has 750 hours free for the first year the last time I checked too. But anyways, onto the following tutorial…

How-to Install VMware Player in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin (Linux Kernel 3.2)

Download VMware Player into your home folder.

You will need to register for an account before downloading the VMware Player installation bundle (or just so a quick search for some alternate download link).

Special Note: if you’re using Google Chrome, the downloaded file will have “.txt” extension – rename the extension to “.bundle”.

Now let’s install the required dependencies and run the downloaded VMware .bundle file, copy and paste into Terminal:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

For Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 32-bit systems:

sudo chmod +x VMware-Player-4.0.3-703057.i386.bundle 
sudo ./VMware-Player-4.0.3-703057.i386.bundle

For Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit systems:

sudo chmod +x VMware-Player-4.0.3-703057.x86_64.bundle 
sudo ./VMware-Player-4.0.3-703057.x86_64.bundle

Special Note: The filename in the commands above may be different, depending on the VMware version you’ve downloaded (at the time I’m writing this post, version 4.0.3 is the latest), so make sure to edit the above commands before copy and pasting into Terminal using wordpad/gedit/etc.

At this point, a window will pop-up and then click “Next”:



How-to patch VMware 4.0.3 to work with Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

Now we need to actually patch the file before attempting to run VMware player in Ubuntu 12.04 because it won’t work due to the following Virtual Network Device error:

“Unable to start services. See log file /tmp/vmware-root/mdconfig-23331.log for details“.



How-to patch VMware Player, copy and paste in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install patch 
cd 
wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz 
sudo tar -xvf vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz 
sudo ~/vmware802fixlinux320/patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

The commands above download the patch and run the bash script file but if you want, you can also manually download the patch from here as well.

If you’ve already installed an previous version of VMware Player and used a patch for it, you will receive an error like this:

/usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched found. 
You have already patched your sources. Exiting

To resolve this issue, simply remove the “.patched” file and try again:

sudo rm /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched

Go ahead and test your newly installed VMware Player 4.0.3 and it should work for you now under Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin and look something like this:



Special Note: The above patch should work with both VMware Player and VMware Workstation, but I’ve only tested it with VMware Player (under Ubuntu 12.04). If you are using a previous version of Ubuntu make sure to do a Google search for the proper installation instructions for your version of Ubuntu.

Free VMware Technical Support: If you need technical support using or installing VMWare Player please visit the following web site for additional help:

http://communities.vmware.com

source : http://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/how-to-install-vmware-player-in-ubuntu-12-04/