Bug 106291 – "Unable to change virtual machine power state" after updating to vmware-workstation 5.0.0.13124-r2

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Oliver Schwabedissen 2005-09-17 10:26:50 UTC]

After updating from vmware-workstation 5.0.0.13124-r1 to the new vmware-
workstation 5.0.0.13124-r2 and adding the user to the group "vmware" (and 
logging on again) I get the following error message when trying to start a 
virtual machine:

"Unable to change virtual machine power state: Failed to connect to peer 
process."

Verified that the user is a member of group "vmware".

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start VMware workstation
2. Try to power on a virtual machine




As a workaround I set the SUID flag on /opt/vmware/lib/bin/vmware-vmx again:

# chmod u+s /opt/vmware/lib/bin/vmware-vmx
# ls -l /opt/vmware/lib/bin/vmware-vmx
-rwsr-x---  1 root vmware 3636940 17. Sep 17:34 /opt/vmware/lib/bin/vmware-vmx

After setting the SUID flag Vmware worked fine again.

Seems the flag is first set in the ebuild and later removed again:

src_install() {
[...]
        # We set vmware-vmx and vmware-ping suid
        chmod u+s ${Ddir}/bin/vmware-ping
        chmod u+s ${Ddir}/lib/bin/vmware-vmx
[...]
        # this makes the vmware-vmx executable only executable by vmware group
        fowners root:vmware ${dir}/lib/bin{,-debug}/vmware-vmx || die
        fperms 750 ${dir}/lib/bin{,-debug}/vmware-vmx || die
[...]

Seems the "fperms 750 ..." removes the SUID flag, but this stops VMware from 
working. Also see this thread: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-381798.html

[Comment 1 Gustavo Felisberto (RETIRED) 2005-09-17 11:15:08 UTC]

Inoticed this same issue with the ebuild for vmware beta 5.5. I guess we need to
have:
fperms 4750 ${dir}/lib/bin{,-debug}/vmware-vmx || die

[Comment 2 Jules Colding 2005-09-19 04:14:35 UTC]

I can only confirm that the setuid flag solves the problem in my end too.

[Comment 3 Vasilij K. Savin 2005-09-19 07:06:03 UTC]

Just SUID flag setting did not solve the problem for me. I have to   
chmod o+rx /opt/vmware/lib/bin/vmware-vmx  
to make it working...  

[Comment 4 Oliver Schwabedissen 2005-09-19 07:47:59 UTC]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Just SUID flag setting did not solve the problem for me. I have to   
> chmod o+rx /opt/vmware/lib/bin/vmware-vmx  
> to make it working...  

Did you add your user to the group "vmware" (and did a logout/login afterwards)? 
This requirement is new since vmware-workstation 5.0.0.13124-r2, see the 
changelog/ebuild.

[Comment 5 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) 2005-09-19 09:02:51 UTC]

Fixed in CVS... sorry about that...

[Comment 6 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2005-09-26 00:36:48 UTC]

*** Bug 107228 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***