VMware on Debian

From Buici

Library Conflicts

There is a slight gotcha with using VMWare Server on Debian. This problem may occur on other GNU/Linux systems as well, though I've only observed it on Debian.

VMware comes with libraries that it uses in the event that they are missing from the system environment. These libraries are stored in /usr/lib/vmware/lib. VMware may not understand the way that the system libraries are linked such that an ambient library links against one of the libraries present in the VMware library cache.

If, when you execute the vmware application, you see messages like these:

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)

(vmware:24464): libgnomevfs-WARNING **: Cannot load module `/usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/libfile.so' (/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)) 

you are experiencing the problem. What these errors mean is that the system is loading libcairo from /usr/lib, and libpng from the VMware library cache, but the versions are not compatible.

You can fix this for non-root users by making the appropriate library directories unreadable. Note that this solution does not work when running vmware as root.

# sudo chmod -rx /usr/lib/vmware/lib/{libgcc_s.so.1,libpng12.so.0}

Shared Folders

VMWare Workstation and GSX/ESX support a shared-folder feature. This feature is *not* available in the free VMWare Server product. We can implement shared folders using Samba (Linux) or Windows File Sharing (Windows) on the host operating system.