Unable to install vmware-workstation from unstable

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1

Hello,

I’m trying to install vmware-workstation from unstable in order to get v17.

But after the build, vmware-networks.service won’t start.

Error logs:

vmware-networks[187335]: Failed to enable hostonly virtual adapter on vmnet1
vmnet-dhcpd[187406]: exiting.
vmware-networks[187335]: Failed to start DHCP service on vmnet1
vmware-networks[187335]: Failed to start NAT service on vmnet8
vmware-networks[187335]: Failed to enable hostonly virtual adapter on vmnet8
vmnet-dhcpd[187411]: exiting.
vmware-networks[187335]: Failed to start DHCP service on vmnet8
vmware-networks[187335]: Failed to start some/all services
vmware-networks[187335]: Started Bridge networking on vmnet0
systemd[1]: vmware-networks.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE

Any ideas ?

Thx

2

It’s essentially impossible to answer this without a clearer idea of what you actually did to “install from unstable”.

3

Indeed, it’s not my best post here :man_facepalming:

I’m running nixos on stable, and tried to install vmware workstation with the pkgs from unstable.

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

let
  unstable = import <nixos-unstable> {
    config = {
      allowUnfree = true;
    };
  };
in
{
  # vmware
  virtualisation.vmware.host.enable = true;
  virtualisation.vmware.host.package = unstable.vmware-workstation;
}

vmware v16 from stable works fine BTW

4

So you’re using the module from stable with the package from unstable. Typically, that would work, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s an incompatibility in this case… No, I checked the git history for the module, and it doesn’t seem to have had any substantive changes since it was created 10 months ago.

That leaves me out of ideas, I’m afraid.

5

A plausible explanation would be that it fails to load the required kernel modules for networking.

If you had v16 from stable enabled before I suppose things might go sideways due to leftover loaded modules…

1 Like
6

Your explanation is correct :+1:
I managed to launch the vmware v17 binary from the terminal directly from the nix store, and I have this error msg:

Version mismatch with vmmon module: expecting 416.0, got 410.0.
You have an incorrect version of the 'vmmon' kernel module.
Try reinstalling VMware Workstation.
7

Having identified the issue I thought it would be easy to solve.

But if I do a nixos-rebuild build with vmware package from unstable I’ve end up with kernel modules from stable in the result.

This is the result after a build with vmware from stable

lrwxrwxrwx   105 root  1 janv.  1970 result/kernel-modules/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmmon.ko -> /nix/store/w1j81bmhw065z0n0f507m17ns34b27yj-vmware-modules-16.2.4-6.1.12/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmmon.ko
lrwxrwxrwx   105 root  1 janv.  1970 result/kernel-modules/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmnet.ko -> /nix/store/w1j81bmhw065z0n0f507m17ns34b27yj-vmware-modules-16.2.4-6.1.12/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmnet.ko
lrwxrwxrwx    80 root  1 janv.  1970 result/sw/bin/vmware -> /nix/store/lhf6x667bvf0b2phl27n3av9hxlk662k-vmware-workstation-16.2.4/bin/vmware

This is the result after a build with vmware from unstable

lrwxrwxrwx   105 root  1 janv.  1970 result/kernel-modules/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmmon.ko -> /nix/store/w1j81bmhw065z0n0f507m17ns34b27yj-vmware-modules-16.2.4-6.1.12/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmmon.ko
lrwxrwxrwx   105 root  1 janv.  1970 result/kernel-modules/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmnet.ko -> /nix/store/w1j81bmhw065z0n0f507m17ns34b27yj-vmware-modules-16.2.4-6.1.12/lib/modules/6.1.12/misc/vmnet.ko
lrwxrwxrwx    80 root  1 janv.  1970 result/sw/bin/vmware -> /nix/store/mdcln4gi3r2yvfdl57jnlf89ky0kh5sf-vmware-workstation-17.0.0/bin/vmware

You can see that vmware version isn’t the same with the unstable version as expected, but the kernel modules aren’t updated.

I’ve no idea how to fix that.

8

You can only fix this by also switching the kernel to unstable.

I would not recommend doing that.

1 Like
9

I had to try :grinning:

Switching the kernel to unstable fixes the issue indeed.
Are there any specific issues that I could encounter with the kernel switched to unstable ?