Workaround for vmrun under VMWare Workstation 12

Ever since upgrading to VMWare Worksation 12 (12.0.0, 12.0.1 and 12.1.0), I haven't been able to use 'vmrun' to work with my Shared virtual machines. This had been working since (at least WS8) and up to (and including) VMWare Workstation 11.1.2.

I used to be able to do this in shared workstation mode:

$ /usr/bin/vmrun -T ws-shared -h https://localhost:943/sdk -u user1 listRegisteredVM
Total registered VMs: 23
[ha-datacenter/standard] WinVista/winVista.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] RHEL6_x64/RHEL6.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node1/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node2/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node3/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node4/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node1/VCS5.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node2/VCS5.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node3/VCS5.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] WinXP/winXPPro.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node4/VCS5.vmx
[....]

Now, on VMW 12, I just get this failure:

$ /usr/bin/vmrun -T ws-shared -h https://localhost:943/sdk -u user1 listRegisteredVM
Host password:
Unable to connect to host.
Error: The specified service provider was not found

Fortunately, vmrun (part of the VIX API bundle) is quite flexible and I just found a workaround.

On a normal VMW 12 install, there's a text config file that lists the API endpoints:

$ cat /usr/lib/vmware-vix/vixwrapper-config.txt
[....]
# Workstation 12.0.0
ws         19  vmdb  12.0.0 Workstation-12.0.0
player     19  vmdb  12.0.0 Workstation-12.0.0

# Workstation 12.0.1
ws         19  vmdb  12.0.1 Workstation-12.0.0
player     19  vmdb  12.0.1 Workstation-12.0.0
# EOF

On VMW 11, you'll note that the 'ws-shared' entries are present whereas they are missing from VMW 12.

$ cat /usr/lib/vmware-vix/vixwrapper-config.txt
[....]
# Workstation 11.0.0
ws         17  vmdb  11.0.0 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
player     17  vmdb   7.0.0 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
ws-shared  17  none  11.0.0 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0

# Workstation 11.1.0
ws         17  vmdb  11.1.0 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
player     17  vmdb   7.1.0 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
ws-shared  17  none  11.1.0 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0

# Workstation 11.1.2
ws         17  vmdb  11.1.2 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
player     17  vmdb   7.1.2 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
ws-shared  17  none  11.1.2 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0

# ESX/vSphere/Server2.0 support
viserver   12  none  2.0.0  Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
esx        12  none  4.0.0  Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0

The workaround is a two-part process:

copy the libs from a VMW11 to your VMW12 install.

That's only the /usr/lib/vmware-vix/Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0 directory.

edit vixwrapper-config.txt on VMW12 to add the missing entries and point to the libs you just copied over.

$ cd /usr/lib/vmware-vix
$ diff -c vixwrapper-config.txt.orig vixwrapper-config.txt
*** vixwrapper-config.txt.orig  Fri Oct 30 11:52:49 2015
--- vixwrapper-config.txt       Fri Nov 20 15:59:39 2015
***************
*** 26,34 ****
--- 26,36 ----
  # Workstation 12.0.0
  ws         19  vmdb  12.0.0 Workstation-12.0.0
  player     19  vmdb  12.0.0 Workstation-12.0.0
+ ws-shared  19  none  12.0.0 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
  
  # Workstation 12.0.1
  ws         19  vmdb  12.0.1 Workstation-12.0.0
  player     19  vmdb  12.0.1 Workstation-12.0.0
+ ws-shared  19  none  12.0.1 Workstation-11.0.0-and-vSphere-6.0.0
  
  # EOF

That's the end of the story, vmrun works again with VMW 12 in Shared VMWare Workstation mode...:

$ /usr/bin/vmrun -T ws-shared -h https://localhost:943/sdk -u user1 listRegisteredVM
Host password:
Total registered VMs: 42
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node1/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node2/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node3/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS41_node4/VCS4.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node1/VCS5.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node2/VCS5.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node3/VCS5.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] WinXP/winXPPro.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] VCS51_node4/VCS5.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] DOS622/dos.vmx
[ha-datacenter/standard] Beini_122/Beini.vmx
[....]

For your convenience, I placed a zip file here with the proper files on my site.

Extract with:

$ sudo unzip -o -d / vmrun_ws-shared_VMW12.zip