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Resolved Issues

The following issues are resolved in this release of VMware Workstation.

• VMware floppy device out-of-bounds memory write
  Due to a flaw in the virtual floppy configuration it was possible to perform an out-of-bounds memory write. This vulnerability allowed a guest user to crash the VMX process or to potentially execute code on the host.The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2012-2449 to this issue.
• VMware SCSI device unchecked memory write
  Due to a flaw in the SCSI device registration it was possible to perform an unchecked write into memory. This vulnerability allowed a guest user to crash the VMX process or to potentially execute code on the host.The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2012-2450 to this issue.

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2012-0009 documents workarounds and mitigation for these two resolved issues.

Known Issues

The known issues are grouped as follows:

• Remote Connection and Remote Virtual Machine Issues
• Role and Permission Issues
• Shared Virtual Machine Issues
• Display and Input Issues
• Folder and Team Conversion Issues
• Device Issues
• Physical Machine Virtualization Issues
• Guest Operating System Installation Issues

Remote Connection and Remote Virtual Machine Issues

• When Workstation is installed on a Linux host, VMware Workstation Server writes the core file to /usr/bin instead of to /var/core or /var/log/vmware.
• You cannot use Workstation to create a remote virtual machine on an ESX or ESXi 4.1 host if the virtual machine name contains non-ASCII characters.
• When you upload a virtual machine to a remote server (VM > Manage > Upload), Workstation modifies the MAC address and PCI slot number of the virtual Ethernet device in the newly created remote virtual machine. Network errors can occur in the remote virtual machine if the network settings in the guest operating system require the original network hardware configuration.
  Workaround: Change the network settings in the guest operating system in the remote virtual machine to match the new network hardware configuration.
• VMware Workstation Server occasionally crashes on a 32-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x host.

Role and Permission Issues

• On a Windows host, if you edit a permission, assign the Administrator role, and then immediately click Remove to delete the permission, the original permission still exists when you reopen the Permissions dialog box.

Shared Virtual Machine Issues

• On Windows hosts, if a shared virtual machine has a floppy drive that is configured to connect at power on, and a remote user powers on the virtual machine, a dialog box appears on the host system asking whether to connect the device every time the virtual machine powers on. If you click Yes to close the dialog box on the host system after the virtual machine is completely up and running on the host system, Workstation crashes on the host system.
• On a 32 or 64-bit Windows 7, 64-bit Windows 2008 R2, or 32-bit Windows XP Professional SP3 host, if you uninstall Workstation, preserve the configuration, and then reinstall Workstation to a different path, the Shared VMs item is unavailable in the virtual machine library.
• On a Windows host, if you create a virtual machine with a name that contains non-ASCII characters in the New Virtual Machine wizard, you cannot share the virtual machine with the Move the virtual machine option if the destination path is other than the system operating system location. The sharing process stops with the error message Failed to move VM to destination path.
  Workaround: If you want to share the virtual machine, you must use only ASCII characters in the virtual machine name when you create the virtual machine in the New Virtual Machine wizard.

Display and Input Issues

• On an Ubuntu 11.04 host, the virtual machine icon does not appear on the system tray when you set the Show trayicon setting (Edit > Preferences > Workspace) to Always or When a virtual machine is powered on.
  Workaround: Whitelist vmware-tray as an application that can show system tray icons in Ubuntu 11.04. Alternatively, enable Notification Area (Systray) for all applications, for example:

  gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

  After you run the command, log out and log back in. The command can take several minutes to take effect.

• On a Fedora 15 host, powering on a virtual machine that has DirectX 9 accelerated graphics enabled might fail with the error “Unable to change virtual machine power state: Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to.”
  Workaround: Deselect the Accelerate 3D graphics setting (VM > Settings > Hardware > Display) to disable DirectX 9 accelerated graphics in the virtual machine.
• When you enter Unity mode in an Ubuntu 11.04 guest, application menus do not appear for applications that were opened before entering Unity mode. Application menus do appear for applications that are opened from the Unity launch menu after entering Unity mode.
  Workaround: Disable the APPMENU (Global menu) in the Ubuntu 11.04 guest. See the Ubuntu documentation for more information.
• After you upload a Windows XP virtual machine from the local host to a remote server, you cannot autofit the guest in full screen mode. This problem occurs because VRAM is reduced to 4 MB when the virtual machine is uploaded to the remote server.
• Dragging and dropping a file between two virtual machines in Unity mode causes Workstation to hang.
  Workaround: Copy and paste the file between the two virtual machines in Unity mode instead of dragging and dropping.
• Some older OpenGL games, such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, might crash in a Workstation 8.0 virtual machine. The game is not able to handle the number of OpenGL extensions available since the game was released. This behavior is also seen on host systems.
  Workaround: Add a new environment variable named MESA_EXTENSION_MAX_YEAR and set the value to 2003. This is a global setting, so it will need to be removed if you run any newer OpenGL applications.

Folder and Team Conversion Issues

• When you select a newly created folder in the Workstation library, the toolbar power option button is dimmed and you cannot perform batch power operations on the virtual machines in the folder.
  Workaround: If you select a virtual machine in the folder, move the selection off the virtual machine (for example, click anywhere on the folder tab), and then select the folder in the library again, the toolbar power option button becomes available.
• On some file systems, such as ext4, mounting them from an unclean state, such as a suspended VM, will not work properly.
  Workaround: Power off the virtual machine before mounting the file system from it.

Device Issues

• On Windows hosts, Player crashes if you click Connect or Disconnect in the Removable Devices menu before the console appears.
• An Ubuntu 11.04 host might crash when you try to connect a USB device to a running virtual machine from the status bar icon’s context menu. This problem typically occurs after Workstation is freshly installed, the host is rebooted, and the first time the device is connected to the virtual machine.
• VMware Workstation Server occasionally crashes on a 32-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x host.
  Workaround:Disable the fingerprint module in the host.

Physical Machine Virtualization Issues

• When simple file sharing or UAC is enabled on the physical machine, the Virtualize a Physical Machine wizard returns an “incorrect user credentials” error instead of an error message that indicates simple file sharing or UAC must be disabled before virtualizing the physical machine. See the online help or Using VMware Workstation for information on preparing a physical machine for virtualization.
• You cannot use the Virtualize a Physical Machine wizard if the Workstation installation path contains non-ASCII characters.

Guest Operating System Installation Issues

• Fedora 15 will not install on systems with less than 768 MB of RAM. If you attempt to install Fedora 15 in a virtual machine with less than 768 MB of RAM, the guest system may hang indefinitely.
  Workaround: Set the RAM for the virtual machine to 768 MB or higher and try again. See http://fedoraproject.org/ for more information.