Virtual Network Editor does not start on Ubuntu 24.04

[MarkZvilius1]

I recently installed VMware Workstation Pro (17.6.3) on an Ubuntu 24.04 host (X11 display manager). I installed a Windows 11 guest, and with the default network configuration I am able to access the internet on the guest. However now I need to add a virtual network, and I discovered that the Virtual Network Editor does not start. For example:

$ sudo vmware-netcfg
[AppLoader] Use shipped Linux kernel AIO access library.
An up-to-date "libaio" or "libaio1" package from your system is preferred.

... and nothing after that.

Any suggestions?

Any log file I could look at for clues? I looked at the journalctl log but there is nothing there related to vmware-netcfg, from what I can tell.

Doing some web searches, I found a number of references to "vmware-networks.service", but I don't see that on my system. For example:

$sudo systemctl start vmware-networks.service
Failed to start vmware-networks.service: Unit vmware-networks.service not found.

But, again, networking does work in the guest because I am able to get to the internet. I just can't get the Virtual Network Editor to run.

Thanks for any help!

[RaSystemlord]

Usually, Linux error messages are to the point. In this case, just load these packages from a command line or with a package manager. Google the syntax and follow the possible instructions that you get when trying to load.

In principle, the first error message is enough and there shouldn't be anything after that. However, I have no background knowledge with this particular matter. Maybe somebody else has, if needed.

[MarkZvilius1]

I checked on an existing, working installation of VMware 17.6.3 on Ubuntu, and the message about “an up-to-date libaio package is preferred” appears on that system also, but on that system the Virtual Network Editor starts up just fine.

So that message is not indicative of the problem.

Is the missing vmware-networks service the problem?

[MarkZvilius1]

I found the following message in "syslog" appears when I try to run netcfg on the Ubuntu 24.04 (failing) system:

tracker-miner-fs-3[16796]: (tracker-extract-3:16796): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: 11:18:56.250: Error creating IO channel for /proc/self/mountinfo: Invalid argument (g-io-error-quark, 13)

A web search seems to indicate that this is a bug in GLib 2.80.0 which ships with Ubuntu 24.04:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/localsearch/-/issues/315

At the moment I've solved my immediate problem by copying /etc/vmware/networking from my working (Ubuntu 22.04) system .. with a couple of hand-edits. Hopefully Ubuntu 24.04 will get a GLib update to 2.80.2, but otherwise I'll update to Ubuntu 24.10 next time I need to change my virtual networks. Of course I'm still not entirely certain this is the problem .. but it seems like a reasonable likelihood.