Getting VMWare Workstation Installed on Pop! os

I have been having problems with VirtualBox.

As a part of my new job, I have been using various virtual machines to test things, analyze malware, CTF resources, an AD lab, etc. This has included both Linux and Windows VMs. While I was getting a set of Windows and Linux VMs set up for a malware analysis course I’m taking (from TCM, their Practical Malware Analysis & Triage course), I ran into an issue with Virtual Box in trying to set up the configuration to be the same as the one in the course. You see, Virtaul Box no longer lets Linux users set host-only IPs to be anything other than 192.168.56.0/21 without making a config file to change it. I spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting because my config file didn’t take. (The issue ended up being that I didn’t have the * on each line because it wasn’t clear to me that was needed.) Once I got that fixed, I went to open up my Windows VM and… it wouldn’t boot. I tried an old known-good Windows 11 machine I had from when it first was released and that also wouldn’t boot. Removing the config for the network didn’t fix anything. Since having a hypervisor without the ability to run one of the major operating systems doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I decided I’d give VMWare a shot.

Installing VMWare Workstation was less than simple. This is the process I took, and I hope that this will help someone else as well (or just me when I inevitably have to reinstall it).

First, I got the latest version of workstation directly from VMWare.

Then I gave the .bundle execution privileges and ran it. Then I got pissed because the necessary modules don’t ship with the installer, and their documentation is only for Fedora and I’m using Pop!_os/Ubuntu.

After digging around, I found that vmware-modconfig --console --install-all didn’t help either, and this was the most common “solution” to the problem.

Then I came across the actual solution:

git clone https://github.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules

cd vmware-host-modules

git checkout workstation-<version from installer bundle>

tar -cf vmmon.tar vmmon-only

tar -cd vmnet.tar vmnet-only

sudo cp -v vmmon.tar vmnet.tar /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/

At this point, the installer ran just fine and I was able to proceed with actual setup.

Now if only Flare VM didn’t take two hours to install…

On an unrelated note, I’ve since replaced both my storage and my RAM, so my laptop is running like an absolute unit. I definitely recommend upgrade if you plan on using Chrome.