Table of Contents

Downloading and Installing VMware Workstation

Visit VMware Workstation official webpage and click on download now under VMware Workstation Pro for PC. This will take you to Broadcom’s support centre.

Click on “Free Software Downloads available HERE” underneath the search box.

Click on “VMware Workstation Pro” near the bottom of the page.

Select the desired version, and download the .bundle file. Note that you may be prompted to agree to the Terms and Conditions and have to fill in contact information and address.

Run the following command to install VMware Workstation. This example uses the 25H2u1 version, replace the filename with your own.

$ sudo ./VMware-Workstation-Full-25H2u1-25219725.x86_64.bundle

Follow the prompts to install.

Building VMware Host Modules

VMware Workstation requires two kernel modules (vmmon and vmnet) to be compiled against the current kernel to function. When VMware Workstation starts up and detects that these two kernel modules are not loaded, it will prompt you to compile and install it.

If the automatic installation fails, it is possible to manually install it with the tarballs that ship with the VMware Workstation. This can also be found in the VMware page in the Debian Wiki.

$ cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
$ sudo tar xvf vmnet.tar
$ cd vmnet-only
$ sudo make
$ cd ..
$ sudo tar xvf vmmon.tar
$ cd vmmon-only
$ sudo make
$ cd ..
$ sudo cp vmmon.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/vmmon.ko
$ sudo cp vmnet.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/vmnet.ko
$ sudo depmod -a

Finally, reboot your device and VMware Workstation should detect the modules are loaded.

Note: The two modules may need to be re-compiled and re-installed everytime the kernel is updated.

(Secure Boot Only) Signing the VMware Host Modules

When Secure Boot is enabled, the self-built kernel modules will not load. To fix this, the kernel modules must be signed with a openssl key. This is documented in a Broadcom Support article.

To sign the modules, first create a keypair using the following command:

$ openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout MOK.priv -outform DER -out MOK.der -nodes -days 36500 -subj "/CN=VMware/"

Next, import the key to the MOK list using the following command:

$ sudo mokutil --import MOK.der

Sign the two modules using the following command:

$ sudo /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n vmmon)
$ sudo /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n vmnet)

After rebooting, the kernel module should be loaded and VMware Workstation should work as expected.

Note: Only the final step need to be repeated everytime the kernel modules are re-compiled and re-installed.