Workstation Pro 17.0.2 networking broken on Linux kernel 6.3.x

[snoopdouglas]

Hi, unsure whether it's worth reporting this here but VMWare seem absolutely adamant against bug reports, so I'm wondering whether you'd be able to help producing a patch for this.

I'm using Fedora 38, and on the kernel 6.2.x series VMWare works without a hitch (and in fact seems fine without these patches, somehow.)

On 6.3.x, vmnet is broken. (vmmon still works fine, though.) Every time I attempt to start the vmware service, it times out when attempting to set up the ethernet device:

Jun 07 19:44:08 vmware[1371]: Starting VMware services:
Jun 07 19:44:08 vmware[1371]:    Virtual machine monitor - failed
Jun 07 19:44:08 vmware[1371]:    Virtual machine communication interface - done
Jun 07 19:44:08 vmware[1371]:    VM communication interface socket family - done
Jun 07 19:44:08 vmware[1371]:    Virtual ethernet - failed
Jun 07 19:44:08 vmware[1371]:    VMware Authentication Daemon - done
Jun 07 19:44:08 VMware-init[1435]: /usr/sbin/vmware-authdlauncher: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.1.1: cannot open shared>
Jun 07 19:44:08 systemd[1]: vmware.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 07 19:44:08 systemd[1]: vmware.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 07 19:44:08 systemd[1]: Failed to start vmware.service - VMware host virtualization and network services for Workstation.

nb. the authdlauncher error appears unrelated, and still appears with kernel 6.2.x, where everything works.

Starting vmware-networks manually produces the same error.

[benjamindoron]

Which CPU do you have? If it's Intel Tigerlake or later, do you see something like traps: Missing ENDBR: init_module+<address>/<address> [vmnet] in the kernel log? If you do, the issue is that the kernel enabled IBT by default from 6.3.0.

You can pass ibt=off on the kernel command line, but probably the better solution is to start compiling these with -fcf-protection=full, though maybe "branch" is enough. I may send a pull request.

[mkubecek]

The libssl error is a userspace problem that has nothing to do with the contents of the repository. Try loading the modules manually and see what happens.

do you see something like traps: Missing ENDBR: init_module+

/

[vmnet] in the kernel log

The ENDBR problem should be fixed since January by commits 0ca979d4bd06 and ce0b61c97752.