Unable to install Workstation on Fedora 24 host using the Console option

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to manually install ncurses library on Fedora 24 host.

Symptoms:
Installing Workstation 12.x on Fedora 24 with Console option fails with an error:

User interface initialization failed

Environment

VMware Workstation Pro 12.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Player 12.x (Linux)

Cause

This issue occurs because Fedora 24 ships with a new library libncursesw.so.6.0 which is currently not built into Workstation. You need to install ncurses-compat-libs on Fedora 24 to get the libncursesw.so.5 library.

Resolution

To install ncurses library on the host manually:

1. Launch a Terminal and run this command:
   
   sudo dnf install ncurses-compat-libs
   
   
2. Restart the host and then install Workstation.