I recently updated my Ubuntu install from 17.04 to 17.10, which meant the kernel was updated to 4.13. As a result, I was no longer able to run VMs with VMware Workstation.

I found some posts regarding the error and that it was due to a change in the way the Linux kernel handles paging. To resolve the issue I needed to replace the vmmon modules.

I didn’;t take down the entire error message, but this post references the same error. There are a number of other posts on the VMware community forums for the same error.

The Fix

First of all, please go to the GitHub repo and read the disclaimers in the README.MD.

The repo has a number of branches, covering different versions of Workstation and VMware player. Adjust the git clone command to suit your version by replacing workstation-14.0.0 with a version relevant to you.

Run the below commands and the memory issue should be resolved

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#Clone workstation 14 branch
git clone -b workstation-14.0.0 https://github.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules.git
cd vmware-host-modules
#Overwrite existing vmmon archive
sudo tar cfv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon.tar vmmon-only/
#Install new modules
sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all