I've installed VMware Server on Ubuntu (after 2 days of serious headaches -- another story). When I run the Console, it presents a Connect dialog box, and when I say "connect to local host" it says it cannot find any running server.
I have looked everywhere and cannot find any clue as to why. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

well, is it running? you should have a service in /etc/init.d or similar which will start and stop it.

I checked, and there is no server running.
Further, there is an error in one of the log files that looks serious:
$ cat /var/log/vmware/vmware-serverd.log
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| Log for VMware Server pid=7308 version=1.0.0 build=build-28343 option=Release.3.2.2
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| Program: /usr/sbin/vmware-serverd
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| CWD: /var/log/vmware
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| Init script: /usr/lib/vmware/serverd/init.pl
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| Perl error 2 during parsing of files.
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| eval error: Can't locate VMware/VMServerd.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/vmware/perl5/site_perl/5.005 /usr/lib/vmware/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux .) at /usr/lib/vmware/serverd/init.pl line 48.
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| VMServerd Panic: Could not initialize Perl script handler.Aug 13 20:49:33: app|
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| Backtrace:
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| Backtrace[0] 0xbfedd3b8 eip 0x80caf8a
Aug 13 20:49:33: app| Backtrace[1] 0xbfee0428 eip 0x8078cb3
takle@takle-desktop:/$

Any Ideas about how to fix this?
I'm completely baffled as to why installation of VMware is so user-hostile!