I have been using VMWare Player for a long time. Generally without issue. I am running Player 6.0.6 build-2700073 on CentOS 6. I recently built an Ubuntu Mate 15.10 64 bit virtual machine. I installed the OS manually as the Mate version does not install the build-essential package by default and the auto install of Vmware Tools never completes. After the initial install I then installed all updates, rebooted to the new kernel and then installed build-essential. The VMWare Tools install and configuration went smoothly using all default choices.

When I launch the machine it comes up windowed (that is not full screen). Normally if I login to a virtual machine and then maximize the VMWare Player window the virtual machine display will expand to fit the maximized window. With Ubuntu Mate 15.10 this rarely happens. That is to say I have had the display expand two or three times over several builds and reboots, log out/in, reduce and expand the window etc. It does not exhibit any consistency and is not reproducible.

For my next trick I built an Ubuntu 15.10 virtual machine by the same process with the exception of installing build-essential. I was informed that it was already installed when I attempted to install the package. This virtual machine display will follow the VMWare Player window when I maximize it.

I then manually installed Mate on the Ubuntu virtual machine. This seems to have broken the ability of the vm's screen to expand. I removed Mate and it is still broken.

I have used Ubuntu Mate 15.04 and not experienced this problem. I have no idea where to start looking. Can anyone offer some advice?

TIA,

Ken

This is a wild guess on my part: Ubuntu 15.10 (the latest release) might simply be too new for VMWare Player 6.0.6 build-2700073 to know how to handle. If you can get VMWare Player 7 or, if your CentOS 6 can take it, VMWare Workstation Player 12, you could try and see if that works.

Thanks xode,

Player usually prompts me to upgrade to newer versions. It did not offer Player 7. I will look into it and see if it is supposed to work on CentOS 6. I wish developers would not break things which work

Ken

I upgraded to VMWare Workstation-Player 12 (new naming scheme) and new VMWare Tools on the client. It seems to work most of the time although I had played around with forcing the screen resolution within the client and probably have it hosed up. I will rebuild the VM and see what happens. I think I am on the right track. Thanks again xode.

Ken

Seems like a dead end. The new VM does not expand - same as the original problem.

I did see a note during the VMWare Tools install that open source tools are available from the OS vendor - presumably Canonical. The knowledge base article at vmware.com was not found so I will have to do some searching. Perhaps these tools will help.

Thanks again,

Ken

Another wild guess on my part: are your glibc libraries on your host system newer than the linux kernel you are using for your host system? If not, you might want to upgrade them to the latest version available.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I try and keep everything in sync with the repositories so I do not think that would be an issue - nor would I want to get out of step with the repos. Thanks again xode.

Ken