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I am having an issue setting up my new Ubuntu 16.04 LTS install with VMWare Workstation Pro 14. Install is successful and reports no errors, but when I go to launch a VM it complains about a module "vmmon" not loaded or found.

Thanks for any solutions.

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This error will appear when you start a VM on a system that boots from UEFI with secure boot enabled. Hosts with secure boot enabled will not allow loading of any unsigned drivers. As a result, the vmmon module is not loaded in the system and this is causing the error you see.

There are two ways to resolve the issue:

  1. If you do not use Windows, disable "Secure Boot" in the BIOS.
  2. If you do use Windows, sign the vmmon kernel module and complete the enrollment from the UEFI console.

If you choose to go with the second option, this is the process:

  1. Generate a key pair using the openssl to sign vmmon and vmnet modules:

    $ sudo openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout MOK.priv -outform DER -out MOK.der -nodes -days 36500 -subj "/CN=VMware/"

    Replace MOK with the name of the file you want for the key.

  2. Sign the modules using the generated key by running these commands:

    $ sudo /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n vmmon)
$ sudo /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/scripts/sign-file sha256 ./MOK.priv ./MOK.der $(modinfo -n vmnet)

  3. Import the public key to the system's MOK list by running this command:

    $ sudo mokutil --import MOK.der

  4. Confirm a password for this MOK enrollment request.

  5. Reboot your machine and complete the enrollment from the UEFI console.

Hope this helps 👍🏻

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  • Eureka! This was exactly it. In fact, I actually recall doing this exact procedure a few years ago and getting stumped on the exact same steps :) Thank yo very much!
    – Lorenzo Battilocchi
    Feb 5, 2021 at 0:44
  • Step 5. "Reboot your machine and complete the enrollment from the UEFI console." This is where some effort has to go in, not simply reboot at the big blue UEFI screen. I had to repeat Step 3 and 4 and try it again. Great solution, thank you so much.
    – Cim
    Jan 28, 2023 at 21:20

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