Situation: When you try to open guest machine from the web interface of your vmware server installation, you get this error message:

Cannot access virtual machine console. The request timed out.
The attempt to acquire a valid session ticket for "xxx" took longer than expected. If this problem persists, contact your system administrator.

Configuration: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala 64 bit, VMware remote console plugin version 2.5.0.122581 running on Firefox 3.6.12. The virtual machines are powered by a VMware server 2.0 on Ubuntu 9.10 and Ubuntu Server 8.04.

Solution: Start the plugin from the terminal. This is a workaround, not a solution.

The command is:

~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/
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 /plugins/vmware-vmrc -h "10.20.30.40:8333" -M "YOURVMID"

YOURPROFILE is the name of your Firefox profile. Find it just by going to the above directory.
YOURVMID is ID assigned by VMWare to your VM. You can find it in the shortcut to your VM.

If you try to run the command, you will get some errors and nothing will run. It is because the permissions are incorrect.

Run the following in the terminal

chmod 755 ~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/
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 /plugins/*
chmod 755 ~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/
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 /plugins/bin/*
chmod -r 755 ~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/
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 /plugins/lib/*

After this you can simply run

~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/
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 /plugins/vmware-vmrc -h "10.20.30.40:8333" -M "YOURVMID"

and the Remote Console and you can login to your server

To make it smoother, create file VM.desktop on your desktop, open in in text editor and enter the following text

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=VM
Type=Application
GenericName=VMware Remote Console
Comment=Enables remote interaction with virtual machines.
Icon=~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/VMwareVMRC@vmwar
e.com/plugins/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/vmware-vmrc.png
TryExec=~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/VMwareVMRC@vm
ware.com/plugins/vmware-vmrc
Exec=~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/VMwareVMRC@vmwar
e.com/plugins/vmware-vmrc -h "10.20.30.40:8333" -M "YOURVMID"
GenericName[en_US]=VMware Remote Console

Save the file, change the permissions to make it executable and now you can connect to your server just by double clicking on it.

In order to solve issue when VMWare Remote Console doesn't grab the mouse, please edit file

~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE.default/extensions/ This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it /plugins/vmware-vmrc

and as a first line after the comments enter

export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes

Resources and credits:

• Open Remote Console / Access VMWare Server 2.0.2 on Ubuntu Linux 10.04 Lucid