Xfce Forum

ramack

Member

Registered: 2009-05-15

Posts: 25

Failed to execute child process "@@BINARY@@" RESOLVED

I have a new install of Debian Bookworm amd64 with xfce.

I've added VMware, but I'm not able to start it through the menu. It will start without error from the CLI. When I start VMware from the default xfce Applications Menu a dialog box pops up displaying:
Failed to execute child process "@@BINARY@@" (no such file or directory).

I've added the Whisker Menu to help troubleshoot, and when I start VMware from that, it starts as expected, and without error.

Why won't it start from the Applications Menu? Looks like a uncommon issue and what I've found, no one had found a solution. I've tried reinstalling VMware several times, and with different releases, but the same error occurs.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Last edited by ramack (2025-05-31 16:59:09)

hotnuma

Member

Registered: 2025-04-12

Posts: 10

Re: Failed to execute child process "@@BINARY@@" RESOLVED

The launcher is probably here :

ls /usr/share/applications/

Then list the "Exec" line :

cat /usr/share/applications/atril.desktop | grep "Exec="
TryExec=atril
Exec=atril %U

Here it's the launcher of atril.

Probably this entry is wrong in the launcher.

ramack

Member

Registered: 2009-05-15

Posts: 25

Re: Failed to execute child process "@@BINARY@@" RESOLVED

Thanks for responding. I realized after posted that I had forgotten to include the contents of

/usr/share/applications/vmware-player.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=VMware Player
Comment=Run a virtual machine
Exec=/usr/bin/vmplayer %u
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=vmware-player
StartupNotify=true
Categories=System;
MimeType=application/x-vmware-vm;application/x-vmware-enc-vm;x-scheme-handler/vmrc;

From other posts I've seen on the web, some had %U, some had %u. Mine has %u and changing it to %U didn't have any effect. From the HHD of my previous install of Bookworm that I had been running since I had sudo -s apt-get dist-upgrade'd to Bookworm and run vmware without issue, the contents of the above file are the same.

hotnuma

Member

Registered: 2025-04-12

Posts: 10

Re: Failed to execute child process "@@BINARY@@" RESOLVED

Someone says it can be a problem of permissions :

https://askubuntu.com/questions/309138/

It seems weird but maybe a clue.

ramack

Member

Registered: 2009-05-15

Posts: 25

Re: Failed to execute child process "@@BINARY@@" RESOLVED

I hadn't taken the  time to look into this issue more until today. But on no direct part of my own, the issue is fixed. I have had multiple updates for Debian Bookworm, none of which I saw were related to VMWare specifically. But as of today, the issue is fixed. I can now start VMWare from the Applications menu without problems. And I am still also able to start VMWare from the Whisker menu too. I had been able open from this menu, but just checking to make sure that when one started working, the other was't broken.

I don't know what the cause was, or what was corrected, but starting VMWare from the Application menu is no longer an issue. I'm not marking solved, but rather resolved.