VMware install on Fedora 45 fails:

Reloading systemd: [ OK ]
Starting vmware (via systemctl): Failed to start vmware.service: Unit vmware.service not found.
[FAILED]

For some reason, VMware still relies on the ancient SysV Init scripts, and previous versions of systemd included automatic conversions of these to be systemd-compatible

With Fedora 45, this has finally been removed, (and there had been warnings about this for some considerable time..)

Fix, is to create and enable the correct systemd conversion scripts..

For Fedora, in /etc/systemd/system
(as root) create vmware.service with the following contents:
———————————————-
[Unit]
Description=VMware Workstation Services
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware start
ExecStop=/etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware stop
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target graphical.target
——————————————-
Then
# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl enable vmware.service
# systemctl start vmware.service

– and everything should work OK, and be future-proof..   Hopefully, VMware might finally provide systemd support, now?

Robert Gadsdon.   August 28th 2026..