vmware-player module prevents use of console #8

Hi,

I just found out that the kernel init processes of vmware-player seem to hold a handle on the boot console. The console is vt8 during a regular splash boot.

The consequence at the desktop level is that, when I switch to another user, vt9 is used because vt8 is unavailable and still displays the last messages from boot.

This is not what the user expects. Conceptually, vt8 is the next free console. As is the case on a system without vmware-player installed.

I found the culprit like this:
LANG=C deallocvt 8
VT_DISALLOCATE: Device or resource busy
deallocvt: could not deallocate console 8

/etc/init/vmware-player stop
deallocvt 8
now successful and vt8 appears empty (no more boot messages).

I have attached lsof output. Maybe the handle on /dev/console shown below is the culprit?
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
vmnet-nat 4671 root 0u CHR 5,1 5052 /dev/console

Regards,
 Jörg Höhle