VMware Workstation install error: Service VMware Authorization Service (VMAuthdService) failed to start.

I was trying to install VMware Workstation 10 on my PC when suddenly wild message appears:

Service VMware Authorization Service (VMAuthdService) failed to start.

Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

I followed all of the official VMware guides to resolve this problem but non of them worked. After pulling my hairs for a while, the solution was to disable hardware-assisted virtualization in Avast! Antivirus. Even when you disable Avast! shield control, you are unable to install Workstation without disabling hardware-assisted virtualization or uninstalling Avast!.

Open Avast!

1. Go to Settings
2. Go to Troubleshooting
3. Uncheck Enable hardware-assisted virtualization
4. Reboot
5. Profit

HttpsURLConnection POST example with NameValuePair and UrlEncodedFormEntity

try {
 String u = "https://...";
 
 // Add your data
 List nameValuePairs = new ArrayList(2);
 nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("id", "1"));
 // ...
 UrlEncodedFormEntity entity = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs);
 
 URL url = new URL(u);
 HttpsURLConnection request = (HttpsURLConnection) url.openConnection();

 request.setUseCaches(false);
 request.setDoOutput(true);
 request.setDoInput(true);

 request.setRequestMethod("POST");
 OutputStream post = request.getOutputStream();
 entity.writeTo(post);
 post.flush();

 BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(request.getInputStream()));
 String inputLine, response = "";
 while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
  response += inputLine;
 }
 post.close();
 in.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
 Log.e("Your app", "error", e);
}

javax.net.ssl.SSLPeerUnverifiedException: No peer certificate

Dealing with the above mentioned Exception has sent me into a wild-goose chase for a quick fix.

Unfortunately the depth of this problem is much larger than I anticipated.

A quick web search suggests that there is a problem with the SSL chain, therefore this would mean that there is a SSL configuration problem on the server, that it's not serving the certificates correctly, eg. in the correct order, or using a self-signed certificate in which case the server also acts as the Certificate Authority.

Some mentioned solutions were to implement your own SSL Client, with a Trust Manager that does absolutely nothing. This is VERY VERY BAD. Don't do it.

Other suggestions were to use your own Trust Keystore (when using self signed certificates, or using "untrusted CAs", like, for example, a university CA).

But if you're using a trusted CA this shouldn't be a problem, right?

For a SSL Server Test you can use Qualys' tool here:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=example.com

Using this test I found no errors on the domain, but there was a notice that the site only works in browsers with SNI support.

SNI (Server Name Indication) is kind of like a Virtual Host for SSL. Usually SSL certificates were issued for an IP address, but having multiple virtual hosts on the same server can cause problems like different browsers getting different SSL certificates from the same server.

You can test this if you have Android <= 2.3.7. Open the browser and navigate to the site. If you get a certificate warning, check the certificate.

So, obviously, if old browsers have this problems, there are going to be problems in the code too.
The answer here summarizes it. The best workaround seems to be to use another library, which supports SNI.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21956663/why-does-android-get-the-wrong-ssl-certificate-two-domains-one-server

The most likely cause for this problem is that the server uses Server Name Indication to choose which certificate to send. If the client doesn't support SNI, the server cannot choose which certificate to send during the SSL/TLS handshake (before any HTTP traffic is sent). SNI is required when you want to use multiple certificates on the same IP address and port, but not all clients support it (notoriously, IE on any version of Windows XP, and a number of mobile browsers).

You're also visibly using the Apache HTTP Client library (not HttpsURLConnection, for which there can be SNI support with some Android versions. Support for SNI in the Apache HTTP Client library is quite recent, and certainly hasn't made it into the Android stack.You may find the workaround described in this article useful (although it seems only to work for Android 4.2+).

Another two options would be:

• to use a distinct IP address for each host (so as not to need SNI), if you're in control of server, or

• to use another HTTP Client library (e.g. HttpsURLConnection).

---

Other notes:

Installing the INTERMEDIATE certificate into Apache on Ubuntu/Debian systems
Credits: https://gist.github.com/mgedmin/7124635

• download https://www.startssl.com/certs/sub.class1.server.ca.pem (or you know, whatever)
• put this in your Apache config (e.g. inside a  directive):

    SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/subdomain.example.com.crt
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/subdomain.example.com.pem
    SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/certs/startssl-class1-intermediate.crt