Anyone got VMware working under 6.2?

[Capricorny]

Setting up VMware Workstation under 6.0.1 was a breeze, but under 6.2, I can't get WS6.5, WS7.0 or Player3.0 to install. It stops in the compilation of the vmmon kernel module. First, there was the error of the missing /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31.6/arch/x86/Makefile_32.cpu (well known bug), but fixing that didn't help.

Is there something screwed up with kernel-2.6.31.6 in Debian? Anyone got VMware working under 6.2?

[klaus2008]

Please excuse my english but it is not my native language.

I use the KNOPPIX-DVD 6.2.0 installed on a harddisk. In order to use the VMware Player 3.0 I did the following.

1. I installed the kernel source for the linux kernel, which is in the archive /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.31.6.tar.bz2. After having done that I renamed the old directory /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31.6 to /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31.6.old and created a new link to the new source directory. Then I moved into the directory /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.31.6 and built the linux kernel with the modules.

sudo su
cd /usr/src
tar xjf linux-source-2.6.31.6.tar.bz2
mv linux-headers-2.6.31.6 linux-headers-2.6.31.6.old
ln -s linux-source-2.6.31.6 linux
cd /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.31.6
make oldconfig
make prepare
make

I needed those steps for the installation of the nVidia display driver.

2. I downloaded the VMware Player 3.0 from VMware and executed the file VMware-Player-3.0.0-203739.i386 as user root. The installation was done without errors. There was a new menu item VMware Player which I selected. The include files for the current kernel were not found and the installer did not accept /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.31.6. Therefore i made a new link

sudo su
cd /usr/src
ln -s linux-source-2.6.31.6 linux-headers-2.6.31.6

Then I used the location /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31.6. The installation was done without errors.

3. In order to test the installation I used an old virtual machine with Windows 98 SE, which I previously created with VMware Player 3.0 for Windows XP. As far as I could see it worked well.

[Capricorny]

Please excuse my english but it is not my native language.
...
2. I downloaded the VMware Player 3.0 from VMware and executed the file VMware-Player-3.0.0-203739.i386 as user root. The installation was done without errors. There was a new menu item VMware Player which I selected. The include files for the current kernel were not found and the installer did not accept /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.31.6. Therefore i made a new link

sudo su
cd /usr/src
ln -s linux-source-2.6.31.6 linux-headers-2.6.31.6

Then I used the location /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31.6. The installation was done without errors.
...

Thank you very much!
It seems that the header stucture is rotten, but the kernel source is ok. And because the headers reflect the kernel, you could make it work by just symlinking to the actual source! That's clever! I'll se if I can make this work. It is a common problem, nice it we have a general solution

[Capricorny]

I could not make the suggested workaround work with the installed kernel, but after recompiling, it worked and Player 3.0 ran just fine.
Next we'll see if this is fixed in 6.2.1 - think it is a bit drastic to recompile the kernel to work around bugs..

[Capricorny]

It seems to be fixed in 6.2.1. VMware Player 3.0 ran right out of the box.
So now I can run it under all Knoppix 6.X releases..

Edit 20100216:
There are still problems with module loading. At setup/configuration of vmware, the necessary modules are compiled and put into /etc/modules/<kernel-vs>/misc, but vmware is not able to load them from there. This MAY be a modprobe bug in Knoppix 6.X. I can't get modprobe to find/load the modules, but the more simplistic sibling insmod works. So, I had to write small scripts vmware-start and vmplayer-start in /usr/local/bin, which load the modules and then starts vmware/vmplayer. Had similar problems in 6.0.1 and 6.2.

Edit 20100217:
The manual loading of modules worked to get vmware running, but there were network problems. The devices /dev/vmnetX were not created/set up properly.
Using the vmware daemon seemed to help, but I had to do a start and a restart to get everything up and running.

/etc/init.d/vmware restart

Edit 20100217-2:
It seems to work well now, with Player 3.0 as well as VMware Workstation 7.0. Just start/restart the vmware daemon when needed. I'm not sure I will start it by default, as it will bind up some resources. Been looking at Virtualbox - is it a better alternative? I think I may be a bit biased from running Windows NT under VMware on Linux for several years back in the Redhat 6.2 days.