Installing VMWare Workstation 6.5.3 on Fedora 12
11 June 2010
The recent Fedora kernel upgrade to 2.6.32 again wreaked havoc on all my Linux installations. Every time a kernel upgrade comes out my VMWare Workstation breaks, and typically my TrueCrypt installation as well, or at the very least my nVidia drivers. Thankfully nothing but the VMWare was a major problem this time. I kept getting installation failures on VMWare, specifically with kernel module configuration - the vmnet module to be precise. Finally I found the answers I needed at http://jbmoore61.blogspot.com/2010/02/fixing-vmware-workstation-652-and-linux.html. Basically following the steps here I got the installation to work:
First, install the VMWare Workstation version from RPM at the console. This will fail at the configuration stage. Next, at the command line issue the following commands:
# cd /tmp
# tar xf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar
# vi vmnet-only/vnetUserListener.c (near line 37 add #include "compat_sched.h")
# tar cf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar vmnet-only
# tar xf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmci.tar
# vi vmci-only/linux/vmciKernelIf.c (add #include "compat_sched.h" around line 30)
# vi vmci-only/include/pgtbl.h (add #include "compat_sched.h" around line 30)
# tar cf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmci.tar vmci-only
# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all
This should go smoothly and then you can launch the VMWare Workstation (or Player) GUI and accept the license agreement and you're good to go.