VMWare

This page will be a collection of tips for running Fedora in VMWare.

Fedora 7

If you're upgrading from a previous installation, you will need to switch your disk to "buslogic" emulation. See: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1216

Upgrading a FC6 image to F7 using the rescue ISO image seems to work after the above.

Fedora 10

Kernel modules does not compile, resulting an error:

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/launcher.sh: line 231: 11405 Segmentation fault "$binary" "$@"

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/172023 page suggests using following script as root user

#!/bin/bash

cd ~
rm -rf vmware-modules
mkdir vmware-modules
cd vmware-modules
find /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source -name "*.tar" -exec tar xf '{}' \;
mkdir -p /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc
rm -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc{vmblock.ko,vmci.ko,vmmon.ko,vmnet.ko,vsock.ko}
cd vmblock-only; make; cd ..; cp -p vmblock.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vmblock.ko
cd vmci-only; make; cd ..; cp -p vmci.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vmci.ko
cd vmmon-only; make; cd ..; cp -p vmmon.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vmmon.ko
cd vmnet-only; make; cd ..; cp -p vmnet.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vmnet.ko
#cd vmppuser-only; make; cd ..; cp -p vmppuser.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vmppuser.ko
cd vsock-only; make; cd ..; cp -p vsock.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vsock.ko
depmod -a
service vmware restart

it's dirty, but so is vmware and this seems to work in x86_64 desktop.

Fedora 20

On 3.13 kernel vmnet fails to build

If VMWare fails to build vmnet module with the following error:

# Error message is something like:
# 3.3-201.fc20.x86_64/build/include CC=/bin/gcc IS_GCC_3=no"
# 2014-02-19T08:39:06.035+10:00| vthread-3| W110: Failed to build vmnet.  Failed to execute the build command.

A patch can be applied to rectify this issue:

$ curl http://pastie.org/pastes/8672356/download -o /tmp/vmware-netfilter.patch
$ cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
# tar -xvf vmnet.tar
# patch -p0 -i /tmp/vmware-netfilter.patch
# tar -cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
# rm -r vmnet-only
# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

This information from the Arch Linux Wiki - VMWare page, but works on Fedora 20.

On 3.17 kernel vmnet fails to build

If VMWare fails to build vmnet module with the following error:

  CC [M]  /tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.o
/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.c: In function ‘VNetNetIf_Create’:
/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.c:152:64: error: macro "alloc_netdev" requires 4 arguments, but only 3 given
    dev = alloc_netdev(sizeof *netIf, deviceName, VNetNetIfSetup);
                                                                ^
/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.c:152:10: error: ‘alloc_netdev’ undeclared (first use in this function)
    dev = alloc_netdev(sizeof *netIf, deviceName, VNetNetIfSetup);
          ^
/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.c:152:10: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in
/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.c: At top level:
/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.c:85:1: warning: ‘VNetNetIfSetup’ defined but not used [-Wunused-function]
 VNetNetIfSetup(struct net_device *dev)  // IN:
 ^
make[2]: *** [/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only/netif.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/3.17.8-200.fc20.x86_64'
make: *** [vmnet.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/modconfig-yzD1NE/vmnet-only'
Failed to build vmnet.  Failed to execute the build command.

Follow the steps below to rectify the issue:

# - as root user
$ cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
$ tar -xvf vmnet.tar
# - edit the file vmnet-only/netif.c and replace the line that looks like
    dev = alloc_netdev(sizeof *netIf, deviceName, VNetNetIfSetup);
to
    dev = alloc_netdev(sizeof *netIf, deviceName, NET_NAME_UNKNOWN, VNetNetIfSetup);
$ tar -cvf vmnet.tar vmnet-only/
$ rm -rf vmnet-only/
$ vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

The solution is copied from: https://communities.vmware.com/message/2425115#2425115