title: VMware 2 on kernel 2.6.18-164 link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/vmware-2-on-kernel-2618-164/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 227 created: 2009/10/17 04:08:52 created_gmt: 2009/10/17 04:08:52 comment_status: open post_name: vmware-2-on-kernel-2618-164 status: publish post_type: post

VMware 2 on kernel 2.6.18-164

The 2.6.18-164 kernel just recently became available for CentOS 5.3 machines. This is actually a repackage of the same kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 shipped with. The security and bug fixes it contains are well worth the effort of updating, but as it stands doing the standard install will break even the latest version of VMware Server 2.

Root cause is a section of source contained in vmnet.tar (the source archive for the vmnet service). The relevant CentOS bug report is 3977. The solution referred to in the bug is to use a patched version of vmnet.tar that has the offending block commented out. The patched file was posted to the VMware Community Forum in this post. A direct link is here.

To deploy you just have to copy (not extract) the vmnet.tar file into /usr/lib/vmware/modules/src (this will overwrite the original file of the same name) and then run vmware-config.pl as usual.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo