title: vmware player on el6: trouble in paradise link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/vmware-player-on-el6-trouble-in-paradise/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 924 created: 2011/08/29 14:51:20 created_gmt: 2011/08/29 18:51:20 comment_status: closed post_name: vmware-player-on-el6-trouble-in-paradise status: publish post_type: post

vmware player on el6: trouble in paradise

Reinstalled VMware Player on my SL (Scientific Linux) 6.1 workstation today, only to discover that a bug in the installer prevented it from properly compiling a required kernel module. Fortunately other, more intelligent, beings had the same experience (back in May) and came up with a workaround. VMware Player has proved to be a useful addition to my tech toolbox almost from the time it was first introduced. I ran VMware Server for a long time before switching to Player. What eventually sold me on it, even after a brief trial period with Oracle's (formerly Sun's) Virtual Box. But there's a problem with getting the latest version of Player to work on the latest version of enterprise Linux: Player makes call to a now non-existent hook in the operating system software. This first showed up in a bug related to VMware's non-free Workstation product: vmware workstation: vmmon disagrees about version of symbol smp_o The workaround given there that did the trick for me was also the subject of this blog posting by the original researcher: VMware Workstation and RHEL 6.1 and vmmon and trouble To use that workaround you need to first make sure the kernel-devel and kernel-headers package are installed. Then follow these steps exactly as presented:

Start as a user (not root): 1. mkdir ~/vmsrc ; cd ~/vmsrc 2. tar xvf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon.tar 3. cd vmmon-only 4. make [Note: this builds vmmon.ko] 5. strip --strip-debug vmmon.ko [Note: this is optional. Note the two dashes] 6. su - 7. cd /lib/modules/uname -r/misc 8. mv vmmon.o vmmon.o.dist [Note: save the original just in case] 9. cp /(path to user’s home)/vmsrc/vmmon-only/vmmon.ko vmmon.o

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