VMware woes on 11.2

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1

Recently upgraded to 11.2, but I think it was a downgrade.

VMware 6.5.2 was working great on 11.1. On 11.2 it just fails miserably both during the install and trying to build the modules.
It’s all over the web about the issues, but none of them helped me.

So I downloaded VMware 6.5.4 and it hangs even worse during the VMware-Player configuration (doing a make I think).

So, let’s try out VMware 7. It installed great. Unfortunately I didn’t read the release notes - it requires a PAE processor, which I don’t have

So tried to uninstall VMware 7 so I could try just the VMware-Player free product.
VMware was not installed with rpm so rpm can’t uninstall it. Then removed all the files manually as per this VMware KB: Manually uninstalling VMware Workstation from Linux hosts

VMware-Player installation issues a popup saying “component vmware-workstation 7.0.0 has unsatisfied dependency: vmware-player-app=3.0.0.”

Before I go back to 11.1 or to some other distro, would anyone know how to really get rid of VMware 7 so that I can try the player only?

Note to self: if it ain’t broke, don’t upgrade ever again.

Thanks for any assistance,

Jim

2

Spoke too soon, just had to do “rm -rf /etc/vmware*” to get rid of the rest of VMware 7 and now Player is installing - fingers crossed.

Thanks,

Jim

3

OK. I’m screwed.

Vmware-player (at least the 3.1) also requires PAE processor, which I still don’t have).

Maybe I can find 6.5.3 of vmware workstation. Last attempt.

Jim

4

Hi
Did you pop into the howto’s section?
http://forums.opensuse.org/information-new-users/unreviewed-how-faq/429925-howto-patch-vmware-server-2-0-2-opensuse-11-2-a.html
http://forums.opensuse.org/information-new-users/unreviewed-how-faq/437356-vmware-server-2-0-2-build-203138-open-suse-11-2-32-bit.html

These are for the server though, search the vmware forums (or google)
the vmware product and the kernel 2.6.31 should get some hits. That’s
all I did for this one running workstation 6.5.4 and 2.6.32.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.32.12-0.7-default
up 1 day 18:32, 2 users, load average: 0.85, 0.45, 0.70
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - CUDA Driver Version: 195.36.15

5

Well alrighty! The bypass/fix is here:
VMware Workstation 6.5.3 on Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 | Nobody was Born with Linux Knowledge

I installed 6.5.4 instead of 6.5.3, but the process still worked.

Started my WinXP vm, installed VMware tools OK and rebooted the vm.

The actual WinXP vm works OK so far, but if I try to go to one of the other vm tabs by just clicking the tab, it just jumps the mouse back to the vm screen.
Have to go up to the “tabs” option to switch.

Will see how things behave before dumping 11.2.

VMware is a critical app since we share VMs at work. Have tried VirtualBox, but nobody else will use it, so have to use vmware.

All at work also use strictly RedHat Enterprise or Centos, so I’m still a little on outside.

Anyway, thanks for any assists and maybe that link above might help others trying to install VMware.

Jim

6

On Sun, 2010-06-06 at 00:46 +0000, j1mw3b wrote:
…
> VMware is a critical app since we share VMs at work. Have tried
> VirtualBox, but nobody else will use it, so have to use vmware.

VBox will use a VMware vmdk (if that matters).

“work” needs to understand that VMware really only wants you to use
ESX (VSphere4). They REALLY don’t care about much else (portably).

Sure… they also like VMware Workstation, but they’ve made it pretty
clear what platforms they support that on… and openSUSE isn’t one of
them.

>
> All at work also use strictly RedHat Enterprise or Centos, so I’m still
> a little on outside.

CentOS IS RHEL, it’s just leeching off the work done by Red Hat.

If you need to think that way, then SLED is your desktop answer.

RHEL still makes for a poor desktop, though it has gotten better.

You can’t play by TWO vastly different rule sets. You can’t say
that quasi-desktop on Red Hat RHEL is ok, but SLED is not ok. And you
can’t compare openSUSE to RHEL. I mean, are your folks really going to
run Fedora 13 and use VMware today? I don’t think so.

>
> Anyway, thanks for any assists and maybe that link above might help
> others trying to install VMware.

At some point, you HAVE to make good technical decisions. In our case,
we were FORCED (by VMware) to move to VBox.

But we still like VSphere4 (and ESX in general) for our large scale VMs.

7

I know a bit about VirtualBox and use it at work also. It also has it’s problems and seems to be to be actually less stable than vmware - a few VMs have just become unuseable under it for no good reason - I also don’t like the 100% cpu issue with running some Unixes( e.g. Centos) under Vbox.

Maybe I wasn’t clear enuf - #1, I am not going to be able to convince anyone there to switch to vbox, not worth my time.

We do have a VMware ESX server there on a couple blades, and most folks(all but me) use Windows with VMware linuxes (RHEL) running as VMs when they need it.

I have actually tried to install Centos 5.5 on a couple machines of mine and it just crashes during the install -every time - hence OpenSuse - and I am not inclined to pay for Suse enterprise (is that what you call SLED). Of necessity, we have it on a couple systems and don’t like it.

I made the choice a year ago to switch to Linux (now suse 11.2) on my laptop - not a better way to become adept at it than have to live with it daily. Only have issues when can’t get wine to run some windows app that is required.

Have a Suse 11.1 on one work desktop with VirtualBox and VMware, WinXP on other work desktop, Debian 5 on one home desktop, and WinXP on other home desktop. I do still require a Windows boxfor some apps however, and I use VMware for that if on the laptop and also to sometimes run RHEL/Centos when there is a need for it.

Thanks again and VMware is running OK now on my 11.2 laptop and I think I’m good to go.

Jim

8

> OK. I’m screwed.
>
> Vmware-player (at least the 3.1) also requires PAE processor, which I
> still don’t have).
>
> Maybe I can find 6.5.3 of vmware workstation. Last attempt.
>
> Jim

Out of curiosity, what processor do you have?