Kernel Change Request

Hi,

I don’t exactly know where to post this request so could you please direct me to the right place. Or even better: I hope the right persons can pick this up.

After the recent kernel updates I did I ran in to problems with recompiling my VMWare modules. The solution was pretty simple, it turns out that a function is missing in the file sock.h.

I described the solution at Darwin-IT: Kernel update alert: VMWare recompile fails.

To me it seems that this function is found obsolete a few kernel-updates back, but apparently VMWare Server up to 1.0.8 (with updated vmnet.tar from VMWare Player 2.0, so probably that product too) need this function.

Could this function be placed back in the kernel sources?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Martien

makker nl wrote:
>
> Could this function be placed back in the kernel sources?

The short answer is no. Over the years, out-of-kernel drivers have
caused the kernel developers a lot of time and grief. As a result,
they are very unlikely to keep features in the kernel unless an
in-kernel driver needs it, and are extremely unlikely to put something
back to satisfy an ook driver.

You need to modify VMWare, or switch to VirtualBox.

makker nl schrieb:
> After the recent kernel updates I did I ran in to problems with
> recompiling my VMWare modules. The solution was pretty simple, it turns
> out that a function is missing in the file sock.h.

> To me it seems that this function is found obsolete a few
> kernel-updates back, but apparently VMWare Server up to 1.0.8 (with
> updated vmnet.tar from VMWare Player 2.0, so probably that product too)
> need this function.
>
> Could this function be placed back in the kernel sources?

That’s not the way it works. It’s VMWare that has to (and undoubtedly
will, in due course) be modified to work with the most current Linux
kernel release.

The kernel change which broke the compilation of the VMWare modules
was undoubtedly made for a good reason. If the VMWare kernel modules
were part of the official Linux kernel source tree, the kernel
developer who made that change would have updated them along with
everything else so that they continued working without you ever
noticing. As it stands, VMWare prefers to maintain their modules
separately, so it’s up to them to keep them in sync with the ongoing
kernel development.

HTH
T.

There is a way to fix it:
In a console type su then root pass then
mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary.old

then vmware and it will recompile

/Geoff

I’m a little late to follow up. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so rude. But I recently stepped over the doorstep to use VMWare Server 2.0. It comes with a specific x86_64 version, that runs better (Since the footprint is 4-5 times bigger then the 1.0.x I stuck with 1.0.x).
So in cases like mine I would recommend to upgrade to VMWare Server 2.0.

There is a known issue that on OpenSuse VMWare 2.0 does not startup on boot. I experienced this on OpenSuse 11.0. You have to do a /etc/init.d/vmware start explicitly as su. But on (my) OpenSuse 11.1 this issue is over.

Regards,
Martien

It wasn’t a problem with 11.0 but a problem with the vmware init scripts that were broken.

Ok. Thanks. But apparently it is not an issue to 11.1. I thought (I’m not completely sure) I used the same rpm on both systems.

Regards,
Martien