Problems with VMWare

I’m using the VMWare Workstation 6.5 Beta. Earlier versions could not compile all of their components in SUSE11.0, and every time I restarted VMWare, I had to go through the whole configuration business, so I tried 6.5.

It’s painfully slow, as it warns you it will be.

Also, the VMWare web site seems to be borked, both in terms of registering and in terms of replying to forum posts.

Does anyone have any satisfactory experiences using the earlier versions? Any clues on how I can get Workstation 6.0.4 to work?

No.
I just use Virtual Box

6.0.4 should just build with no big issue on openSUSE 11.0.
Do you have all needed packages installed before running the vmware-config script (meaning kernel-sources, gcc, gcc++ & make)?

It’s running dandy here.

Cheers,
Wj

Yes, I did. It seems to be working now.

I installed what packages I could find that referred to vmware - including vmx-manager, vmware-kmp-default and vmware-kmp-xen.

I then went and downloaded the latest 6.0.4. I rpm -U’d my VMWare rpm, which seemed to have replaced the 6.5 beta. When I tried to run, I got the run vmware-config.pl message, so I tried that.

That aborted, saying I had a number of modules that the installer didn’t know about - vmblock, vmnet, etc. I uninstalled everything (except, I think, vmx-manager), then blew away these remaining modules from /lib/modules. I re-installed VMWare Workstation 6.0.4, an re-ran the config. It worked (for the first time!) including the compiles that were required.

I have no idea how all of these bits fit together, but it seems to be working now. Praise be.

This could be causing the first problem, you don’t need these modules as they are part of the openVM tools - the open version of the VMWare guest tools (needed when running openSUSE IN VMware as guest, not as host).

The only packages you need before running the compile script (vmware-config.pl) are;
-kernel-source
-gcc
-gcc++
-make

Uninstalling everything related to VMWare probably gave you the clean base to build the VMWare modules on…

I have no idea how all of these bits fit together, but it seems to be working now. Praise be.

Lol… I know the feeling, probably just some voodoo going on :wink:
Good you got it going!

Cheers,
Wj

New problems have mysteriously arisen.

After working beautifully for a while, I had a serious disk-bouond lockup of the system this morning. I could ping, but could not get an ssh login prompt to try to see what was going on. The cursor wsa almost frozen, appearing every now an again on the VM or the host screen as I moved it around. I couldn’t ctrl-alt-f1 to get a console. after a while i power cycled. following this -possibly coincidentally- i could no longer drag and drop from the guest to the host. i tried installing the vmware-kvm-default and vmare-kvm-xen modules and restarting, but no good. still can’t drag and drop.

hmmmm. also, having done a crtl-alt-f1 to check the sequence, and an alt-f8, and an alt-f7 to bring the gui back, i no longer have a functioning shift key.

Seems like a process was locking up the CPU? Might be an idea to make a link to the system monitor and put it on your desktop so that if this happens again you can try calling on it to look at whats eating up your system…
Might take some time opening but it will probably get there…

following this -possibly coincidentally- i could no longer drag and drop from the guest to the host. i tried installing the vmware-kvm-default and vmare-kvm-xen modules and restarting, but no good. still can’t drag and drop.

hmmmm. also, having done a crtl-alt-f1 to check the sequence, and an alt-f8, and an alt-f7 to bring the gui back, i no longer have a functioning shift key.

Again the vmware-kvm-default and vmare-kvm-xen modules are not needed on the VMWare host (host = the machine you have VMWare Workstation installed on).
If you run into trouble with the host bit, or when you have done a kernel update, re-run the vmware-config.pl script from a terminal as root. That mostly sorts any broken VMWare modules.

Hope that helps,
Wj