[vmware modules] insmod, depmod, modprobe...

Greetings !!

I used vmware with a x86 version of suse 10.3 and it worked real good. Since I changed my architecture to 64bits and used suse 11.1 I upgraded vmware to 6.5.2 and it is working good BUT I have never found a way to include vmci, vmmon, vmnet, vmblock, etc… (all the stuff created by vmware-modconfig) in the modules loaded in the kernel at boot time (linux is a modular operating system) !!

I used insmod first to avoid having the messages when opening the virtual teams saying one module is missing to launch the virtual machine (vmmon missing).

But even if I used depmod -a each time suse is rebooted, the /dev/vmmon, /dev/vmci, etc… are not defined and so it seems that I have to explicitly add them in the kernel.

I then went to modprobe.conf.local to try to explain the kernel to load the modules at boot time.
But untill now, there is no success in my mission :{

Here are the different files involved in the process:

modprobe.conf.local

#
# please add local extensions to this file
#
########################################################*
## VMWARE test feb 2010					*
########################################################*

install char-major-10-165	/bin/true
install char-major-10-59  /bin/true
install char-major-119-8 	/bin/true 
install char-major-119-2 	/bin/true
install char-major-119-1 	/bin/true
install char-major-119-0 	/bin/true
alias char-major-10-165 vmmon
alias char-major-10-59 vmci
alias char-major-119-8 vmnet8
alias char-major-119-2 vmnet2
alias char-major-119-1 vmnet1
alias char-major-119-0 vmnet0

this file was inspirated by the result of ls -lisah on /dev/ once all the insmod were done and once I launched the vmware’s network settings assistant that created thevmnet* devices.

49787 0 crw-rw---- 1 root root  10,  59 Feb 27 16:34 vmci
49879 0 crw-rw---- 1 root root  10, 165 Feb 27 16:34 vmmon
52374 0 crw------- 1 root root 119,   0 Feb 27 16:36 vmnet0
52403 0 crw------- 1 root root 119,   1 Feb 27 16:36 vmnet1
52461 0 crw------- 1 root root 119,   2 Feb 27 16:36 vmnet2
52525 0 crw------- 1 root root 119,   8 Feb 27 16:36 vmnet8

of course I could add the **insmod *sequence in the bashrc but this is not really efficient because I have to launch the vmware’s network assistant to have the vmnet devices created… I can’t do it through bashrc !!

I’m short of ideas, the last resort should be rebuild the kernel but I heard that since kernel 2.4 we could dynamicly add external modules to the kernel without recompile it, am I right ??

Thank you for the interest given to this post
Have a great week-end !!

Hurukan