I just tried installing VMWare Workstation 15.1.0 on the latest version of TW and during the installation I am asked to browse the location of the GNU C Compiler version 9.1.1 since it was not found.
The exact prompt is as follows:
Before you can run VMWare, several modules must be compiled and loaded into running kernel
GCC
GNU C Compiler (gcc) version 9.1.1 was not found. if you installed it in a non-default path you can specify the path below. Otherwise refer to your distribution's documentation for installation instructors and click Refresh to search again in default locations.
The last time I installed VMWare on another installation of TW about a couple of weeks ago this same issue was none existent so it has got to be something new related to the gcc version but I can’t seem to find anything relevant in my searches.
This is a problem often encountered in Tumbleweed and apps like VMware…
The actual cause of the error is actually likely because the specific gcc version is not installed in your system (you likely have a newer version). You can check whether this is the case by running the following command
gcc --version
To resolve the problem is simple… install the gcc version that’s needed.
First find and install the gcc you want from https://software.opensuse.org/search.
Then, you need to point your system to the required gcc, when you have multiple gcc on your system you have a couple choices… You can copy the needed gcc binary to /usr/bin/gcc (which I don’t recommend) or set up an alternatives so you can switch between installed versions easily. I describe how to set this up in the following Wiki article
Okay so I have managed to make it work after some more research, trial and error.
First things first, for some reason gcc was **not **even installed on my TW for some reason. I was under the impression that it would be among one of the many pre-installed packages that came with TW initially. I realized that it was not installed when I wanted to check for the version.
sudo zypper install gcc
After installing the gcc the VMWare prompt changed and it was now looking for the kernel headers
Before you can run VMWare, several modules must be compiled and loaded into running kernel
**Kernel Headers 5.1.7-1-default**
Kernel headers for version 5.1.7-1-default where not found. if you installed it in a non-default path you can specify the path below. Otherwise refer to your distribution's documentation for installation instructors and click Refresh to search again in default locations.
To take care of that I had to install the -devel packages
zypper in kernel-syms
Once the package is installed VMWare Workstation 15.1.0 installation will finally stop nagging and start compiling modules into the kernel. However, the current version of the workstation is still not fully compatible with the latest kernel so the process will fail. Luckily to you can use this GitHub Page to find the required files which will fix that as well.
Once the fix for your version of the VMWare Workstation is installed the modules will successfully compile and you can then run the VMWare workstation Pro with no issues.
gcc and make have not been part of a default install of any openSUSE I can remember going back at least to 12.1.
Although some might recommend installing the C development pattern, if the purpose isn’t to install a complete C development environment and just build some kernel modules all you’d generally need are
zypper in make gcc kernel-devel kernel-default-devel
That’s interesting that you say you needed that github repo for building your kernel modules… In the first place the repo’s description says that it provides patches for the vanilla kernel which might or might not work on a default openSUSE kernel which installs a modified “default” kernel instead of a vanilla kernel. The repo contains code as old as 2 years ago when Tumbleweed **definitely **did not require these patches.
If special patches are needed, that’s a new development, no one has reported needing such before and I would caution anyone reading this thread to not install patches first before using this repo.
Since you appear to be new at VMWare and openSUSE,
Your probable next step is to understand how to work with Guest Tools and possibly hardware pass-through which I describe in the follwoing
Hi
The last module commits are from 25 days ago, the patches are for the vmware modules to allow for kernel code changes, it will have no impact whether it’s the default or vanilla.
My post was meant to mean that when this project was first created and ever since (2 years!), there was no reported issue using an openSUSE kernel.
Because no problems had been reported before now, it’s unclear whether these patches are needed, particularly when we don’t have a detailed description what packages were installed, eg “all” kernel devel packages… Do we know which packages were installed or the correct ones?
Before recommending these patches, we probably need confirmation, and certainty that prerequisite packages were installed to build successfully.
Please read again more carefuly. The sentence in README says the patches are tested to build against vanilla kernels. Unlike Leap, Tumbleweed kernel is rather close to vanilla. And, actually, as I’m running Tumbleweed kernel on my machine where I’m using Workstation most often, these patches are probably better tested with Tumbleweed kernel than with any other…
That’s nothing new, that happens whenever some internal kernel API changes in a way which requires VMware host modules code to adapt (and it kept happening not only two years ago but even ten or more years ago). They were lucky recently but 5.0 brought some breakages and 5.1 some more. Version 15.1.0 has fixes for breakages from 5.0 but not for those from 5.1.
So to sum it up: these patches do work with Tumbleweed kernel and one does need them to make Workstation 15.1.0 (or 14.1.7 or 12.5.9) work on current Tumbleweed kernel (5.1.y). But yes, the originally reported problem was caused by missing devel packages, i.e. the original poster did not get far enough to face the absence of the patches.