VMWare Tools not compatible with Fedora 9's xorg? (vmware_drv.so: undefined symbol: PictureScreenPrivateIndex)

[Gagravarr]

Does anyone know what the trick is for getting vmware tools to work with Fedora 9's xorg? Having installed vmware tools, when I try to start up X, I get:

dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//vmware_drv.so: undefined symbol: PictureScreenPrivateIndex
(EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//vmware_drv.so
(EE) Failed to load module "vmware" (loader failed, 7)

I've tried two different versions of vmware tools - 3.5.0-110271 (from ESXi), and 2.0.0-116503 (from vmware server), but despite them having slightly different vmware_drv.so files, there's no difference. With both, x fails to start with the undefined symbol error.

I suspect the issue might be that Fedora 9 has xorg 1.5.0, which I believe is X 7.4. However, both vmware tools releases seem to only have drivers for X 6.7, 6.8, 7.0, 7.1 and 7.3. There's no 7.4 version.

Does anyone know if there's a new version of vmware tools somewhere for download that does support xorg 1.5.0 / X 7.4? Or, is there some trick for getting the older 7.3 driver to work with the new x server?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Your discussion has been moved to the VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

[Gagravarr]

I think I am going to need a new version of vmware_drv.so to solve this.

I decided to try to work around the issues with the driver I did have. First up, I created a small .so which provided PictureScreenPrivateIndex (as an extern int, as per the old x headers). When I pre-loaded that (LD_PRELOAD) as I started X, it got a little further. This then gave me the error:

(EE) module ABI major version (2) doesn't match the server's version (4)
(EE) Failed to load module "vmware" (module requirement mismatch, 0)

Next up, I tried setting the ServerFlags "IgnoreABI", and again starting X with my .so. This got a bit further - the screen went black, and a fair bit of disk activity occured. Eventually I was taken back to the console, and greeted with:

/usr/bin/X: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//vmware_drv.so: undefined symbol: xf86GetPciVideoInfo

So it seems that quite a few bits of the driver need to be updated for the newer x server version, not just PictureScreenPrivateIndex to PictureScreenPrivateKey. I don't fancy trying to extend my .so to provide run time compatibility for everything that has changed in the X api.... Does anyone know where I can download a newer version of the vmware_drv.so driver for this newer X?

Nick

[Gagravarr]

I think I am going to need a new version of vmware_drv.so to solve this.

I decided to try to work around the issues with the driver I did have. First up, I created a small .so which provided PictureScreenPrivateIndex (as an extern int, as per the old x headers). When I pre-loaded that (LD_PRELOAD) as I started X, it got a little further. This then gave me the error:

(EE) module ABI major version (2) doesn't match the server's version (4)
(EE) Failed to load module "vmware" (module requirement mismatch, 0)

Next up, I tried setting the ServerFlags "IgnoreABI", and again starting X with my .so. This got a bit further - the screen went black, and a fair bit of disk activity occured. Eventually I was taken back to the console, and greeted with:

/usr/bin/X: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//vmware_drv.so: undefined symbol: xf86GetPciVideoInfo

So it seems that quite a few bits of the driver need to be updated for the newer x server version, not just PictureScreenPrivateIndex to PictureScreenPrivateKey. I don't fancy trying to extend my .so to provide run time compatibility for everything that has changed in the X api.... Does anyone know where I can download a newer version of the vmware_drv.so driver for this newer X?

Nick

[Texiwill]

Hello,

vmware_drv actually comes from Xorg and not vmware tools these days.... xorg-x11-drv-vmware

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Gagravarr]

A ha! VMwareTools had "helpfully" replaced the vmware_drv.so from xorg-x11-drv-vmware with its own (incompatible) one

After I re-installed xorg-x11-drv-vmware, I had the correct driver version, and X now behaves

[pkharte]

Hello. I seem to be having similar issues. Would you be so kind as to outline the update process for this isse? I am trying to use yum but it cannot find the new driver for updating.

Thanks

PK

[Texiwill]

Hello,

rpm -e xorg-x11-drv-vmware

yum -y install xorg-x11-drv-vmware

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

SearchVMware Blog: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/

Blue Gears Blogs - http://www.itworld.com/ and http://www.networkworld.com/community/haletky

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization