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Krellan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Here is patch for Workstation 6.5.2 on Linux 2.6.31 kernel

I'm pleased to announce an updated patch. I found some more time to work on it, and there's two big improvements:

1) It's "universal". It works for Linux 2.6.29, and Linux 2.6.30, and Linux 2.6.31!

2) Your VMware module files no longer need to be restored from backup, after a failed upgrade. The patch script is now much smarter about backing up the files that it changes. It uses checksums to make sure that it is seeing the original VMware Workstation 6.5.2 files, and when those files are found, it backs them up to a place that it uses for all future runs. The script is now idempotent: it's OK to run it more than once, it will have the same effect.

Here are 2 files, attached.

There's the shell script, and the patch file.

Download both of these files, to the same directory.

Then, run the script, as root. (Check it first, unless you REALLY trust me not to put some kind of rootkit in there!)

su <-- become root

bash ./vmware-6.5.2-newkernmods.sh <-- run the script

I tested it, and it worked, on these 3 kernels:

Linux 2.6.29.2

Linux 2.6.30.1

Linux 2.6.31-rc3

This is only for VMware Workstation 6.5.2. It won't work on any older version.

It's only for the host OS. It won't work on the guest OS (VMWare Tools).

It won't work on VMware Player.

It won't work on VMware Server.

Do let me know if this works successfully for you!

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Krellan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

noname: Interesting. The later 2.6.30.x kernels probably went to the new system that's being used in 2.6.31, where some stuff in struct net_device got moved around. Should be easy enough to fix.

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icthy
Contributor
Contributor

just wanted to say thanks. it worked great on 2.6.29 for me.

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SuSEganstarr
Contributor
Contributor

After a quite a few hours of running around in circles, I found this, and I am very releaved.

openSuSE 11.2 milestone 6 - x86 - kernel2.6.31-rc6-3-pae

Thank you very much

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pasard
Contributor
Contributor

great job, Krellan !

Thumbs up !

now back to business with a working VMWare workstation (6.5.2) on Ubuntu 9.04 / kernel 2.6.30.

tx for your help !

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GrantTurrill
Contributor
Contributor

For those who are experiencing the unusual keyboard behaviour, have you tried running the command 'setxkbmap' I find that some keys are erroneously mapped after a VM crash, and running the setxkbmap command restores my keyboard mappings.

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aertsb
Contributor
Contributor

What about VMware Workstation 6.5.3 for x86_64.

Is the patch for 6.5.2 still valid?

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GrantTurrill
Contributor
Contributor

I tried following the instructions provided by various users about installing workstation 6.5.3 on Fedora 11 with all the latest application upgrades, but when I tried to kill -9 the relevant process, I found that it wouldn't terminate. I had to kill the parent as well which meant that the rest of the necessary files required to run the application didn't install.

As an experiment, I fired up a Live installation of PCLinuxOS I have on a 320Gb USB drive, and tried the install on that. It worked perfectly. I then copied all the relevant VMware files from that drive onto my main system, rebooted, compiled the kernel modules and it worked.

A somewhat tortuous path, but I'm finally there. Hopefully the work involved will be worth it.

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dibl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

*buntu released kernel 2.6.31-8 for the developmental 9.10 OS yesterday. VMWare Player 2.5.3, patched with Krellan's excellent work, continues to build its modules correctly, and "work", but the keyboard/mouse interface is still snarfed. Mouse click will not get focus on the guest OS -- only Ctrl-G works. After login to the guest, it is possible, by carefull use of the keyboard, to control the guest OS and its applications (for a person who remembers Alt-Tab), but it's not pretty and not efficient.

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Krellan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I haven't had a chance to play around with 6.5.3 yet. I'm hoping they have fixed their kernel module building, to work "out of the box" on newer kernels. Hope to have a patch for it "real soon now", assuming somebody else doesn't beat me to it first Smiley Happy

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sdo
Contributor
Contributor

Looking forward to it, because so far I can't get the methods posted to work for me. Smiley Sad

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Mark_E_Johnson
Contributor
Contributor

I was hoping that they'd have the install problems fixed out of the box, and, just to try to be on the safe side, I removed VMware Workstation 6.5.2 completely before attempting to install Workstation 6.5.3, the install appeared to work, until I tried launching VMware Workstation. I tried your last patch for 6.5.2 on kernel 2.6.29, but it failed, and I didn't notate the error. I tried removing 6.5.3 completely, then reinstalled 6.5.2, ran your patch and it worked. So, I tried upgrading, and it still didn't work. I tried your patch again on it, and it failed again. I ripped 6.5.3 and replaced with 6.5.2 with your patch and all was good in the world again. I'm sorry I didn't note the errors for you, but I was in a hurry to get it working again so that I could complete some work that could only be done with a web application that only runs under Windows. Thanks!

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h2-2
Contributor
Contributor

I tried the old 2.6.30 patch and the new 2.6.29-2.6.30 patch, which gave this for vmplayer 2.5.3:

patching file vmblock-only/linux/control.c

Hunk #2 FAILED at 158.

Hunk #3 FAILED at 172.

2 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmblock-only/linux/control.c.rej

patching file vmblock-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 122.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmblock-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmci-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 122.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmci-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmmon-only/include/x86svm.h

patching file vmmon-only/linux/driver.c

Hunk #1 FAILED at 1984.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmmon-only/linux/driver.c.rej

patching file vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c

Hunk #2 FAILED at 3538.

Hunk #3 FAILED at 3662.

2 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c.rej

patching file vmmon-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 122.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmmon-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmnet-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 122.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmnet-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmnet-only/netif.c

Hunk #1 FAILED at 194.

Hunk #2 succeeded at 175 (offset -45 lines).

Hunk #3 FAILED at 295.

Hunk #4 FAILED at 541.

Hunk #5 FAILED at 597.

Hunk #6 FAILED at 658.

5 out of 6 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmnet-only/netif.c.rej

patching file vsock-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 122.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vsock-only/Makefile.rej

And then the module failed to build.

Oddly, with the old patch, which gave these errors, the module did build, but I don't know if it works, I didn't test it.

patching file vmblock-only/linux/control.c

Hunk #2 FAILED at 158.

Hunk #3 FAILED at 172.

2 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmblock-only/linux/control.c.rej

patching file vmblock-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 113.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmblock-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmci-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 113.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmci-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmmon-only/include/x86svm.h

patching file vmmon-only/linux/driver.c

Hunk #1 FAILED at 1984.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmmon-only/linux/driver.c.rej

patching file vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c

Hunk #1 succeeded at 3424 (offset 1 line).

Hunk #2 FAILED at 3538.

Hunk #3 FAILED at 3662.

2 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c.rej

patching file vmmon-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 113.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmmon-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmnet-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 113.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmnet-only/Makefile.rej

patching file vmnet-only/netif.c

Hunk #1 FAILED at 324.

Hunk #2 FAILED at 570.

Hunk #3 FAILED at 626.

Hunk #4 FAILED at 687.

4 out of 4 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file vmnet-only/netif.c.rej

patching file vsock-only/Makefile

Hunk #1 FAILED at 113.

1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file vsock-only/Makefile.rej

So we'll leave this as experimental testing option for now.

I also have to wonder why patches are necessary at this point in the game, that seems a bit odd for a company like vmware to rely on such methods, much as I appreciate the work done by the patch author here.

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noname111
Contributor
Contributor

What about working patch for latest amd64 stable kernel???

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aertsb
Contributor
Contributor

I had 6.5.2 and installed the 64bit rpm of 6.5.3.

It installed perfectly without any interaction.

VMware workstation 6.5.3 runs just fine.

Conclusion: no patch needed for 6.5.3 and kernel 2.6.29.6-2

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rgbatduke
Contributor
Contributor

On what Distro/Release? And does sound work yet? Under F11, 6.5.2 not only required the patch but even patched it didn't know how to cope with ALSA sound under the universal pulseaudio interface (which is still somewhat broken -- I have to go into alsamixer -c0 to directly fix some of the channels all the time). Hopefully, though, vmware has finally restored sound to the guests.

I'm downloading 6.5.3 now, but it will take a few hours and I'm a bit cautious about trying it as I really need to be able to rely on one of my vm guests being available whenever I need it at short order. I'll have to minimally back off the 6.5.3, go back to 6.5.2, and repatch to get back to functional if it doesn't work.

rgb

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theooze
Contributor
Contributor

I got 6.5.3 to install on Fedora 11, 2.6.29.6-217.2.16.fc11.x86_64. I still don't have sound on the guests though. What did you do to get sound working?

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aertsb
Contributor
Contributor

To be more complete: I have VMware Workstation 6.5.3 x86_64 running on Mandriva 2009.1 PowerPack x86_64 wih kernel 2.6.29.6-2.

Sound in the VMware guest Windows Vista is working fine, but VMware must be the one and only sound user, I have to shutdown Amarok. Mandriva also uses PulseAudio and Alsa. If VMware is running and sound got not connected at startup, you can still connect the sound by clicking on the soundcard icon in the bottom of the window and selecting "connect", of course after stopping other sound users.

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Krellan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I tried VMware Workstation 6.5.3, with Linux 2.6.31, 64-bit, on my fairly old Fedora 10 installation, and it seems to work well for me:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/230743

Is there still a problem with the VMware installer? I was upgrading my kernel, and already had VMware installed, so didn't need to run the installer again, so didn't test that.

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martyfelker
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I did an install of 6.5.3 onD ebian Unsatable Kernel 2.6.3-0. First thei installer uninsalled the beta version of WS and then installed 6.5.3. Launching 6.5.3 it wanted the heaader files for the kernel which is normal of course and since this was a fresh install of debian I grabbed the headers using Synaaptic. Woprskstation 6.5.3 did not need the patch to the modules in order to compile and run and I entered my purchased key for 6.5.x. Did VMware fix the modulel bug in 6.5.3 ? Perhaps unistalling the beta had already applied the patch so to speak? I never have had to install at module lpatch script to install the beata.

Has anybody else had this experience or am I forgeting I applied the patch? The later seems unlikely because this was a fresh install and I didn't even ddownload the modlue script file. My exlperience was not confine to Debian host because I just tried to instaall 6.5.3 bundle on Sabayon 4.2 What follows was the output below - I cannot determine has been posted before in this or lthe beat forum. I probably haven't done a through search.

-


sudo ./VMware-Workstation-6.5.3-185404.x86_64.bundle

Password:

You have gotten this message because you are either downgrading VMware

Workstation, Player, or VIX, or because you attempted to run either

vmware-uninstall or vmware-uninstall-vix.

If you are downgrading, please uninstall all newer versions first, then

install again.

The vmware-uninstall* scripts have been deprecated. Instead, please use

the vmware-installer.

Long form:

vmware-installer --uninstall-product PRODUCT

Short form:

vmware-installer -u PRODUCT

Where PRODUCT is one of vmware-workstation, vmware-player, or vmware-vix.

For a list of which products are installed, you may run:

vmware-installer --list-products

or:

vmware-installer -l

-


The installation of the 6.5.3 WS went without a hitch and indded I was able to run a Windwos 7 guest which was created by the beta. I assume some functionality was lost but I haven't pursuded that yet.

Marty Felker

Marty Felker
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dibl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Update on the keyboard/mouse issue (VMWare Player 2.5.3, Ubuntu 2.6.31 kernel): Running the VM in Unity mode appears to resolve the problem, assuming a fairly recent VMWare Tools version is installed.

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