Lack of aarch64 xf86-video-vmware

[foxtdev]

In order to start an X11 server, a display driver for the VMWare SVGA device is required. From what it seems, there are not any distributions of the xf86-video-vmware package on ARM platforms, and compiling from source fails, and installing open-vm-tools from source did not fix X server failing with "Failed to load module "vmware" (module does not exist, 0)" Could anyone help me with this.

[Technogeezer]

What distribution are you working with?

The distributions that I've worked with on the Tech Preview so far (Ubuntu, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora) don't seem to need this. The 5.14 Linux kernels in particular add VMware's virtual graphics driver as part of the kernel release - which in conjunction with open-vm-tools enables on-demand switching of display resolution. 

[foxtdev]

I'm using Arch, with the 5.15.1-1-ARCH kernel

Edit: I can install fbdev to get a basic 1024x768 slow output, but not the full graphically accelerated output you'd expect

[Technogeezer]

Does your kernel have the vmwgfx VMware SVGA driver? VMware has stated they've sent their virtual video driver to the kernel developers and it's able to be included in 5.14 and kernels. In the distributions I use, vmwgfx version 2.18.1.0 is provided as part of the 5.14 and 5.14.19 kernels i've installed from them.

Any of the open source repositories on freedesktop.org I've found for xf86-video-vmware haven't been updated in almost 3 years. It's possible that those old releases haven't been updated for ARM. 

[AaronR1]

Hello, I am having the same issue. Arch arm64 seems to be missing the vmwgfx driver, and I could not find it in any repository for Arch and the architecture.

@Technogeezer , so what you are saying is that it needs to be part of the kernel?

I am running 5.15.18-0-lts from Alpine Linux (based on Arch).

[Technogeezer]

It appears that Alpine hasn't picked up the driver from Linux kernel sources.

VMware donated it to the Linux kernel maintainers (if you check the official Linux kernel source tree, it's in there there). Almost all of the 5.14 or later kernels I've used have included this driver. The one notable exception is the Debian bullseye-backports 5.14 version. It did not contain the driver. Their 5.15 version did, and works as expected.

xf86-video-vmware for arm64/aarch64 also does not seem to e available through freedesktop.org. The last commit there is over 4 years ago, which predates the work done by VMware to port to arm64. (Opinion): I also doubt that VMware is going to make it available through freedesktop.org since they have already submitted it to the kernel source tree.

I would ask the Alpine maintainers why they have not picked up this driver or otherwise made it available if they are using a 5.14 or later kernel. Perhaps it is because of their "lean " approach to a Linux distro.

[AaronR1]

Thanks a lot for your detailed response! I will follow up with the Alpine maintainers. Have a great day!