Ubuntu 8.04 (and other Linux 2.6.24 kernel distros)

[diamondsw]

Now that Ubuntu 8.04 has been officially released, will we see a VMWare Tools update to support Linux kernel 2.6.24? The version with 1.1.1 would not compile (I have not tried 1.1.2 yet, but since it's not listed in the release notes I'm not optimistic).

[rachel]

No, they don't build with 1.1.2 either. And ubuntu handily removed the open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-gui packages from their repository too; which had given me a useful system during the alpha/beta period, but having deinstalled it to try 1.1.2's tools, I discovered they couldn't then be reinstalled.

And it's not something which can be installed from source sensibly by the user either. Actually, it can be built easily enough, but the install part is basically absent and left to package maintainers.

So for the time being my vmware-fusion install of hardy is defunct.

[WoodyZ]

Now that Ubuntu 8.04 has been officially released, will we see a VMWare Tools update to support Linux kernel 2.6.24? The version with 1.1.1 would not compile (I have not tried 1.1.2 yet, but since it's not listed in the release notes I'm not optimistic).

It makes little difference that Ubuntu 8.04 (and other Linux 2.6.24 kernel distros) have been officially released or not as neither are officially supported by VMware Fusion.

VMware is aware of the 2.6.24 kernel issue in regards to VMware Tools and until they support it by providing whatever it will take to make it work it is a wait and see issue.

Before you ask when... I do not work for VMware however the standard line is "VMware policy is to not comment on unannounced features, products, timelines, etc." so until they decide to announce it, it's wait and see.

[hoju]

I am not sure what would motivate someone who doesn't work for VMware to post non-answers that sound like they come from a legal department.

Notwithstanding, as another avid VMware user, I would like to see this made a priority. I don't give a rats hiney whether there is support, but given the nature of the installation mechanism and how hard it is to compile and * install * the already posted and obvious fixes manually, it would be nice if the clever folks on the VMware dev team would do that for us and make it available in an unsupported capacity.

Best Regards,

The Hoju

[admin]

I am not sure what would motivate someone who doesn't work for VMware to post non-answers that sound like they come from a legal department.

I suspect it's because Woody knows that if an employee does answer, it's going to be with that line or similar, so he's saving you time and saving us effort.

We are aware that 2.6.24 (and in general, a more flexible update system) are desired.

[diamondsw]

It makes little difference that Ubuntu 8.04 (and other Linux 2.6.24 kernel distros) have been officially released or not as neither are officially supported by VMware Fusion.

Linux isn't supported? News to me. Makes their whole platform a little pointless then.

Given this is a problem with Linux kernel headers, which will eventually make its way into ALL Linux distributions, it's rather serious. Ubuntu is simply the latest distro to be released and bring this to the forefront.

VMware is aware of the 2.6.24 kernel issue in regards to VMware Tools and until they support it by providing whatever it will take to make it work it is a wait and see issue.

From what I can tell in other forums, this is not terribly hard to fix. While I could not personally apply the patch due to some other issues on my system, the patch files I saw changed a handful of lines - almost all involved adding in a different header when running kernel version 2.6.24 or higher.

The delay on this makes me very, very upset.

Before you ask when... I do not work for VMware however the standard line is "VMware policy is to not comment on unannounced features, products, timelines, etc." so until they decide to announce it, it's wait and see.

Something else that makes me very upset - their communication has been worthless.

[rachel]

Which is extremely frustrating. It's a wrong policy to have such an embargo on information about this particular component. It's a bad policy, because it pisses customers off that they either have to keep back to old versions of stuff or run with a semi-disabled version, and there's no indication of how long, even, such a state of affairs is going to continue.

It's not really a matter of having to support each and every distribution, which they won't, which would be too big a task. But it would be nice if they could at least support up to the current vanilla kernel - that is, the one from http://www.kernel.org. Then at least if an exact distro's kernel doesn't have a pre-built set of modules from vmware, there's a reasonable chance that it can build them, and if it doesn't work it's the distro's fault for diverging too far, patching too much, or something. Usually of course that's exactly what happens, but presumably there was some change from 2.6.23 to 2.6.24 which breaks it.

Kernel 2.6.24 has been out since 24th January. Kernel 2.6.25 came out about a week ago... I note that open-vm-tools make modules does build the modules fine against 2.6.24, but there's no sane way to install that right now.

[hoju]

etung that reply was on par with Woody. Don't insult your customers. If that is all you have to say, there really is no need to post.

We are glad you are aware. We sort of expected that you know - would be sort of pathetic of you not to be (assuming you are a dev and not just tech support).

And I think we want to you VMware folks to be aware that it is impacting us, and it would be greatly appreciated if you could make it somewhat of a priority to help us out. And that is why we take the time to post here. It is a service to VMware. Your customers help you a lot more then you help them. It would be wise to remember that.

Spare us your condescending "policy" recitations.

[WoodyZ]

I am not sure what would motivate someone who doesn't work for VMware to post non-answers that sound like they come from a legal department.

Notwithstanding, as another avid VMware user, I would like to see this made a priority. I don't give a rats hiney whether there is support, but given the nature of the installation mechanism and how hard it is to compile and * install * the already posted and obvious fixes manually, it would be nice if the clever folks on the VMware dev team would do that for us and make it available in an unsupported capacity.

I hardly think stating the facts sound like it comes from the Legal Department! As to whether it's a "non-answer" that's your opinion which of course you're entitled to however when you have helped as many people that I have and provided the number of original solutions that I have then maybe your opinion will mean something to me!

If one is going to use a product in an unsupported way it's a little absurd to keep demanding that VMware do something about it! It is my understanding they are working on it and when they are ready they will, if they choose, provide something more then they have so far however until then all the bitching and complaining about unsupported scenarios gets one nowhere!

[hoju]

Rachel,

Have you tried this? I am in the process of trying it, just thought you might be interested - from another forum post:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/131168;jsessionid=F22AE55FCA6A998F0ACA9591753CA9A5?tstart=0

(see the post from mufassa)

Since all we get from vmware is insulting responses (insulting to our intelligence), perhaps the OSS world will offer the solution they fail to provide.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Cheers,

Hoju

[hoju]

I demanded nothing. I requested. Please refrain from "helping" me in the future - I find you irritating.

[WoodyZ]

Linux isn't supported? News to me. Makes their whole platform a little pointless then.

I never said the Linux wasn't supported! I said "It makes little difference that Ubuntu 8.04 (and other Linux 2.6.24 kernel distros) have been officially released or not as neither are officially supported by VMware Fusion." and that is not the same thing as saying Linux isn't supported. There are obviously many different flavors of Linux that are supported as well as kernel versions however it one looks at the documentation neither Ubuntu 8.04 or the 2.6.24 kernel are supported!!!

The delay on this makes me very, very upset.

The only advice I can offer is... Get over it!

[rachel]

Hmm. That might just work. Fiddly as hell, but might work. Be nice if sudo make install could run an included version of vmware-config-tools.pl, but maybe that's too obvious to have occurred to them.

AFAIK the open-vm-tools project was created by VMWare, so getting all us-and-them about it isn't really appropriate. This is VMWare themselves heading towards a good long-term solution for tools deployment and installation on Linux. It's just too early days for it to be a polished solution now.

So let's cool it with the invective, eh? We're frustrated about the current lack of apparent, visible, useful progress for up-to-date Linux systems to run as vmware guests or hosts (this affects other VMWare products outside Fusion of course). No need to make it personal.

[hoju]

There is something sad about this forum. I don't live here, as some do... most of the time I happily use my VMware fusion and go about my day.

But on the rare occasion that I do decide to post out a concern, such as this one... it inevitably erupts into:

a) some condescending response with no content by a 3rd party speaking on behalf of VMware as some sort of fanboy and

b) some annoying exchange that ends up with some other 3rd party offering words of diplomatic appeasement.

Is it not possible to just post an issue to this forum and have the discussion be about "that issue". If VMware has some sort of point system encouraging people to reply with nonsense about "it is vmware policy to encourage people to reply that vmware does not wish to reply", I wish to voice my dislike of it, as customer. And that is * my * opinion... it has created a very annoying subculture that I don't find on other non-points oriented forums. I can't tell you how enjoyable it is to post about a technical issue, and receive technical replies.

And that message is for VMware to hear from a customer - I don't need * or want * a 3rd party reply.

Regards,

hoju

PS. Fair point about open-vm-tools, kudos to team at VMware. I am quite sure they have a sense of humor too... as a dev I am sure they appreciate the frustration of working within the confines of corporate policy. I think it is a great solution to the "supported" complication. Well done. The OSS jab was all in fun (back pedal, back pedal)

[WoodyZ]

I demanded nothing. I requested. Please refrain from "helping" me in the future - I find you irritating.

First of all it was you that responded to a post I made that was not addressed to you, so I responded to it and not necessarily with the intent to help you specifically, now don't turn that around, but to make a comment on what you had to say about my response. Beyond that I was not addressing you specifically as noted by the use of "one" as opposed to"you" in the remainder of my post and I was not trying to specifically say you were demanding or bitching or complaining and if you felt that then I'm sorry as my intent was more of a collective thought over the fact that people keep bringing up this same issue when the original answers that were given haven't changed... yet over and over....

No problem I won't try to help you in the future as I've not that I know of tried to help you in the past either. I find people continually asking for a fix to something not supported equally irritating.

[admin]

etung that reply was on par with Woody. Don't insult your customers. If that is all you have to say, there really is no need to post.

I'm not trying to be insulting or condescending. If someone asks a question and we're not allowed to answer it, I think it's quite reasonable to explain why there is no real answer. It sounds like you'd prefer that there be no response at all. While this might work for you, I think it's pretty unfriendly and that it is more normal to assume that no reply indicates that nobody's read the question or it's gotten lost.

[hoju · Accepted solution]

Rachel,

Have you tried this? I am in the process of trying it, just thought you might be interested - from another forum post:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/131168;jsessionid=F22AE55FCA6A998F0ACA9591753CA9A5?tstart=0

(see the post from mufassa)

Since all we get from vmware is insulting responses (insulting to our intelligence), perhaps the OSS world will offer the solution they fail to provide.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Cheers,

Hoju

For those actually interesting in the subject of this thread (as opposed to typical vmware forum soap opera), just wanted to say:

THIS WORKS!

I now have a working vmware-tools packaged for my 64bit Ubuntu 8.04 VM - copy and paste has been restored! drag and drop file copy works also. I would post the .gz package, but I am pretty sure vmware would get mad. If you follow those directions you should be good to go

Thanks again open-vm-tools team!!!

Cheers,

Hoju

[diamondsw]

Back on topic, as I've said before, VMWare needs to reassess this policy. I also understand that the forum monitors cannot change this, but I would certainly expect they could raise this inside the organization appropriately - something we certainly cannot do. They've stated in the infamous rebate thread that they're not used to dealing with the general computing public; well, this is part of it. I don't expect a nightly update to VMWare Fusion, but I do expect their tools to be kept up to date on a much more frequent basis as Linux and Windows updates require. I've made the comparison between Fusion/Tools and Safari/WebKit before. One is proprietary and progress is confidential, one is open and updated rapidly for those who want to benefit from it.

No problem I won't try to help you in the future as I've not that I know of tried to help you in the past either. I find people continually asking for a fix to something not supported equally irritating.

No problem; there wasn't any "help" in your posts. I found them equally irritating, arrogant, and unhelpful. I applaud users who take the time to help. Your posts were not such.

[hoju]

Since they call this a community, it really isn't about just asking VMware for an "unsupported fix" - it is about finding a fix. And thanks to a lot of techies out there like myself, we now have one for the subject matter of this thread.

Pity it got polluted with all of the "help"... which amounted to a bunch of gibberish, doublespeak and melodrama.

Now if someone could just develop a filter for this forum that weeds out all the "help", and just leaves the meaningful content - it might be as useful as a normal forum.

The mantra of this forum should not be "we hear you customers, and it is against our policy to say anything more"... it ought to be:

"The difference between a wise man and a fool is that when the answer is not known, the former remains silent, and the latter keeps on talking ".

[Pat_Lee]

Hoju,

I am glad that the community found a fix to this problem. We appreciate the input and support of our users in the community and we will continue to do our best to support the community with solutions and workarounds that we about on our team.

The Open VM Tools project was created for many reasons, one of which Rachel picked up in that the distros can ship tools when they ship new versions. This enables an even better installation experience for users. Over time, I personally hope to see more and more of this happen.

With regards to VMware response and policy, there a great number of people from VMware who spend time in this forum to help answer and address as many issues where we can. We also listen closely to our customers to get their feedback to see where there are areas we can improve the products. However, we have rules as VMware employees that we have to follow as well. We give guidance where we can and if we can't, we want people to know we know about an issue, we are tracking it, and that we can't say more at this time. While you may not agree with this approach, we want to provide the feedback we can on the subject and continue on working to improve where possible.

Best,

Pat Lee

Group Manager, Consumer Products

VMware