Accepted Solutions
First .. you seem to differentiate between x86_64 and i686 iso image for Fedora. I could not find a i686 image. Of course, I need to be on 64-bit system. If I am wrong here, then please point me in the right direction.
If you want to use the x86_64 image that's fine, assuming your system supports it. I just used the i686 image as an example as under the scenario either will fail the same way. Then main thing is in the error message it reported a null string for the location of the default 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 kernel and this means that the necessary header files for that kernel were not on the system. I presented it the way I did so one would understand that if they did a default install and no upgrade and didn't use "-`uname -r`" appended to "kernel-devel" with yum then is would install the latest kernel header files not the default and one would still get a null string error message.
Second, I upgraded to the latest version of the kernel and I get these errors now. Should I downgrade.
The latest kernel I do not believe it is officially supported by VMware yet and the VMware Tools would need to be patched with a third party patch before installing with kernels later then the default kernel. So you'll either have to apply one of the patches that are out there on the web or use a VMware supported kernel, it's your choice.
BTW It is quite common with Linux distro once one upgrades the kernel from the default that one will usually need to use one of the third party patches to get VMware Tools to install properly and you should be able to find it in the forums and via Google. Generally speaking, VMware is and always has been extremely slow to support newer kernels, hence the need to use third party patches to get VMware Tools to install properly on any Linux distro and kernel that is not yet officially supported! 
Cooolbabu wrote:
I am trying to install VMWare tools in Fedora 17 and getting an error message
The path "" is not a valid path to the 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 kernel headers.
I installed gcc, binutils and make.
Looks like you didn't install the proper kernel-devel package and why you got the error message "The path "" is not a valid path to the 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 kernel headers."
The following is just an example...
If I were to install Fedora 17 in a VM say from the Live ISO Image vs. the DVD Image then wanted to install VMware Tools here is what I'd do.
As an example install Fedora 17 from the Fedora-17-i686-Live-Desktop.iso image.
Now without doing any updates install a few dependencies needed for installing VMware Tools.
In a Terminal as root issue the following command:
yum install gcc make binutils perl kernel-devel-`uname -r`
Then install VMware Tools.
Note: If "-`uname -r`" isn't appended to "kernel-devel" then as of today it would install the packages for the 3.6.3-1.fc17.i686 kernel not the default 3.3.4-5.fc17.i686 and then the error message "The path "" is not a valid path to the 3.3.4-5.fc17.i686 kernel headers." would be displayed. Also note that if the 64-bit image was used then .i686 in the kernel would be replaced with .x86_64.
So in a root Terminal issue the following command:
yum install kernel-devel-`uname -r`
When finished then install VMware Tools and it should go okay. 
First .. you seem to differentiate between x86_64 and i686 iso image for Fedora. I could not find a i686 image. Of course, I need to be on 64-bit system. If I am wrong here, then please point me in the right direction.
If you want to use the x86_64 image that's fine, assuming your system supports it. I just used the i686 image as an example as under the scenario either will fail the same way. Then main thing is in the error message it reported a null string for the location of the default 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 kernel and this means that the necessary header files for that kernel were not on the system. I presented it the way I did so one would understand that if they did a default install and no upgrade and didn't use "-`uname -r`" appended to "kernel-devel" with yum then is would install the latest kernel header files not the default and one would still get a null string error message.
Second, I upgraded to the latest version of the kernel and I get these errors now. Should I downgrade.
The latest kernel I do not believe it is officially supported by VMware yet and the VMware Tools would need to be patched with a third party patch before installing with kernels later then the default kernel. So you'll either have to apply one of the patches that are out there on the web or use a VMware supported kernel, it's your choice.
BTW It is quite common with Linux distro once one upgrades the kernel from the default that one will usually need to use one of the third party patches to get VMware Tools to install properly and you should be able to find it in the forums and via Google. Generally speaking, VMware is and always has been extremely slow to support newer kernels, hence the need to use third party patches to get VMware Tools to install properly on any Linux distro and kernel that is not yet officially supported!
Same problem here: I'm new to linux and currently trying different distros on Workstation 9
Fresh install of Fedora 17 i686
first I had to install gcc
Fedora comes with kernel 3.4 but with headers of 3.6, so I had to upgrade the kernel to match the headers
also needed to install kernel-devel
then to apply this patch
http://communities.vmware.com/message/2130250#2130250
but before it worked i had to install utility called "patch"
and run
chmod +x vmware_90_linux-3.6.x_patcher.sh
everything built successfully, but then I got:
Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel.
Starting Virtual Printing daemon: done
Starting vmware-tools (via systemctl): Job failed. See system journal and 'systemctl status' for details.
[FAILED]
Unable to start services for VMware Tools
Execution aborted.
I couldn't be bothered any further and moved on to another distro
BTW tools install from the first go on Linux Mint 13, which has kernel 3.2