VMware Communities
motri
Contributor
Contributor

vmplayer wont compile on 2.6.39-2-amd64

this time vmmon:

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmmon-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.39-2-amd64/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. \
          MODULEBUILDDIR= modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.39-2-amd64'
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:783: error: ‘SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED’ undeclared here (not in a function)
make[4]: *** [/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[2]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.39-2-amd64'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2

driver.c also explains what this is all about:

/*
                * RedHat 7.2's SMP kernel, 2.4.9-34, contains serious bug
                * which prevents concurrent mod_timer() requests to work.
                * See bug 34603 for details.
                *
                * This spinlock is not needed for non-RedHat kernels,
                * but unfortunately there is no way how to detect that
                * we are building for RedHat's kernel...
                */

mebbie just clean up?

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
djpalindrome
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Interesting; that's why VMware unwisely continues using kernel constucts deprecated for years, which finally have broken altogether.

VMware's commercial interests in supporting some vintage Red Hat 2.4.x kernel may very well outweigh the welfare of the vast majority of it's users; I don't know.

But you have two choices. Scour the Web and look for some guy's patch to make the proprietary VMware Tools source play nice without BKL, or make a new start based on any recent OpenVM Tools source tree. Debian and Ubuntu have done as miserable a job keeping OpenVM Tools current with recent kernels as VMware has with proprietary VMware Tools, but with less justification, since the distros are simultaneously providing us both the new kernels and the unusable Tools.

But there is hope. There is a somewhat grumpy Ubuntu developer who has a working PPA, and his packages will very soon appear in Oneiric repositories. These are built on a very recent code tree from the OpenVM Tools project on SourceForge, and DKMS actually works again, building kernel modules on everything up to, and including, linux 3.0-rc6.

If your distro is derived from Debian, in other words, you may be in luck.

I really *hate* resorting to distro-provided VMware packages, since the distro package maintainers of Open VM Tools are, for the most part, both incompetent and lazy, and do not even bother to read the SourceForge packaging guidelines to find out what they are supposed to be providing, but almost never do, such as initialization scripts that mount HGFS shares and prepare the guest environment for copy-and-paste operations. You know, those frilly little things that are the whole rationale for installing a Tools package in the first place.

Reply
0 Kudos
motri
Contributor
Contributor

Havent seen a patch for 2.6.39-2-amd64 (Debian testing/unstable) so far, do you have one?

Tried to migrate to virtualbox, but no luck with my winxp virtual machine (drivers ...).

Still optimistic towards virtualbox because drivers come with Debian.

Reply
0 Kudos
djpalindrome
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Most of the generic source patches out there seem to be for VM Workstation running on linux hosts.

I, however, am only going to run some 3.0.0-rc kernel virtualized as a linux guest, and keep the hypervisor running on a stable platform (in my case, Windows 7 x64 SP1).

I think most people can see the point of that.

See Weltal's blog; he has a reputation in this area:

"As there have been many requests to fix the guest modules of vmware (which I don’t need myself) I’ve fixed them so they build and seems to load correctly and work (I’ve tested them on opensuse 12.1 milestone 2 which has a 2.6.39 kernel and built them well also on ubuntu 11.10 which has a 3.0-rc kernel)."

http://weltall.heliohost.org/wordpress/2011/06/26/vmware-7-3-4-guest-modules-fixes-for-linux-2-6-39-...

If you are going to stick with a stable kernel, like 2.6.39, which just won't compile, this may be worthwhile for you. I haven't tried it. I really need DKMS to do the dirty work for me, as both Oneiric and Debian Experimental come up with a new version of 3.0 every other Tuesday at least.

Reply
0 Kudos
kissanej
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

motri wrote:

this one worked for me:

http://osicarg.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/here-is-patch-for-vmware-player-3-1-4-build-385536-on-linux-...

Thanks for that link, it also worked for me in Fedora 15 using kernel 2.6.40-4.fc15.x86_64.

Reply
0 Kudos