Alas, all I can do is to confirm that neither proprietary nor "Open-Source" VMware tools play nice on a VMware host [Windows 7 SP1 x64] having a Debian Sid guest running any post-2.6.38 kernel:
- As noted, proprietary VMware Tools 8.4.6 (latest available) croaks spectacularly after failing to build a single kernel module. Only after completely borking your previous Tools installation will you find it doesn't work.
- The open-vm-tools 8.4.2-261024-1 (latest available) package from Debian repos is not intended to inject any modules into a running kernel; by design it includes only kernel-independent Userland components. This mystifies those who actually expect it to work without building the kernel modules from source (impossible; see below)
- open-vm-source 8.4.2-261024-1, also from Debian, also the latest available, spectacularly fails to buils with module-assistant on a variety of kernels. Why are we trying to use m-a? Because they yanked the DKMS package branch altogether, a spectacular failure. This has been noted in Debian bug reports for at least four months.
I understand the caution and conservatism of VMware Corporate, but when that is coupled with paralysis in the open-source community, it's the end users who are left out in the cold.
I really don't want to abandon VMware, but DKMS in VirtualBox has never even hiccuped, and I'm becoming so obsessed with solving VMware's problems that's it's seriously interfering with my other work (to say nothing of my life 😉
