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steveadler
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare on Fedora 20

Does anyone know if VMWare Desktop 10.0.1 runs on a Fedora 20 host?

14 Replies
WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

steveadler wrote: Does anyone know if VMWare Desktop 10.0.1 runs on a Fedora 20 host?

Yes, although not officially supported, I have VMware Workstation 10.0.1 installed and running on Fedora 20 (3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64).

To install VMware Workstation 10.0.1 on Fedora 20 I did the following in a root Terminal:

yum -y install gcc kernel-headers kernel-devel

ln -s /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h

sh VMware-Workstation-Full-10.0.1-1379776.x86_64.bundle

The last command extracts the VMware Installer and brings up a GUI to install VMware Workstation.  Note:  Use the FQP (Fully Qualified Pathname) to the .bundle file.

steveadler
Contributor
Contributor

I got an e-mail that VMWare only supports the following linux distributions...

OpenSUSE

SLE Desktop

SLES

RHEL

Oracle Linux

CentOS

Ubuntu

Why doesn't it include Fedora? Isn't fedora on of the major linux distributions?

BTW Woodzy, thanks for letting me know I can upgrade fedora 19 to 20 without breaking VMWare... Smiley Happy

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abhilashhb
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Not sure why fedora is not supported but as WoodyZ mentioned you can still  install the Workstation on fedora.

Its not officially supported.

Abhilash B
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashhb/

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steveadler
Contributor
Contributor

What does it mean to be fully supported? Does VMWare do some kind of testing of a new release of VMware Desktop against those distributions to see if they work or not?

Maybe I should switch to Ubuntu then... My biggest problem in life is when a new version of Fedora comes out and VMWare stops working...

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

BTW Woodzy, thanks for letting me know I can upgrade fedora 19 to 20 without breaking VMWare... Smiley Happy

Just so were perfectly clear I never said that!  What I said in reply to "Does anyone know if VMWare Desktop 10.0.1 runs on a Fedora 20 host?" was "Yes, although not officially supported, I have VMware Workstation 10.0.1 installed and running on Fedora 20 (3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64)."

This was a clean install of Fedora 20 not a upgraded install from Fedora 19 and upgrading to 20 from 19 may break the existing VMware Workstation install.  Not to worry though as upgrading to the next supported version of a supported Linux Host OS often breaks the install.  One usually just needs to update the kernel headers and then rebuild the VMware Workstation modules.

Since it does install and work on a clean install of Fedora 20 the worst case might be having to uninstall VMware Workstation 10.0.1, update the kernel headers and then reinstall VMware Workstation 10.0.1.  Note that doing so does not remove your existing Virtual Machines.

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steveadler
Contributor
Contributor

Well, its done. I've upgraded (actually blew away fedora 19 and installed fedora 20 from scratch) and VMWare is humming along. But, my experience is when a new kernel comes out, VMware start up procedures go off and automatically rebuild all modules. The problem I usually run into is that sometimes the new kernel is incompatible with the VMware modules, they fail to compile, and then I have to search the web for someone who has published the patch and patch the modules.

In any case, I'm fine now, running fedora 20.

Cheers.

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mdraugh
Contributor
Contributor

steveadler wrote:

I got an e-mail that VMWare only supports the following linux distributions...

OpenSUSE

SLE Desktop

SLES

RHEL

Oracle Linux

CentOS

Ubuntu

Why doesn't it include Fedora? Isn't fedora on of the major linux distributions?

BTW Woodzy, thanks for letting me know I can upgrade fedora 19 to 20 without breaking VMWare... Smiley Happy

I don't know the official line, but I've always figured it is because Fedora is bleeding-edge.  Unlike all of the distros in the supported list, Fedora does change major kernel versions during the lifecycle of a release -- for example, Fedora 19 released with 3.10 and updated in midstream to 3.11 (breaking VMware Workstation in the process until the necessary patches came out).  That would make it much harder to support, as testing/patching to keep up with changes would be much more labor-intensive than for the more stable distros.  Which sucks for people who prefer to use Fedora (I include myself in that group) but rely on VMware Workstation for everyday use.  My workaround is to dual boot, keeping a current Linux Mint (Ubuntu derivative, but with better debugging) install that I can use to function during the interval between breakage and patch.

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

tejaaus, the links you've provided are irrelevant to the issue of this discussion because this thread is about running VMware Workstation on Fedora 20 not installing Fedora 20 in VMware Workstation (or VirtualBox)! Smiley Wink

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MexicanDetected
Contributor
Contributor

Hi thanks for this great info

i try to install the workstation and get an error in the second line

"

ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/usr/src/kernels/3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64/include/linux/version.h’: No such file or directory

"

dou you have any clue for this ?

thanks in advance

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antus
Contributor
Contributor

I can confirm that this also works on kernel 3.13.10-200.fc20.x86_64 with VMWare 10.0.1 64bit.

uname -a
Linux ant-my-host-name 3.13.10-200.fc20.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Apr 14 20:34:16 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel

ln -s /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h

sh VMware-Workstation-Full-10.0.1-1379776.x86_64.bundle

For people who have a working system and dont want vmware to keep breaking it can be useful to add to to /etc/yum.conf

exclude=kernel-*

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viirtualiizatii
Contributor
Contributor

Friends could you please let me know how to proceed when I am getting an error in the step:

ln -s /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h

There is no such location(/usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h) in my installation of Fedora 20 and it shows the error though I was able to install the software but now it gives some kernel error.

Also would like to know why we would create a soft link for this? Shouldn't it work from /generated/..... itself?

Thank you all in advance.

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rtk2005
Contributor
Contributor

I already installed VMWare Workstation on Fedora 20, using Mate Desktop. Works fine but, if you update the packages, the software fails. If you're using GNOME Desktop, the software did not work!

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viirtualiizatii
Contributor
Contributor

Yup, I got the GNOME and faced the issue on Fedora though it worked fine on CentOS and Debian.

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