I just upgraded my Pop!_OS to 21.10 (regretting this now) and I'm receiving somewhat the same compile issue, instead of vmmon its vmnet

VMware compile fails with "Skipping BTF generation for /tmp/modconfig-9C2Ftg/vmnet-only/vmnet.ko due to unavailability of vmlinux"

Before finding this post I've uninstalled 16.1 and tried to install 16.2 (obviously that didn't work)

I've installed the headers with "apt install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)"

root@lenovow540:/usr/lib# uname -r
5.15.8-76051508-generic

I tried the steps posted here but that didn't work for me. (likely because its vmmon and not vmnet)

Because I had been messing around trying other methods before I found this post, I decided to start over fresh again, so I reinstalled VMWare WS 16.2.

Now after the install there is only the 2 tar files for vmnet and vmmon, I extracted those tar files manually (tar xvf vmnet.tar then tar xvf vmmon.tar) and modified the vm_asm_x86.h in ./vmmon-only/ before doing the make and make install.

Now the 'Make' for vmmon went great no errors however the make install returned

"Using kernel build system.
make: *** No rule to make target 'install'. Stop."

I don't know if this is good or bad.  So I did what I do when my car makes a bad noise I turned up the radio so I couldn't hear it and moved on.

As far as the vmnet-only directory I'm not sure what file to modify.  The 'make' fails with:

Skipping BTF generation for /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet-only/vmnet.ko due to unavailability of vmlinux
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-5.15.8-76051508-generic'

So sticking my head in the sand (again) I moved on with the following.

Before I found this thread I tried the method in this post here which didn't work because it doesn't have a step to comment out line 65-72 as you identified in file vm_asm_x86.h (located in ./vmmon-only).

But now I've had some success.

So I followed the last few step of the thread :

cp vmmon.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/vmmon.ko

cp vmnet.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc/vmnet.ko

depmod -a

systemctl restart vmware.service

And well success.

I'll be honest, I have no idea what I've done or am doing but THANK-YOU!

Thanks @tomarmistead for the code edit and thanks @gdelcampo for a solution in another thread and thanks to @DigitalDude for having almost the exact same issue as me on the same platform and directing me to this great thread.

I don't know if this convoluted mess of a post will help anyone but there it is.

And thanks again.