satukubik

The default VMWare Player and Workstation distribution can’t be installed in Ubuntu 7.04 due to some kernel errors. This is the error message:

Extracting the sources of the vmmon module.Building the vmmon module.
Building for VMware Player 1.0.2 or 1.0.3 or VMware Workstation 5.5.2 or 5.5.3.
Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.20-gentoo-r6/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.20-gentoo-r6'
CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:85:
/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘...’ before ‘compat_exit’
/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘...’ before ‘exit_code’
/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21: warning: type defaults to ‘int’ in declaration of ‘_syscall1’
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.20-gentoo-r6'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only'
Unable to build the vmmon module.

What you have to do is:

1. change dir to the installer directory, and enter /lib/modules/source
2. untar vmmon.tar

   tar xvf vmmon.tar

3. edit the file vmmon-only/include/compat_kernel.h, add the following preprocessor statements

   /*
    * compat_exit() provides an access to the exit() function. It must
    * be named compat_exit(), as exit() (with different signature) is
    * provided by x86-64, arm and other (but not by i386).
    */
   #define __NR_compat_exit __NR_exit
   #if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,19)
   static inline _syscall1(int, compat_exit, int, exit_code);
   #endif

4. tar back the file

   mv vmmon.tar vmmon.orig.tar
   tar cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only

5. run vmware-config.pl again

   # sudo ./vmware-config.pl
   ...
   
   You can now run VMware Player by invoking the following command:
   "/opt/vmware/player/bin/vmplayer".
   
   Enjoy,
   
   --the VMware team