VMWare Workstation 6.0 on Linux 2.6.22

As network stack changes were introduces in linux kernel 2.6.21/2.6.22, the vmware modules currenlty refuse to compile. Based on some forum discussions, I’ve creates a small patch so that the modules compile again.

You can download the patch or the vmnet.tar archive here:
vmware-workstation-6.0_linux-kernel-2.6.22.patch
vmnet.tar

Simply apply it to the contents of vmnet.tar and reconfigure your vmware. I’ve tested it on an AMD64 platform, but not on a IA32 yet!

Update: Fixed a bug in the patch and added a link to vmnet.tar.

51 Responses to “VMWare Workstation 6.0 on Linux 2.6.22”

  1. flash78 Says:

    Thank you very much! Works for me on my IA32 2.6.22.

  2. happytiger Says:

    Thanks you works like a charm on my Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon running 2.6.22-6-generic on a IA32 centrino duu core Dell Latitude.
    /happytig3r

  3. Kevin Says:

    Hi,

    The download links above do not seem to work any more. Is it still possible to get your patch from somewhere?

    Thanks,

    Kevin

  4. Daryll Says:

    Compiled successfully on Kubuntu using the latest 2.6.22 kernel but has problems:

    1. Host and vmware network can ping but TCP crc failed.

    2. After some time, Windows XP inside vmware blue screen.

  5. Victor Says:

    Works for me on my IA32 Mandriva 2007.1, kernel 2.6.22.

  6. phbaer Says:

    My VMWare-installation works quite well. Early versions of this patch showed up many IP checksum errors in dmesg. The lastest version, however, didn’t show up any errors here.

    Let’s hope that VMWare will release working modules with one of the next builds :)

  7. 0livier Says:

    Works for me on my x86_64 Mandriva 2007.1 kernel 2.6.22 tmb,
    BUT VMip.exe seems hung……
    I should try to reboot my kernel and my windows……. maybe some trash in ints or modules are still there……

  8. Olivier Says:

    Full test after rebbot: everything works fin. thx a lot :-)
    One more proof were OnpenSource community support is faster than commercial support ;-)

  9. Guilherme Says:

    Run fine in the Suse 10.2 kernel update 2.6.22 IA32 .
    Thanks very much

  10. Kripsio Says:

    Yep! it work on Debian Etch with custom 2.6.22 kernel 10x :)

  11. Kishd Says:

    Works well on Archlinux with kernel 2.6.22

  12. gianc Says:

    OK..work in Fedora 7 + kernel 2.6.22.1-27
    Thanks.

  13. Richard Hendershot Says:

    worked for me also! Thanks!!

    fedora 7 x86_64, kernel 2.6.22.1-27.fc7

  14. phbaer Says:

    It’s great to hear that the patch works that well :)

    Even though I hope that there will be some officially maintained version some day…

  15. Grant Turrill Says:

    I used the vmnet.tar file on VMware Server Console 1.0.3 build-44356 after searching for other solutions and only finding options that required modifying the page.h file in the kernel source tree.

    I was not keen to do this, so your solution was a much better option.

    Thanks very much

  16. Fintan Says:

    I am new to patching and want to install vmware-player 2.0 not workstation on my kubuntu 7.10 (tribe3) so I copied the vmnet-only file given by the patch into /usr/bin and replaced the “old” vmnet-only file. I did vmware-config.pl and it came up with an error message (too long to post here) and aborted. Is this patch only for workstation6.0? If so is there a way of getting player 2.0 running?

    As I have my guest system (vmx) set up with ws6.0 beta I need player 2.0

    Any help would be greatly appreciated and I can give it on to the *ubuntu forums.

  17. phbaer Says:

    Well, I actually never tested the patch with the VMWare Player. For the Workstation you only have to copy the vmnet.tar to the module sources directory (most likely /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/) and call vmare-configure.pl.

    In my opinion the procedure should also work for the player as it only is a cut down version of the workstation (isn’t it?).

  18. Matt Says:

    This works on my fedora 7 amd64 laptop running 2.6.22.1-27.fc7 with VMPlayer. Thanks!

  19. Dani Says:

    Works fine on Arch Linux with kernel 2.6.22.

    Thanks !

  20. dbavedb Says:

    Another success story for:

    Linux version 2.6.22.1-27.fc7

    On an Intel Quad Core.

  21. dhave Says:

    Umm, I hate to be a party-pooper, but, after using phbaer’s vmnet.tar, I can succesdfully compile vmware modules and can boot into my guest OS (Windows 2000 Pro), but I don’t have a net connection in my guest OS anymore. I normally use bridged networking.

    I’m running Arch Linux with kernel 2.6.22.

    Guess I may need to revert to an older kernel until VMware gets things together — unless one of you gurus has another idea.

    Thanks.

  22. phbaer Says:

    @dhave: You’re the second one who came across this weird problem. I can’t reproduce it here and also hope for VMware patching their bundles modules correctly.

  23. insulae Says:

    iea!! i am using Arch Linux with VMware Workstation v6.0.0.45731 with linux 2.6.22-ARCH and with this patch vmware works perfectly. THANKS!!!

  24. myblog › linux 2.6.22 und wmware-workstation 6… Says:

    [...] zja, so kanns gehn. hier der link: http://npw.net/2007/05/17/vmware-workstation-60-on-linux-2622/ [...]

  25. Harri Says:

    Doesn’t work for me. XP boots as usual, but after login I just see the desktop background. After a few minutes XP reboots. Switching back to kernel 2.6.21.6 makes the problem go away.

  26. Patrick Campbell Says:

    works great here on Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon alpha-3

  27. Renan Says:

    Works great here on Arch Linux.

  28. Rudy De Luca Says:

    Thanks, work in gutsy tribe 3

  29. Patrick Campbell Says:

    correction - does not work well in gutsy tribe 3 with 2.6.22-9 kernel.
    windows xp bsod’s and i can’t access apache or cups on the host system

  30. Rudy De Luca Says:

    correction - too me not work net devices in gutsy tribe 3

  31. Nathan Davis Says:

    Thanks very much! Works for me on 2.6.22.1-41.fc7.

  32. phbaer Says:

    Please try to use the Gentoo patches. They seem to compile against 2.6.22 (not tested!).

  33. Michael Says:

    Good work! You’re patch works great with Fedora 7 (2.6.22.1) and VMwarePlayer-2.0.0-45731. Thanks a lot!

  34. VMware Player 2.0.0-45731 and kernel 2.6.22 | Michael’s Tech Blog Says:

    [...] to Philipp Baer who did a patch for VMWare Workstation 6.0 which works for VMware Player 2.0.0-45731 as well. To solve the problem [...]

  35. Free Mind » Blog Archive » Vmware module vmnet refused to compile under linux 2.6.22 Says:

    [...] Linux 内核里面对 network stack 有很大的改动造成的。并且在这里找到了一个可以下载的 patch 以及打好 patch 的 vmnet.tar 。那里的作者说是在 [...]

  36. pluskid Says:

    Thanks! Good work! It works with Debian Sid(2.6.22.1).

  37. Fernando Says:

    The VMWare installer (or lack thereof) is simply ludicrous, ridiculous, laughable. In short: a joke.

    I cannot believe a company with the resources of VMWare cannot do a proper installer script for the “VMware player” that checks basic stuff like “hey, you don’t have the source packages for your kernel, want me to invoke {apt-get | yum] and fetch those for you?”. or “you don’t have gcc-c++ installer, want me to install that as well?”.

    No, instead the user is presented with all sorts of hard-to-decipher errors and must figure things on their own.

    The situation with regards to the vmmon module is unbelievable… why can’t this company support Fedora Core 6 and 7, along wih Ubuntu, Suse and Debian? That would have 90% of linux users covered.

    I spent TWO DAYS reading different “how to get vmware working in XYZ Linux” posts to realize what a MESS the VMware install currently is (and I only need to install the VMWare viewer!).

    The folks at Win4Linhad a similar situation a couple years ago, and they had to chase every distro’s moving kernel, and had to release custom kernels for each distro and version, until they finally devised a work-around and now you can install Win4Lin practically everywhere, without messing with the kernel and compilation. Why can’t VMWare do the same??

    Sheesh!. I give up!.

  38. Don Says:

    I am new to trying vmware-player.

    Fedora 7 x86_64, kernel 2.6.22.1-41,fc7

    After the any-any-113 patch I got vmplayer to install. I have a vm with Win2KPro installed. I ask the vmware-config to give me NAT and bridged connections. So, what I am supposed to see in Windows isn’t clear. Win reports that I have no driver installed for the network adaptor. It cannot find one. What am I missing about the install process? Everything I read seems to assume far more knowledge about how to set things up than I have.

  39. FireStorm Says:

    Worked like a charm here — Fedora Core7 WinXP Pro guest.

    Thanks!

  40. Mark Renouf Says:

    Just wanted to add my thanks, attempted to patch this myself but realized I can’t afford to spend the time on it. Came across your page (Google), applied the patch and I’m all set. Debian Sid/2.6.22 on Core Duo (Lenovo).

  41. Tony Says:

    Not working on Gutsy Tribe 5 AMD64 same error.

  42. Joe Says:

    Thanks, works great in gutsy tribe 4

  43. John DeCarlo Says:

    I am using Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5.

    This new vmnet.tar compiles perfectly, thank you.

    My only issue now is that when I try and run vmplayer, I get an error:

    /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmplayer: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libvmwareui.so.0/libvmwareui.so.0: invalid ELF header

    This is undoubtedly a library issue. Investigations led to looking at a setting to force previous GTK, as well as changing the LD_LIBRARY setting. So far, neither has worked for me.

    If anyone succeeds with this, I would appreciate hearing about it.

    P.S. I know this is my own problem created by using bleeding edge kernel and alpha OS.

  44. Don Boyd Says:

    On Gutsy Tribe 5, I got VMWare Player 2 past the vmnet problem, using the patch, but upon re-running the configuration routine, there are some C library files that it wants, that are not in the Gutsy repos. Apparently there is a package named “glibc” that has them. The glibc documentation is in the Gutsy repos, but the package itself is not. If I can find an .rpm version of it, alien might be a way to get around this.

  45. Fintan Says:

    On gusty tribe 5 I got it working with first applying the anyany113 patch here:

    http://knihovny.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/

    then applying the new vmnet.tar as described above.

    My only problem is that my xp guest says I have no permissions to open my shares.:((

  46. Renan Says:

    Working perfectly in bleeding-edge Arch Linux and Slackware 12. Thank you!

  47. zgibek Says:

    Thanks,
    Nice to report it works also for VMware-server-1.0.3 on Fedora 7 x86_64, ThinkPad T61 with vanila kernel 2.6.22.5.

    best regards, zgibek

  48. rudanj Says:

    thx,
    on kubuntu 7.10, 2.6.22-14-generic, vmware-player works fine.

  49. Valek Says:

    I’m a newbie and i don’t know how to apply that patch. Can u help me writing what i’ve to do?

    Tnx a lot!

  50. mihkel Says:

    How can I apply this patch? Please tell us newbies

  51. Frank Says:

    I had problems running Workstation 6.0 unter Ubuntu 7.10. vmware are crashed on start.

    If you have the same problem try to run vmware with the VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK env.variable

    VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes vmware

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