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.

May 30th, 2007 at 21:39
Thank you very much! Works for me on my IA32 2.6.22.
June 22nd, 2007 at 17:16
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
June 30th, 2007 at 07:06
Hi,
The download links above do not seem to work any more. Is it still possible to get your patch from somewhere?
Thanks,
Kevin
July 11th, 2007 at 06:05
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.
July 12th, 2007 at 08:14
Works for me on my IA32 Mandriva 2007.1, kernel 2.6.22.
July 12th, 2007 at 09:40
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 :)
July 12th, 2007 at 14:38
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……
July 12th, 2007 at 15:03
Full test after rebbot: everything works fin. thx a lot :-)
One more proof were OnpenSource community support is faster than commercial support ;-)
July 15th, 2007 at 19:05
Run fine in the Suse 10.2 kernel update 2.6.22 IA32 .
Thanks very much
July 17th, 2007 at 19:24
Yep! it work on Debian Etch with custom 2.6.22 kernel 10x :)
July 18th, 2007 at 15:10
Works well on Archlinux with kernel 2.6.22
July 21st, 2007 at 10:11
OK..work in Fedora 7 + kernel 2.6.22.1-27
Thanks.
July 22nd, 2007 at 14:38
worked for me also! Thanks!!
fedora 7 x86_64, kernel 2.6.22.1-27.fc7
July 22nd, 2007 at 15:29
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…
July 23rd, 2007 at 07:14
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
July 24th, 2007 at 10:29
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.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:43
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?).
July 24th, 2007 at 18:57
This works on my fedora 7 amd64 laptop running 2.6.22.1-27.fc7 with VMPlayer. Thanks!
July 25th, 2007 at 20:31
Works fine on Arch Linux with kernel 2.6.22.
Thanks !
July 27th, 2007 at 02:43
Another success story for:
Linux version 2.6.22.1-27.fc7
On an Intel Quad Core.
July 27th, 2007 at 04:09
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.
July 27th, 2007 at 09:32
@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.
July 29th, 2007 at 04:38
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!!!
July 29th, 2007 at 11:56
[...] zja, so kanns gehn. hier der link: http://npw.net/2007/05/17/vmware-workstation-60-on-linux-2622/ [...]
July 30th, 2007 at 10:33
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.
July 31st, 2007 at 22:43
works great here on Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon alpha-3
August 1st, 2007 at 22:02
Works great here on Arch Linux.
August 5th, 2007 at 16:20
Thanks, work in gutsy tribe 3
August 7th, 2007 at 07:52
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
August 7th, 2007 at 22:54
correction - too me not work net devices in gutsy tribe 3
August 8th, 2007 at 02:30
Thanks very much! Works for me on 2.6.22.1-41.fc7.
August 8th, 2007 at 17:28
Please try to use the Gentoo patches. They seem to compile against 2.6.22 (not tested!).
August 9th, 2007 at 09:37
Good work! You’re patch works great with Fedora 7 (2.6.22.1) and VMwarePlayer-2.0.0-45731. Thanks a lot!
August 9th, 2007 at 10:02
[...] 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 [...]
August 14th, 2007 at 03:57
[...] 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 [...]
August 14th, 2007 at 04:01
Thanks! Good work! It works with Debian Sid(2.6.22.1).
August 17th, 2007 at 08:24
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!.
August 17th, 2007 at 21:54
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.
August 19th, 2007 at 18:07
Worked like a charm here — Fedora Core7 WinXP Pro guest.
Thanks!
August 21st, 2007 at 20:19
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).
August 26th, 2007 at 14:46
Not working on Gutsy Tribe 5 AMD64 same error.
September 3rd, 2007 at 01:06
Thanks, works great in gutsy tribe 4
September 4th, 2007 at 18:27
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.
September 7th, 2007 at 15:11
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.
September 7th, 2007 at 15:31
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.:((
September 8th, 2007 at 05:21
Working perfectly in bleeding-edge Arch Linux and Slackware 12. Thank you!
September 12th, 2007 at 00:21
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
October 23rd, 2007 at 20:02
thx,
on kubuntu 7.10, 2.6.22-14-generic, vmware-player works fine.
October 28th, 2007 at 17:12
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!
November 26th, 2007 at 14:51
How can I apply this patch? Please tell us newbies
December 10th, 2007 at 21:25
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