Arch Linux

belhifet

Member

Registered: 2007-04-17

Posts: 39

VMWare

Why is it so difficult to get VMWare working on Archlinux?

I have kernel 2.6.20.
I haven't tried it yet but I planned to follow this howto:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installing_VMware

I see "vmware and kernel 2.6.20 compile modules problem" and other problems with .22 etc.

So isn't there an easier way around?
Why does it not appear on pacman?

I've waited for long (months) and the issue remains the same, no serious update on the wikipage too.
So, what's the matter with VMWare?

whompus

Member

From: Durham. UK

Registered: 2005-08-09

Posts: 256

Re: VMWare

Not sure what problems you're having but I'm running vmware and kernel 2.6.23 using the PKGBUILD's from the AUR

belhifet

Member

Registered: 2007-04-17

Posts: 39

Re: VMWare

Did you need to apply any of the patches/fixes as in the wikipage?

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,154

Re: VMWare

There is a large number of vmware workstation 5 & 6 , server and player archusers, but communication is mainly done through the aur comments and forum threads, not the wiki.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

belhifet

Member

Registered: 2007-04-17

Posts: 39

Re: VMWare

Lone_Wolf since you're the maintainer for the pkg, if I install via source or AUR and then do vmware-any-any, will it work flawlessly with my 2.6.20 kernel?

Last edited by belhifet (2007-11-07 22:45:19)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,154

Re: VMWare

The vmware-ws5 / vmware-any-any combo is tested with kernel 2.6.21 (later versions) , 2.6.22 and 2.6.23 stock arch kernel packages.

Before the modules were put in a separate package i used the vmware-workstation (then maintained by miklos) and the method used in that package was the starting point for my vmware-ws5 package works.

While vmware-ws5 has never been tested with 2.6.20 , the similarites are so great i see no reason why it shouldn't work with 2.6.20.

Note : you are aware that the latest version of workstation is 6 ?
I made the vmware-ws5 package partially because i saw no advantage in splitting the modules to a separate package and also because i (and several other arch users) own a license for workstation 5 and don't intend to upgrade to ws 6 anytime soon.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

belhifet

Member

Registered: 2007-04-17

Posts: 39

Re: VMWare

Well thanks for the info but I'm going for server since it's free.

I just installed from source and didn't have any problem (I think).
Except from when I try to run vmware from xterm, I get

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by /usr/lib/libglibmm-2.4.so.1)
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)

Any ideas?