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HOWTO: Install VMware Server 1.0.4 on Fedora 8

Submitted by lalee on Tue, 11/20/2007 - 13:29
Updated May 19, 2008
Please stop spamming unofficial VMware-on-Fedora9 solutions here.  Thanks.  I will be writing a Fedora9-Updated article shortly, once I have personally verified (or constructed) any patches necessary to get things working with Fedora.

Preliminary reports in the VMware Communities forums suggest that vmware-any-any-117 works for Fedora9, and I will be verifying this fact shortly.  Thanks!

Updated March 16, 2008
These installation instructions are still valid for Fedora 8, with Kernel 2.6.24.  (Verified with 2.6.24.3-12.fc8).  I have no idea why a recent HowtoForge article instructs you to download their own specific patch, when the more official vmware-any-any patch 1.15 referenced below appears to work perfectly fine.  As a Fedora Ambassador, I caution you against following those HowtoForge instructions without first verifying the contents of their patch.

Despite the great strides in the Virtualization Support of Fedora, I still prefer the polished capabilities of VMware Server.  In fact, I will happily install VMware on any big, beefy Fedora Linux box I can get my hands on.  In my opinion, the Virtualization Group in Fedora's Yum Repository (i.e Xen Kernel, KVM, and Qemu) are still in need of fine-tuning, and aren't quite ready for use in a reliable setting.

Software professionals need reliability for their environments -- we have enough bugs and infrastructure quirks to deal with in our own solutions to need to diagnose and debug an entire Host or Guest Operating System environment!    We'll play with Xen and the other Virtualization Toys on our personal machines later, but for now, to keep things humming along on the bleeding edge, I'd rather eliminate a potential point-of-failure and work with something that's polished, mature, and freely available:  VMware Server.

Installing VMWare Server 1.0.4 on Fedora 8

VMware Server RPM
Download the RPM Binary version of VMWare Server from the VMware.com website.  Save it someplace convenient for you to get to it later, like your Documents folder.

VMware Server Keys
Don't forget to get your VMware Keys by registering with VMware.  They're free, and it just takes a minute to fill out an online form to get them.

VMware Any-Any Patch
Download the VMware-any-any update patch, version 1.14 or later.  You'll need that to get the VMware networking modules to compile correctly for Linux Kernel 2.6.23.

Become Root to install files
  Either su or sudo (if configured)
    su
    sudo bash

Fedora Packages to Satisfy Dependencies
Install a few packages to satisfy VMware dependencies:
 yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
 yum install kernel-devel perl-devel inetd

Install the VMware RPM
  cd ~/Documents (or wherever you downloaded the RPM)
  yum localinstall --nogpgcheck VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.i386.rpm

Install the VMware-any-any update
  tar -xvzf vmware-any-any-update114.tar.gz
  cd vmware-any-any-update114
  perl runme.pl

Follow the script prompts (you'll probably just hit <return>for all of them).  Enter your Serial Number.  Congratulations, you should now have a working VMware server.

Creating a Launcher Icon
If you want to create a New Launcher on your desktop, the binary is /usr/bin/vmware.  If you don't like the built-in icon, you can select the VMware icon in the /usr/share/pixmaps directory.

End Notes
Kernel Updates will temporarily BREAK VMware.  No, it's not a bug -- VMware needs some low-level interaction with the Kernel, and it does so by building Modules specific to the kernel version you're running.  Thus, any time you receive an updated Linux Kernel from the Fedora Updates repository, you will need to run vmware-config.pl to rebuild the Networking Modules. 

Fortunately, this condition is pretty easy to spot if you watch your machine startup -- you will see a "Starting VMware Service... FAILED" message when this happens.

If running vmware-config.pl (as root) fails to work, check online for a new vmware-any-any update patch to resolve your issue.  Fedora can sometimes receive a major Kernel Update, and if that happens, it will take some time before a newer vmware-any-any update patch is released to address the differences.  In such cases, you'll need to select your OLDER kernel version from the Grub Bootloader menu and stick with it until you can download apply the newer vmware-any-any patch.

Hope this helps!

Laurence Lee
Fedora Ambassador, Hawaii

Most Recent Kernels Verified

Linux bigdaddy.lalee.net 2.6.24.3-34.fc8 #1 SMP Wed Mar 12 16:51:49 EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Linux bigdaddy.lalee.net 2.6.24.3-12.fc8 #1 SMP Tue Feb 26 14:21:30 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

 
#1Submitted by Ryan (not verified) on Sat, 03/29/2008 - 05:06.

Set up is unable to find the 'make' program on your machine.

I get this message while trying to install VMware on Fedora 8:

Set up is unable to find the 'make' program on your machine. Please make sure it is installed. Do you want to specify location of this file by hand?

If I type Y it asks for me the location, whic I don't know where. If I type N the installation aborts.

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ryan

 
#2Submitted by lalee on Sun, 03/30/2008 - 16:06.

Ryan, It sounds like you may

Ryan,

It sounds like you may not have done a yum groupinstall "Development Tools" on your machine, as 'make' is included in that group of packages.  (Note that the command is "yum groupinstall", not just "yum install".

If that doesn't correct the problem and help get you up and running, let me know -- there could be something amiss with your installation that we'd need to figure out.
#3Submitted by Mark A. Stevens (not verified) on Fri, 03/21/2008 - 02:21.

Version of any-any versus Latest Kernel

I don't know if it makes sense to point at the exact file, when it changes, and it is usually behind the latest kernel release. Something like: "Go to this link http://knihovny.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/ and search for any-any. Identify the latest version, and see that it matches your kernel, found in /usr/src/kernels/." I have found that the latest kernel releases far outstrip the any-any releases, which creates that concern, of, live without VMware server, or live without the latest kernel patches? I guess I will opt for being behind on the kernel :-) ... Mark
#4Submitted by domo (not verified) on Mon, 02/11/2008 - 12:05.

Hi, Thanks for the Howto. I

Hi,Thanks for the Howto.I running Fedora 8 as well but I had to run:yum install  --nogpgcheck VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.i386.rpmTo be able to install the rpm otherwise I get the error:Package VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.i386.rpm is not signed 
#5Submitted by lalee on Mon, 02/11/2008 - 23:26.

Thanks for the heads-up.  I

Thanks for the heads-up.  I have made the correction to this HOWTO.
#6Submitted by Adi (not verified) on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 00:25.

Error while installing VMware

Extracting the sources of the vmmon module.

Building the vmmon module.

Building for VMware Server 1.0.0.
Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.25.9-40.fc8/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.25.9-40.fc8-i686'
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driverLog.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/hostif.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/comport.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.o
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vcpuset.h:74,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/modulecall.h:23,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/vmx86.h:19,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/hostif.h:18,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.c:15:
include/asm/bitops.h:9:2: error: #error only <linux/bitops.h> can be included directly
In file included from include/asm/cpufeature.h:118,
                 from include/asm/alternative.h:42,
                 from include/asm/bitops.h:13,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vcpuset.h:74,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/modulecall.h:23,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/vmx86.h:19,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/hostif.h:18,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.c:15:
include/linux/bitops.h: In function ‘get_bitmask_order’:
include/linux/bitops.h:29: error: implicit declaration of function ‘fls’
include/linux/bitops.h: In function ‘hweight_long’:
include/linux/bitops.h:45: error: implicit declaration of function ‘hweight32’
include/linux/bitops.h:45: error: implicit declaration of function ‘hweight64’
include/linux/bitops.h: In function ‘fls_long’:
include/linux/bitops.h:112: error: implicit declaration of function ‘fls64’
In file included from include/asm/bitops.h:316,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vcpuset.h:74,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/modulecall.h:23,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/vmx86.h:19,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/hostif.h:18,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.c:15:
include/asm/bitops_32.h: At top level:
include/asm/bitops_32.h:135: error: static declaration of ‘fls’ follows non-static declaration
include/linux/bitops.h:29: error: previous implicit declaration of ‘fls’ was here
In file included from include/asm/bitops_32.h:145,
                 from include/asm/bitops.h:316,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vcpuset.h:74,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/modulecall.h:23,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/vmx86.h:19,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/hostif.h:18,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.c:15:
include/asm-generic/bitops/hweight.h:6: error: conflicting types for ‘hweight32’
include/linux/bitops.h:45: error: previous implicit declaration of ‘hweight32’ was here
include/asm-generic/bitops/hweight.h:9: error: conflicting types for ‘hweight64’
include/linux/bitops.h:45: error: previous implicit declaration of ‘hweight64’ was here
In file included from include/asm/bitops_32.h:149,
                 from include/asm/bitops.h:316,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vcpuset.h:74,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/modulecall.h:23,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/vmx86.h:19,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/hostif.h:18,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.c:15:
include/asm-generic/bitops/fls64.h:7: error: static declaration of ‘fls64’ follows non-static declaration
include/linux/bitops.h:112: error: previous implicit declaration of ‘fls64’ was here
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.25.9-40.fc8-i686'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only'
Unable to build the vmmon module.

For more information on how to troubleshoot module-related problems, please
visit our Web site at "http://www.vmware.com/download/modules/modules.html" and
"http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/linux/prebuilt_modules_linux.html".

Execution aborted.

 

 

I get this error message.

Please help
#7Submitted by lalee on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 15:31.

VMWare Error

At first glance, it looks like you'll need to hunt for a more recent version of the vmware-any-any patch.  I haven't used VMware in a while -- I think the last linux kernel version I built the modules for was 2.6.24, and it looks like you're on 2.6.25.

-Lalee