December 7, 2024

VMWare howto

To get VMWare workstation 7.x.x to work on Ubuntu/Mint/whatever Linux distro with kernel 2.9/3.x you have to apply a patch, otherwise it complains about compiling modules and won’t install. Here’s how you do that.

VMWare Mint/Ubuntu kernel 3.2.x Workstation 7.1.6.x patch

su
cd /usr/src/
mkdir vmware.patch
cd vmware.patch
wget http://weltall.heliohost.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/vmware715fixlinux320.tar.gz
tar xfvz vmware715fixlinux320.tar.gz
vi patch-modules_3.2.0.sh
#vmreqver=7.1.5 (copy this line, then comment it out)
vmreqver=7.1.6 (add this line right below it)
bash patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

VMWare tools missing kernel headers

for some reason, even though you have the kernel headers installed, vmware tools doesn’t know where to look to find them, to fix that do:

apt-get install build-essential
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h

now re-run the vmware tools .pl installer.