I have some VMWare VM’s I’ve been using here and there. I probably should convert them to Virtual Box, but I’ve had a rough time getting that working as well.
So … every time you upgrade the kernel, VMWare barfs because kernel headers have changed. Usually I look around for patches to the VMWare sources, but this time there were none I could find, so I figured it was my turn.
This simple patch makes VMWare Player 4.0.0 work with Linux 3.1.0. At least it seems to work. What I did to patch it in:
$ mkdir /tmp/vmware
$ cd /tmp/vmware
$ wget http://thewalter.net/stef/misc/vmnet-4.0.0-linux-3.1.0.patch
$ tar -xvf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar
$ patch -p0 < vmnet-4.0.0-linux-3.1.0.patch
$ sudo cp /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar.bak
$ sudo tar -cvf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar vmnet-only
And then run vmplayer and let it do its install thing. It says that the services fail to start (systemd incompatibility), but it works regardless.
Note: If you try this and it doesn’t work for you (or makes your doggy sad), don’t complain to me. Complain to VMWare.