VMWare Fusion 2.0.1 & Ubuntu 8.10, oops …
It seemed like a good day to test VMWare Fusion 2.0.1 on my Mac, but while it works well with Microsoft Windows XP VM, it doesn’t work as well with Ubuntu 8.04.1 or 8.10 VM. It wasn’t too surprising to see that VMWare Tools (VMwareTools-7.9.3-128865.tar.gz) don’t work with Ubuntu 8.04.1. There’s a mismatch between the gcc compiler and the kernel. You need gcc 4.2.3 to compile the kernel but gcc 4.2.4 to compile the modules for VMWare Tools.
You see it right away when the VMWare Tools script prompts you to compile the vmmemctl modules, like this:
None of the pre-built vmmemctl modules for VMware Tools is suitable for your running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmemctl module for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)? [yes] Using compiler "/usr/bin/gcc". Use environment variable CC to override. Your kernel was built with "gcc" version "4.2.3", while you are trying to use "/usr/bin/gcc" version "4.2.4". This configuration is not recommended and VMware Tools may crash if you'll continue. Please try to use exactly same compiler as one used for building your kernel. Do you want to go with compiler "/usr/bin/gcc" version "4.2.4" anyway? [no] |
At this point, upgrading Ubuntu appears ideal. Upgrading was tedious, and resulted in two failures. The first failure requires you shut down the instance by using the VMWare Fusion menu – Virtual Machine, Shut Down Guest. Don’t expect it to work as fast as it did in 2.0.0, at least with Ubuntu.
The second failure is that vsock.o can’t be made due to missing header files. That’s really as good as it gets because a fresh install produces the same error. The failure shown is:
Using 2.6.x kernel build system. make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only' make -C /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic' CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linuxaf_vsock.o CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/driverLog.o CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/util.o /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linux/util.c: In function 'VSockVmciLogPkt': /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linux/util.c:157: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linuxaf_vsock.o LD [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.o MODPOST 1 modules WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_CreateHnd" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_DestroyHnd" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIEvent_Subscribe" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCI_DeviceGet" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIEvent_Subscribe" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIDevice_Get" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIMemcpyFromQueueV" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIQueuePair_Detach" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCI_GetConextID" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_Send" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIQueuePair_Alloc" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIEvent_Unsubscribe" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! WARNING: "VMCIMemcpyToQueueV" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied! CC /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.mod.o LD [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic' cp -f vsock.ko ./../vsock.o make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only' Unable to make a vsock module that can be loaded in the running kernel: insmod: error inserting '/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock.o': -1 Unknown symbol in module There is probably a slight difference in the kernel configuration beetween the set of C header files you specified and your running kernel. You may want to rebuild a kernel based on that directory, or specify another directory. The VM communication interface socket family is used in conjunction with the VM communication interface to provide a new communication path among guests and host. The rest of this software provided by VMWare Tools is designed to work independently of this feature. If you with to have the VSOCK feature you can install the driver by running the vmware-config-tools.pl again after making sure that gcc, binutils, make and the kernel sources for your running kernel are installed on your machine. These packages are available on your distribution's installation CD. [ Press the Enter key to continue.] |
Wouldn’t it be nice if they pointed to a specific file. It didn’t take much effort to find them, after all it’s Linux. I found that they’re defined in the vmci_queue_pair.h and vmciGuestKernelAPI.h files. Those files are found inside the vsock-only.tar file. You can find the vsock-only.tar file in the vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source directory. You can read more about the Virtual Machine Communication Interface on VMWare’s web site.
The only pre-built VMWare Fusion 2.0.1 pre-built tool modules for Ubuntu are compatible with the listed kernels. Unfortunately, as noted above they don’t work because of a gcc difference.
bld-2.6.24-16-i386generic-Ubuntu8.04 bld-2.6.24-16-i386server-Ubuntu8.04 bld-2.6.24-16-i386virtual-Ubuntu8.04 bld-2.6.24-16-x86_64generic-Ubuntu8.04 bld-2.6.24-16-x86_64server-Ubuntu8.04 bld-2.6.24-19-i386generic-Ubuntu8.04.1 bld-2.6.24-19-i386server-Ubuntu8.04.1 bld-2.6.24-19-i386virtual-Ubuntu8.04.1 bld-2.6.24-19-x86_64generic-Ubuntu8.04.1 bld-2.6.24-19-x86_64server-Ubuntu8.04.1 |
The only question I’m left with is do I troubleshoot this or downgrade VMWare back to 2.0.0? I’m inclined to the latter given the lack of energy in the VMWare forum.
Ultimately, this was fixed with the next release of VMWare. They simply lag a bit in getting the libraries straight. In fact, I ran into a similar problem with Ubuntu 9.04 and the page.c file. I hacked it and got everything working but really, you should probably just use the last release of Ubuntu a little longer because VMWare looks to lag release by about 4 months.
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