Installing VMware Server 2 on a Debian Lenny GNU/Linux host

(Last updated: 2009-07-20)

Disclaimer

The information below is accurate to my knowledge, however I provide no guarantees to this effect and consequently accept no liability whatsoever for any bad things that may happen as a result of the reader using this information in practice. Use at your own risk.

Introduction

This article documents my experience of installing VMware Server 2 on a Debian Lenny host. The VMware Server version used was 2.0.1-156745 (32-bit).

It is assumed that the reader is already familiar with the VMware Server installation process. Please review this helpful page for more detailed instructions.

Installing pre-requisite packages

Several packages need to be installed first. Please note that the machine in question is a 32-bit Intel P3 server, so you may need to change package names slightly.

aptitude install linux-headers-2.6-686 build-essential

After these packages were installed I needed to modify the /usr/bin/gcc and /usr/bin/g++ symlinks to point at the 4.1 version on the compilers (not sure if g++ change was actually necessary) as they were pointing at 4.3 by default. There is probably a better way to do this.

cd /usr/bin
ln -sf cpp-4.1 cpp
ln -sf g++-4.1 c++

Extract source files

Download the installation package and extract the files:

tar xvfz VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.i386.tar.gz

Patching vmware-config.pl

There appears to be an issue with compiling one of the VMware kernel modules (vsock). The build process fails with the following error:

WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_CreateHnd" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefined!
WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_DestroyHnd" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefined!
WARNING: "VMCI_GetContextID" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefined!
WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_Send" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefined!
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-2.6.26-2-686'
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 between 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.

This patch (courtesy of some nice person at the Ubuntu forums) resolved the problem.

cd vmware-server-distrib/bin
[copy patch file here]
patch < vmware-patch.txt

After this is done, you can start the installer.

cd vmware-server-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

Fix VMware host start-up problem

When attempting to start the VMware host process I ran into the following issue:

invoke-rc.d vmware restart
...
vmware is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured
for this system. To (re-)configure it, invoke the following command:
/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl.

Needless to say, I did try running the vmware-config.pl tool again. In the end, this ("brown paper bag", IMHO) error was resolved by removing the following file:

rm -r /etc/vmware/not_configured

Conclusion

Hopefully at the end of this you will have a working VMware Server host. As always, constructive comments, or criticisms are welcome.

References

Files