VMware Player on Debian

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For various reasons, having vmware running on my desktop would be kind of useful. VMware provide a Free (as in beer) version of their software called VMware Player. I downloaded the file VMware-Player-4.0.2-591240.x86_64.bundle off their website and tried to build it.

It failed to build. Given my previous lack of success with VMware server, I wasn’t too surprised. What was surprising was it wasn’t too hard to fix it. The problem was that the vmnet module would not compile and that was due to three things:

net device ops no longer has set_multicast_list (in netif.c)
the linux module header needs to be included to define THIS_MODULE
skb_frag_t has been redefined and needs an adjustment

The patch is only a few lines and means I can compile vmware on my Debian sid computer running kernel 3.2.0-1

vmnet.patch

To use it, you will need to find where the modules are built, for me it is /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source

mv vmnet.tar vmnet2.tar
tar xf vmnet2.tar
patch -p0 < vmnet.patch
tar cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only

With that you can run the player which will try to build the modules and you’re done!

imabonehead: Cross-compiling VMWare View for ARM Linux (in Debian/Ubuntu) | CNXSoft – Embedded Software Development (cnx-software.com)
Virtually Run Another OS in your System (tech2copycat.wordpress.com)
Upgrade to Oneiric breaks VMWare Player (aslakjohansen.wordpress.com)

Comments

12 responses to “VMware Player on Debian”

February 19, 2012

bharath

also see this post http://tech2copycat.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/have-you-ever-t/

Reply
February 19, 2012

Ben Hutchings

Your patch breaks multicast and promiscuous mode.
You need to s/ndo_set_multicast_list/ndo_set_rx_mode/.

Reply
1. February 19, 2012
  
  Craig
  
  ndo_set_multicast_list is assigned to VmNetifSetMulticast() is an empty function. So I think for this specific case, we’re safe. I’ve seen other examples of similiar code and they removed the function like what I did too.
  
  But perhaps we (those that have done it that way) are all collectively doing the wrong thing too!
  
  Reply
February 26, 2012

Kai Hendry

As a long time VMware user who has recently switched to Virtualbox, I suggest you do the same. 🙂

Reply
1. February 26, 2012
  
  Craig
  
  Ooh, care to explain why? I’m not challenging your suggestion just curious about the reasons behind that; besides not having to do evil patches like my blog entry describes.
  
  Reply
March 6, 2012

Scott Busby

Worked perfect on my Debian Testing system!
Linux kernel 3.2.0-1-686-pae

Thanks for the patch.

Scott

Reply
May 8, 2012

re7erse

did not work for me:

/usr/lib/vmware/modules/source# patch -p1 < vmnet.patch
can’t find file to patch at input line 4
Perhaps you used the wrong -p or –strip option?

The text leading up to this was:

|diff -u vmnet-only.orig/filter.c vmnet-only/filter.c
|— vmnet-only.orig/filter.c 2012-01-19 09:22:02.000000000 +1100

|+++ vmnet-only/filter.c 2012-02-16 21:03:24.000000000 +1100

File to patch:

Reply
1. May 8, 2012
  
  Craig
  
  As the error message says, you used (and I told everyone) the wrong -p option.
  The correct command is patch -p0 < vmnet.patch so just change the “1” for “0” and you should be right to go.
  
  Reply
May 30, 2012

mr_me

works perfect! thanks 🙂

Reply
August 10, 2012

brett h

these are the reasons i quit VMWare for VirtualBox a few years ago…. only problem is it’s very difficult to get a laptop to share USB devices with the vm, particularly a wireless Alfa card running on a Mac. ill send you a driver once i figure out how to build it!

Reply
September 25, 2012

Agustin Vazquez

Tanks a lot i had the same problem and i’ven fixed all becaouse of you.

Reply
1. September 25, 2012
  
  Craig
  
  Glad that it worked out for you! I got a little of the way forward by reading other blogs so figured it might help others; or me when I need to do it again and forget what I did.
  
  Reply