VMWare Workstation on openSuSE 11.1

Written by vidarlo on 20081221 in english and Linux and software with 12 comments.
OpenSuSE

Vmware workstation, fresh out of the box, did not want to run on openSuSE, claiming it could not find any modules:
$ vmware
Logging to /tmp/vmware-vidarlo/setup-17389.log
modinfo: could not find module vmmon
modinfo: could not find module vmnet
modinfo: could not find module vmblock
modinfo: could not find module vmci
modinfo: could not find module vsock
modinfo: could not find module vmmon
modinfo: could not find module vmnet
modinfo: could not find module vmblock
modinfo: could not find module vmci
modinfo: could not find module vsock

The problem was that the modules were precompiled, and included with VMware workstation. However, these did not insert into the running kernel (2.6.27-x86_64).

Removing the precompiled modules did the trick for me – simply rm -Rf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary should remove ’em, and force VMware workstation to compile the modules on next run. This worked nice for me. If you’re cautios, you might want to move the modules instead of removing them…:)

Please note that you need gcc, kernel source and other build dependencies to compile the VMWare modules 🙂 So right now, VMware workstation works like a charm. Even though they don’t support anything newer than 10.3 officially…

This is written from my openSuSE-perspective, but I can’t see any reason why it shoudn’t work on (almost) any Linux distribution showing similar problems with VMWare…

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12 Responses to “VMWare Workstation on openSuSE 11.1”

  2. Thank you for sharing this information.
    On 11.0, VMWare WS was working out of the box. On 11.1 x86_64 I had this problem to.

  3. Thank you very much for the tip, it did the trick for me too 🙂

    Cheers mate!

  4. Nice, but what are these build dependencies i would need cant get it running:

    Logging to /tmp/vmware-goeasi2/setup-9027.log

(vmware-modconfig:9027): Gtk-WARNING **: Im Modulpfad "qtcurve" konnte keine Themen-Engine gefunden werden,
/usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:72: error: unexpected identifier 'colorize_scrollbar', expected character '}'
modinfo: could not find module vmmon
modinfo: could not find module vmnet
modinfo: could not find module vmblock
modinfo: could not find module vmci
modinfo: could not find module vsock
modinfo: could not find module vmmon
modinfo: could not find module vmnet
modinfo: could not find module vmblock
modinfo: could not find module vmci
modinfo: could not find module vsock
modinfo: could not find module vmmon
modinfo: could not find module vmnet
modinfo: could not find module vmblock
modinfo: could not find module vmci
modinfo: could not find module vsock
modinfo: could not find module vmmon
modinfo: could not find module vmnet
modinfo: could not find module vmblock
modinfo: could not find module vmci
modinfo: could not find module vsock
modinfo: could not find module vmmon
modinfo: could not find module vmnet
modinfo: could not find module vmblock
modinfo: could not find module vmci
modinfo: could not find module vsock

(gksu:9359): Gtk-WARNING **: Im Modulpfad "qtcurve" konnte keine Themen-Engine gefunden werden,
/usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:72: error: unexpected identifier 'colorize_scrollbar', expected character `}'
Must use a valid mode.  Use one of:
        --get-kernel-headers
        --get-gcc
        --validate-kernel-headers
        --validate-gcc
        --install-pbm
        --build-mod
        --install-all
modinfo: could not find module vmmon

  6. Worked perfectly 😀

    Just as you suggested, did the move:
    sudo mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary.backup

    Instead of removing them but worked perfectly 😀

  7. Thanks a lot man.. Had this problem in x64 OpenSuSE 11.1 as well.

  9. I did what it was suggested here, moved contents of /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary

    but after that tried to run vmware and it said it needed to rebuild modules into kernel, but nothing happens, and vmware dont run

    I have opensuse 11.1 x86_64

  10. This solved the problem for me too, running on Fedora 10 (x86) with VMware-Workstation-6.5.1-126130.x86_64

    Thanks !

  11. thanks a lot!
    this solved my problem.
    I’m using ubuntu 9.04