I actually purchased a license for VMWare Workstation when I was on Fedora21 as I needed it for a training course. Worked fine.
Looks like the next time I tried to use I was on Fedora23 as I managed to get the library modules it needs working under F23. From memory it took weeks to get it working again and I had to downgrade some packages.
Now I am running Fedora26, want it to run a puppet training environment, no chance. It refuses to automatically compile the modules needed saying it cannot find a compatible gcc version, even though the exact version it says it cannot find is the default.
mark@vmhost3 ~]$ gcc --version gcc (GCC) 7.1.1 20170622 (Red Hat 7.1.1-3) Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. [mark@vmhost3 ~]$ gcc -dumpversion 7
Trying to install the modules manually also gets an error
[root@vmhost3 ~]# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all Failed to get gcc information.
Running make manually on vmmon and vmnet gets lots of compile errors.
root@vmhost3 vmware_work]# make -C vmmon-only
make: Entering directory '/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only'
Using kernel build system.
make -C /lib/modules/4.11.9-300.fc26.x86_64/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. \
MODULEBUILDDIR= modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/kernels/4.11.9-300.fc26.x86_64'
CC [M] /var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:124:19: error: initialization from incompatible pointer type [-Werror=incompatible-pointer-types]
.fault = LinuxDriverFault
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:124:19: note: (near initialization for ‘vmuser_mops.fault’)
/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c: In function ‘cleanup_module’:
/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:403:8: error: void value not ignored as it ought to be
if (misc_deregister(&linuxState.misc)) {
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At top level:
/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1332:1: warning: always_inline function might not be inlinable [-Wattributes]
LinuxDriverSyncReadTSCs(uint64 *delta) // OUT: TSC max - TSC min
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
cc1: some warnings being treated as errors
make[2]: *** [scripts/Makefile.build:295: /var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [Makefile:1496: _module_/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/kernels/4.11.9-300.fc26.x86_64'
make: *** [Makefile:120: vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory '/var/tmp/vmware_work/vmmon-only'
I don’t want to spend weeks trying to get it working, and all the forums google searched throw up day basically the same thing, if you upgrade your OS for any reason you have wasted your money purchasing VMWare.
Admittedly VirtualBox also needs the kernel driver(s) recompiled after OS upgrades, the main differences between the two being VirtualBox is free and the recompiled generally work… however I do not want yet another virtual machine environment installed on what should be a dedicated KVM machine.
Will try and eliminate VMWare Workstation from the machine alltogether and try and get the OVA machine image working under KVM as per this (external site) post KVM: Importing an OVA appliance. I have done this before with limited success depending on the complexity of the hardware configuration, but attempting this is preferable to installing yet another virtual machine tool.
I doubt I will use VMWare again; and I feel sorry for the sysadmins that have to support it. I have had a lot of pain getting OpenStack to do what I want, I consider VMWare is worse, my personal opinion of course :-).
