Craig Mayhew

Installing VMware server 2.0.2 on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala 64bit

by Craig Mayhew on Tue 3rd Nov 2009 under Guides/Fixes, Linux/Ubuntu

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu Karmic Koala and fully expected this to break my VMWare server install. Sure enough I got plenty of errors when trying to compile VMWare Server with the latest kernel. Here's the solution:

Download VMware Server (2.0.1 or 2.0.2) – in gz format. You will also need a license key.

If you have tried to install vmware server already and something went wrong during the install, then do these two steps first:

first, delete the vmware modules


rm -rf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/


if needed (you’ll know if you need to do this one):


rm -rf /lib/modules/2.6.31-13-server/misc/vm*



Install:

Run vmware-install.pl. Somewhere in the installation process you should be asked:
Do you want this program to invoke the command for you now? [yes]
you should answer: no

Then run the patch vmware-server.2.0.1_x64-modules-2.6.30.4-fix.sh.
sudo ./vmware-server.2.0.1_x64-modules-2.6.30.4-fix.sh


After this, run 


/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl


If the vmware-config.pl aborts, because it couldn't shut down all vmware services then kill them manually and then rerun vmware-config.pl:


kill -9 $( grep -i vm | awk '{ print $2 }' )


And hopefully that should work!
Ubuntu 9.10   Karmic Koala   VMware server 2.0.2