VMWare Player and livecd

Sometimes, after building dozens of livecd with Kadischi, burning cds/dvds for testing becomes boring. Im now using VMWare on Fedora Core 5 Test 2 to launch my isos.

VMWare lets you run another computer in your computer. There are times when you need to check if something "just works" on a different platform.

How to install VMWare on Fedora Core 5 Test 2

1. Get the free VMWare Player
2. Download the linux image e.g VMware-player-1.0.1-19317.i386.rpm
3. Install it with rpm -ivh VMware-player-1.0.1-19317.i386.rpm
4. Then configure it with vmware-config.pl

If ever, you fall on,
What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? [/lib/modules/2.6.15-1.1853_FC5/build/include]
Troubleshooting it as follows.

# cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source.
You should find 2 tar files, vmmon.tar and vmnet.tar.Extract both via
# tar xf vmmon.tar
# tar xf vmnet.tar
you should find a Makefile.kernel in both vmmon-only/ and vmnet-only/ . Edit both!!

For vmmon-only/Makefile.kernel
Comment these two lines.

#EXTRA_CFLAGS += $(call vm_check_build, $(SRCROOT)/autoconf/epoll.c, -DVMW_HAVE_EPOLL, )
#EXTRA_CFLAGS += $(call vm_check_build, $(SRCROOT)/autoconf/setnice.c, -DVMW_HAVE_SET_USER_NICE, )

Add the following 2 lines below the commented lines.

EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DVMW_HAVE_EPOLL=1
EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DVMW_HAVE_SET_USER_NICE=1

For vmnet-only/Makefile.kernel
Comment these three lines.

#EXTRA_CFLAGS += $(call vm_check_build, $(SRCROOT)/epoll.c, -DVMW_HAVE_EPOLL, )
#EXTRA_CFLAGS += $(call vm_check_build, $(SRCROOT)/socket.c, -DVMW_HAVE_SK_WMEM_ALLOC, )
#EXTRA_CFLAGS += $(call vm_check_build, $(SRCROOT)/sk_alloc.c,-DVMW_HAVE_SK_ALLOC_WITH_PROTO, )

Add the following lines below the commented lines.
EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DVMW_HAVE_EPOLL=1
EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DVMW_HAVE_SK_WMEM_ALLOC=1
EXTRA_CFLAGS += $(call vm_check_build, $(SRCROOT)/setnice.c, -DVMW_HAVE_SET_USER_NICE, )
EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DVMW_HAVE_SK_ALLOC_WITH_PROTO=1

Rename the existing vmmon.tar and vmnet.tar via
# mv vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.save
# mv vmnet.tar vmnet.tar.save

Create new tar files via
# tar cf vmmon.tar vmmon-only
# tar cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only

Run 'vmware-config.pl'. it should use these new tar files containing the updated Makefile.kernel files.

The above worked for me on kernel-2.6.15-1.1948_FC5.

MY Makefile.kernel for vmmon.tar and vmnet.tar