UPDATE: there’s a new patch available, existing link updated (May 28, 2006)
If you want to get VMware working with Fedora Core 4 you could waste a lot of time if you’re looking in the wrong places – in fact I couldn’t find the answer anywhere on the web, just discovered it by trial and error.
The bottom line is this:
- forget about using VMware 5
- using VMware 4.5.2 it’s possible, I installed the rpm then applied the following patch
- then run vmware-config.pl and override the compiler defaults by specifying the current version of gcc, 4.0.1, instead of 4.0.0 which the install wants because the kernel was compiled with it
- accept the default values for the rest of the wizard
This worked for me with the latest kernel which at the time of writing is 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4smp – smp just because my machine has the intel hyper-threading feature. Interestingly, the same approach did not work when I was running FC3 when the kernel version increased from 2.6.11.x to 2.6.12.x.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Hey Demian, VMWare 5.5 (Beta) works nicely in FC4.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:54 pm
’bout time the muppets sorted themselves out ..
October 11th, 2005 at 12:33 am
Help, i was updated my kernel to Linux version 2.6.13-1.1526_FC4 then the error
Linux version 2.6.13-1.1526_FC4 is:
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config2/vmmon-only’
Unable to build the vmmon module.
can you help me
October 12th, 2005 at 9:44 am
i’m done perfectly, with vmware 4 & 5, my problem was the missing gcc-c++, i install the compiler with yum, and then work, then i download the 5th version and then works..
thanks. cheers
October 31st, 2005 at 7:04 am
have you tried using vmware 5.5rc1 ?
free download for registered users
March 3rd, 2006 at 7:54 am
I had no problems with FC4 and the latest beta version…except that it was *s-l-o-w* (I need to upgrade my PC before I seriously think about using a virtual machine as a production (working) system.
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 am
I tried VMware 5.5 workstation with Fedora Core 4 with kernel verion 2.6.16-1.2108_FC4smp on Pentium D 2.26 GHz 1GB RAM (DDR 2700). It installed fine and VMware ran smoothly. I installed Microsoft Windows XP professional in the VMware with 20GB hard drive space dedicated to it. My problem was when I was simply using the system in VMware, it was very smooth without a glitch. However, when I used more CPU/resource intensive programs such as ppstream, it became very SLOW. The screens between each transition in the movie clip delayed severely, and the sound was slugish. I checked memory usage with top, and found out with VMware loaded all physical memory was used and the system started to use swap space. Since only 268 kB was used in the swap, I figured I could have closed programs or tuned the memory usage so none would go to swap. After Fiddling with the preference in VMware and system, I finally fit all memory into physical memory without touching the swap. However, the movie streaming in VMware was still slow, but sound was ok. Then I shrunk the memory reserved for Windows in VMware from 256 MB to 128 MB, and the memory for VMware from 378 MB to 256 MB, more physical memory was freed up, but the streaming was still slow. Then I adjusted the priority of VMware to -1 using “renice -1 PID”, magically the streaming and the picture were smooth. Compared to a native Windows system, it was as smooth but it was now acceptable. Note, when I changed the priority to -2 or higher priority, the result was sluggish again. I think it was probably conflict with other important system process such as screen rendering process, but I am not sure. May someone help or give a hint of how to make VMware faster in Fedora? Which version of Linux distro is more effective in terms of virtualization and media management?