VMware – Still waiting for 12.5.8…
Apparently there is ‘no information’ on the possible availability of an update to the 12.5.x version of VMware, to fix the well-known problems with GCC 7 etc…
If you were thinking of trying the ‘technology preview’ version – which came out some months ago – then this version also has a problem with GCC 7 (tested with Fedora 26, GCC version 7.1.1)
Robert Gadsdon. September 11, 2017.
I was able to get vmware v12.5.7 running on Gentoo running kernel 4.13.1 with the patch from vmware’s forums. Everything (the kernel, vmware, actually everything) was compiled with gcc 7.2. I ran into a ‘could not recognize gcc version’ error or something like that initially, but everything worked when I recompiled my kernel with gcc 7 (I’ve had that happen on the graphics drivers before). What errors are you getting? I haven’t checked my logs (I just did this yesterday), but video acceleration, vmware-tools, and networking all seem to work fine.
I have been running the technology preview for a few weeks. Installed elfutils*, compiled vmmon and vmnet, modprobed, and started the VMware service (there might have been a reboot in there somewhere). Works well.
I have seen some weird inconsistency between kernels though…where one kernel will work, then next won’t…
for me it works for about 20-30 minutes with the 4.13.1 kernel then crashes
I threw fedora 26 on a spare drive, and I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with VMWare on it. I looked at the modconfig script, and I guess it’s just a wrapper for some binary, so I didn’t look farther than that. It’s definitely a bug in the vmware binary, and I guess it can’t parse the output when it attempts to determine the version of gcc running. It cuts off the minor version, and just displays ‘7’.
On my main system “gcc (Gentoo 7.2.0 p1.1) 7.2.0″, vmware works, as does the vmware-modconfig –console –install-all, and the log looks like this:
(timestamps removed so it’s easier to read, working after the patch for kernel v4.13.x from Darius, and toggling VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS=”yes”)
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmmon module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmnet module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmblock module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmci module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vsock module.
modconfig| I125: Setting vsock to depend on vmci.
modconfig| I125: Trying to find a suitable PBM set for kernel “4.13.1”.
modconfig| I125: No matching PBM set was found for kernel “4.13.1”.
modconfig| I125: Found compiler at “/usr/bin/gcc”
modconfig| I125: Got gcc version “7.2.0”.
modconfig| I125: The GCC version matches the kernel GCC minor version like a glove.
On fedora 26 “gcc version 7.1.1 20170622 (Red Hat 7.1.1-3) (GCC)”, I get this:
(timestamps removed so it’s easier to read)
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmmon module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmnet module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmblock module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vmci module.
modconfig| I125: Reading in info for the vsock module.
modconfig| I125: Setting vsock to depend on vmci.
modconfig| I125: Trying to find a suitable PBM set for kernel “4.12.12-300.fc26.x86_64”.
modconfig| I125: No matching PBM set was found for kernel “4.12.12-300.fc26.x86_64”.
modconfig| I125: Found compiler at “/bin/gcc”
modconfig| I125: Got gcc version “7”.
modconfig| I125: Unable to parse gcc version
modconfig| I125: We are now shutdown. Ready to die!