sakana

very short memo

vmplayer abnormal exit on ubuntu

These days on my ubuntu box I encounter abnormal exit of vmplayer upon start-up. Specifically speaking vmplayer asks for me to update kernel modules and it fails.

sigh.

problem description

It goes as follows.

$ vmplayer
Logging to /tmp/vmware-ayamada/vmware-modconfig-12999.log
... "VMWare Kernel Module Updater" windows comes up ...
$ echo $?
1

vmware-modconfig logs ends up here.

Failed to find /lib/modules/3.8.0-30-generic/build/include/linux/version.h
/lib/modules/3.8.0-30-generic/build/include/linux/version.h not found, looking for generated/uapi/linux/version.h instead.

core file indicates that the process exited by receiving SEGV.

Core was generated by /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-gksu –su-mode –message=Please enter the root passw’.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0 __strcmp_ssse3 () at ../sysdeps/i386/i686/multiarch/strcmp-ssse3.S:229

workaround

It seems to be known issue. Please refer to following thread in askubuntu.

So workaround is to:

  1. create symbolic link of version.h header for current kernel revision
  2. compile

Procedure is as follows.

$ uname -r
3.8.0-30-generic
$ sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/version.h
$ sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

Now you can enjoy vmplayer again.

remark

There are so many headers...

$ ls -ld /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-*-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 May 18 14:34 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-21-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 May 25 08:59 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-22-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 May 31 09:59 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-23-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jun 19 10:01 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-25-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jul  5 09:58 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-26-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jul 31 09:22 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-27-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Aug 21 10:07 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-29-generic
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Sep  6 09:52 /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-30-generic