VMware Tools Patches

vmware-tools-patches patches the source code contained in a VMwareTools-*.tar.gz file, so VMware Tools will successfully compile and install on a variety of kernel versions.

Quick Start

To build VMware Tools, do the following:

1. Checkout the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/rasa/vmware-tools-patches.git

2. Copy your patch(es) into the appropriate directory in the patches directory. The file must end in .patch, or .diff. This step is optional. For example:

$ cp great-new.patch vmware-tools-patches/patches/vmhgfs

3. Copy a VMwareTools-*.tar.gz into the vmware-tools-patches folder:

$ cp VMwareTools-*.tar.gz vmware-tools-patches/

4. Apply the patches, and then run the vmware-install.pl installer:

$ cd vmware-tools-patches
$ ./untar-and-patch-and-compile.sh

Supported Versions and Kernels

The included patches have been tested with the following versions of VMware Tools:

• VMwareTools-9.9.0-2304977.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 7.1.0 & Workstation 11.0.0)
• VMwareTools-9.8.4-2202052.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 7.0.1)
• VMwareTools-9.8.3-2075148.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 7.0.0)
• VMwareTools-9.6.2-1688356.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 6.0.3/4/5 & Workstation 10.0.2/3/4)
• VMwareTools-9.6.1-1378637.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 6.0.2 & Workstation 10.0.1)
• VMwareTools-9.6.0-1294478.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 6.0.0/1 & Workstation 10.0.0)
• VMwareTools-9.2.4-1398046.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 5.0.5 & Workstation 9.0.3)
• VMwareTools-9.2.3-1031360.tar.gz (VMware Fusion 5.0.4 & Workstation 9.0.2)

With the patches applied, at least one version of VMware Tools listed above, compile successfully with the following Linux kernels:

• 3.18.x
• 3.17.x
• 3.16.x
• 3.12.x
• 3.11.x
• 3.8.x
• 3.5.x
• 2.6.32

The patches have not yet been tested with the following kernels, but presumably will apply successfully:

• 3.15.x

The patches do not yet apply successfully with the following Linux kernels:

• 3.13.x

and building VMware Tools fails with the following error:

vmhgfs-only/link.c:186:10: error: implicit declaration of function ‘vfs_readlink’ [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]

so the vmhgfs kernel module failed to build. VMware Tools still installs successfully, but without the "shared folder" functionality.

Required Patch Format

Please note your patches must contain only one directory name in them. For example, the following patches will work:

+--- vmhgfs-only/link.c.orig	2014-04-23 10:11:34.891106441 +0100
++++ vmhgfs-only/link.c	2014-04-23 00:49:03.000000000 +0100

or

+--- vmhgfs-only.orig/link.c	2014-04-23 10:11:34.891106441 +0100
++++ vmhgfs-only/link.c	2014-04-23 00:49:03.000000000 +0100

The following patches will not work:

+--- link.c.orig	2014-04-23 10:11:34.891106441 +0100
++++ link.c	2014-04-23 00:49:03.000000000 +0100

or

+--- path/to/vmhgfs-only/link.c.orig	2014-04-23 10:11:34.891106441 +0100
++++ path/to/vmhgfs-only/link.c	2014-04-23 00:49:03.000000000 +0100

Dependencies

If apt-get is installed on your system, the following packages will be installed prior to compilation:

• linux-headers-$(uname -r)
• build-essential
• dkms
• patch
• psmisc

If apt-get is not installed, you will need to install these (or equivalent) packages manually, before starting.

Contributing

To contribute to this project, please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Bugs

To view existing bugs, or report a new bug, please see the issues page for this project.

License

This project is MIT licensed.

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG.md for the version history for this project.

Contact

This project was originally developed by Ross Smith II. Any enhancements and suggestions are welcome.

Links