Support for kernel 5.8.0?

[dbonner]

Hi,
Thanks so much for this project. I've used it successfully a number of times with kernel updates.
However, I was not able to successfully run VMware Workstation 15.5.6 using the kernel modules created by this package after updating to Ubuntu mainline kernel 5.8.0. I am on Ubuntu 18.04.
Do you plan to support kernel 5.8.0?
Many thanks,
Daniel

[mkubecek]

I certainly do but the problem with 5.8 kernel is deeper and it's not even sure if it can be resolved within the host modules. Definitely not all of it as the segfaulting applications are closed source so that only VMware can fix them. The kernel crash happening when vmware-modconfig is bypassed might be possible to handle but it's really hard to investigate.

[dbonner]

No worries, Thanks for trying. Dan

…

On Tue, 4 Aug 2020 at 18:32, Michal Kubeček ***@***.***> wrote: I certainly do but the problem with 5.8 kernel is deeper and it's not even sure if it can be resolved within the host modules. Definitely not all of it as the segfaulting applications are closed source so that only VMware can fix them. The kernel crash happening when vmware-modconfig is bypassed might be possible to handle but it's really hard to investigate. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#70 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAB26QRXJOSYF5H3ZEHMX6DR67BQBANCNFSM4PTZL6JQ> .

[mkubecek]

For the sake of completeness, there is a discussion in VMware forum on this topic (no good news, I'm afraid, except that VMware is working on the problem).

[mdlam92]

anyone have a workaround for this yet?

[tommyjcarpenter]

..the workaround is to downgrade the kernel until this is fixed in Vmware, from my reading everywhere on this issue. On Arch I've downgraded to linux 5.7 and pinned it there, until this issue is confirmed fixed. They seem to ACK that at some point in vmware 16, the next release, it will be fixed.
Bleeding edge kernels are great until.. they're not =)

[baryonix]

I just added pull request #72 which seems to fix the issue at least for my systems. Hope this helps.

The pull request addresses the kernel issue. Regarding the vmware-modconfig crash, I don't see how to fix this without some advanced binary patching, but you can just symlink vmware-modconfig to /bin/true and build the modules manually.

[dbonner]

Thanks baryonix,
I used your pull request branch and was able to install the vmware kernel modules (it worked on Ubuntu 18.04 with mainline kernels 5.8.6 and 5.8.7).
I then did the following:
mv /usr/bin/vmware-modconfig /usr/bin/vmware-modconfig_backup
ln -s /bin/true /usr/bin/vmware-modconfig
and I was able to run virtual machines.
All the best,
Dan

[TahomaSoft]

Michal (mkubecek), thanks very much for your ongoing work on the vmmon and vmnet patches! I have found them very useful for a long time.

~Erik

[EpicVoyage]

I did not have the latest version of vmware player installed and have updated. In addition to the instructions above, I had to load the kernel modules manually after creating a symlink in place of vmware-modconfig:

modprobe vmmon
modprobe vmnet

And run the network configuration app:

vmware-netcfg

After that, everything seems to be up and running. Thanks, guys. Your work is really appreciated over here.

[justinclift]

Ahhh. I tend to run this, which I think (without checking) restarts those dependent services:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/vmware restart

[avs333]

Thank you, the patch works just as nice for me with 5.8.8 and vmware-modconfig blocked!

[Ulceration]

The patch works in 5.8.6-1 on Manjaro.

Thanks for the contribution.

[stefantalpalaru]

Workstation 16.0 has been released: https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/downloads/details?downloadGroup=WKST-1600-LX&productId=1038&rPId=51975#product_downloads

[mkubecek]

Thanks for the heads up. I updated the tmp/workstation-16 branch with preliminary patchset but I'll need 2-3 more hours before I can test it. It fails to build against vanilla 5.7 kernel but this rather seems to be a problem of objtool in v5.7. Builds against 5.8 and current mainline are fine.