Arch Linux User Repository

After the first installation, please:

1) install the appropriate headers package(s) for your installed kernel(s): linux-headers for default kernel, linux-lts-headers for LTS kernel...

2) reboot or load vmw_vmci and vmmon kernel modules (modprobe -a vmw_vmci vmmon)

3) Enable the services you need (using .service units to activate them during boot or .path units to activate them when a VM is started) :

• vmware-networks: to have network access inside VMs

• vmware-usbarbitrator: to connect USB devices inside VMs

@jihem I just rebuilt it; I'm not seeing any more issues.

Thank you so much for fixing this.

Carlos

@Carlos I applied only 2 of the 3 patches. Can you confirm that the current package version fix your problem?

@jihem

That makes sense - he also does a good job of making each commit be cherry-pickable. I think the one that fixes the oops is 3bfe216f5b: vmnet: use explicit module_init() and module_exit() (#187). That was the last one I picked before the kernel did not oops anymore. However, I also had picked e3f4f1774: modules: rename conflicting DO_ONCE() macro, and cf2b9221a: vmnet: work around field-spanning write warning (#195). I'm not sure if these 2 commits are necessary though?

Thanks so much for pulling these Changes.

EDIT: here's the updated patch with only these three commits (https://gist.githubusercontent.com/CarlosM10011/c6b8a4f34d43516e377ab93548744a2d/raw/318c9ed4166cd775e9769751360e33127c4f9a8b/0001-Patch-modules-for-linux-6.1-and-linux-6.2.patch).

I can confirm that this inserts into both the LTS and mainline kernels packaged by Arch and am running a Windows VM with no problems on the LTS kernel.

@Carlos

I am aware about Michal Kubeček's repository. This man makes a great job to make VMware modules compiling cleanly (without any warning) on most distributions and with newer kernel versions. I often apply his patches to make this package working after a new kernel version that breaks something and before a new VMware release fix it.

But I want to keep vmmon.patch and vmnet.patch as small as possible (to simplify a little bit the maintenance and reviewing of this package) with only the patches required to be able to compile and run theses modules. So, I won't apply your entire patch that contains a lot of unneeded patches.

However, if this package crashes your system, it is necessary to fix it, but I would like to only apply the useful patch(es). I think the following patch could be the one that fix your crash: https://github.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules/commit/650fb3abeb82f2b7d3a14f9579a7529d153636b7. Can you test it? If it solves the problem, I will add it in the package. If not, could you remove one by one each commit of the branch workstation-17.0.1 related to the vmnet module, to discover which one is necessary to fix your crash?

Hello,

A bit of warning - what I'm about to share is more of a workaround to the problem I had. That being said, I'm sharing because someone may find it helpful.

So I recently upgraded my laptop from the 5.15 LTS kernel to the new LTS kernel, and vmnet.ko would oops the kernel when I would try to insert it. In case someone has a similar problem, you can build the kernel modules located at (https://github.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules).

I was able to patch the new changes present in this repo on top of the vmware-workstation AUR repo; each vmware-workstation version has its own branch, and the changes are applied on top of the official tarball by vmware. This probably makes more sense if you look at the commit history and the list of branches.

To the maintainers of this package, here's the patch file I generated; you all should just be able to git apply $PATCH_FILE to pull in the changes (https://gist.githubusercontent.com/CarlosM10011/ff69db0640b742bf6a5ccde6855d5c94/raw/e23f47fb2331c98ed6333427ce04fe12b94d1c91/Patch-kernel-modules-with-latest-changes.patch).

Let me know if you all have questions, and hope this helps someone.

• Carlos

@ailick I don't have this kind of error when compiling the DKMS modules on an up-to-date system, but I know that the compiler generates some warnings and it seems that you use the compiler option -Werror which handles warnings as if they are errors, so the compilation fails.

Did you change some configuration in your system (/etc/makepkg or elsewhere, I honestly don't know how DKMS get the compiler options to apply) or use a custom compiler, which could explain the use of the -Werror option?

Im getting the following error while trying to install. Kernel version: 6.2.5

/var/lib/dkms/vmware-workstation/17.0.1_21139696/build/vmnet-only/driver.c:1411:22: error: a function declaration without a prototype is deprecated in all versions of C [-Werror,-Wstrict-prototypes]
VNetFreeInterfaceList()
                     ^
                      void
1 error generated.

/var/lib/dkms/vmware-workstation/17.0.1_21139696/build/vmnet-only/smac_compat.c:86:16: error: a function declaration without a prototype is deprecated in all versions of C [-Werror,-Wstrict-prototypes]
SMACL_GetUptime()
               ^
                void
1 error generated.

@jihem well,the log shows no guile lib installed.fixed. Thank you very much.

@frat This is strange, it compiles fine on my computer with the exactly same Linux version. Can you provide the content of /var/lib/dkms/vmware-workstation/17.0.1_21139696/build/make.log?

Install DKMS modules ==> dkms install --no-depmod vmware-workstation/17.0.1_21139696 -k 6.2.2-arch1-1 Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 6.2.2-arch1-1 (x86_64) Consult /var/lib/dkms/vmware-workstation/17.0.1_21139696/build/make.log for more information. ==> WARNING: `dkms install --no-depmod vmware-workstation/17.0.1_21139696 -k 6.2.2-arch1-1' exited 10