Hi everyone!

I have been searching for the past few hours trying to resolve this problem, but to no avail!

I am trying to install VMware, and have got everything working till it asks for the directory that has the C header files

[root@localhost neraka]# /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl
Making sure services for VMware Workstation are stopped.

Stopping VMware services:
Virtual machine monitor [ OK ]

Configuring fallback GTK+ 2.4 libraries.

***
* Updating MIME database in /usr/share/mime...
***
In which directory do you want to install the mime type icons?
[/usr/share/icons]

In which directory do you want to install the application's icon?
[/usr/share/pixmaps]

Trying to find a suitable vmmon module for your running kernel.

None of the pre-built vmmon modules for VMware Workstation is suitable for your
running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for
your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)? [no] y

Using compiler "/usr/bin/gcc". Use environment variable CC to override.

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running
kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include]

I am using Mandriva 2006 Beta, but I can seem to find this folder, the only ones I can find are /usr/src/RPM/RPMS no /linux/include

Where could I find the C header files, to get this program to work!?!

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

"usr/src/linux" is a symlink to the kernel sources directory. If you don't have it, the kernel sources are not installed. Install the package called kernel sources. This is true for almost every linux distro. There are a few things you need to do with SuSE 9.x to get VMware 5.0 to work. The answer for SuSE is on VMware's forum, probably several times.

During a VMWare installation on Fedora 7 I was also stuck here:

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running
kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include]

What I had to do was install kernel-devel:

yum install kernel-devel

Ensure you also have xinetd, gcc, gcc-c++:

yum install xinetd gcc gcc-c++

The next problem I encountered was that my kernel-devel did not match my running kernel (my running kernel was: 2.6.21-1.3194.fc7, while the devel/"kernel headers" was 2.6.22.9-91.fc7). I upgrade everything so that my kernel-devel would match my running kernel:

yum update

I restarted my Linux Fedora 7 server and I was able to run /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl with no problems.

Also worth noting, I was able to take a Windows 2003 virtual machine created in Windows XP and move it to my Fedora 7 computer. It runs much faster, consumes less resources (RAM & CPU), and swaps less often, if ever.

Thanks this post was very useful!

Just thought I would add my thanks as well.

I have just followed your recommendations to help me install Vmware Tools on Fedora 9 (Kernel Linux 2.6.25.3-18.fc9.x86_64) running under Vmware Workstation 6.0.3 build-80004. Worked brilliantly - Thanks!

For SLES10 users:

I ran into this same issue installing VMware server 1.07 on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SP2). I resolved it by installing the packages mentioned above: kernel-source, kernel-syms, gcc, gcc-c++, libgcc, & make (libgcc & make may have already been there, not sure).

That, by itself, wasn't enough. I found this in the VMware support knowledgebase:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/sea...%200%20142280#

It says that you must go to /usr/src/linux and run the commands:
create cloneconfig
make modules_prepare

I don't know about other distros but SLES doesn't have a "create" command. This is what worked:

(su to root)
cd /usr/src/linux
make cloneconfig
make modules_prepare

That created the files in the /usr/src/linux/include directory that VMware expected to find and the installation of VMware proceeded.

(I'm posting this reply so that other Googlers can find the solution a little quicker.)

CLP,

I just wanted to post a HUGE THANK YOU for adding that to this post, it helped me with a problem I've been banging my head against the wall for an hour over!

Thank you!