How To: Gentoo VMware Workstation

Step 1. Assume root privilege as it is required for many of the following steps.

# sudo su -
Password:

Step 2. Make sure you are installing on the right kernel.

# uname -r

You should see this result:

# 2.6.24-sabayon

Step 3. Download the vmware workstation .tar package: Download workstation

Select the 6.0.3 linux tar version: workstation for linux 32-bit

Step 4. Extract downloaded .tar file into: dir_of_your_choice/vmware_distrib (into directory of your choice).
Step 5. Emerge libraries and prepare environment:

# emerge --sync
# emerge -a libXi

Step 6. Install a temporary environment variable:

# export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK='yes'

or better yet make it permanent by creating a file ‘/etc/env.d/99gtkvmware’ with VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=’yes’ as the only entry. This is a Gentoo best practice.

File: /etc/env.d/99gtkvmware

 VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK='yes'

See Gentoo Handbook and read section: 5.b. Defining Variables Globally.

To have this included in your env do this:

# env-update

Step 7. You will need to create /etc/rc{0..6}.d directories, because the installation script needs these.

# mkdir /etc/rc{0..6}.d

Step 8. Go to the directory /vmware_distrib that you created in step 4 and run:

# ./vmware_install.pl

Answer all the questions as you normally would when installing workstation (if you’ve never done this before just use the defaults).

This will fail at the last step with the following output:

#make: ***[vmmon.ko] Error 2
....
# Unable to build the vmmon module
....
# Execution aborted

This is okay because we are going to correct this problem in the next step.
Step 8. We are going to patch and run a script that is specific for the vmware workstation install on the 2.6.24 kernel. This is very important (do not use any older versions of this vmware-any-any-update115 script). Download this specific one, it is patched for our kernel 2.6.24 needs (if you like look at this article for the Ubuntu distribution: http://aldeby.org/blog/?p=113)

Download and extract into directory of your choice: Patched vmware-any-any-update Then change directory to where you extracted and run:

# ./runme.pl

Answer questions again as you see fit for your configuration.
Step 9. You should be good to go; startup vmware and accept agreement and enter your purchased workstation key by menu Help>Enter Serial key.

# vmware