Fedora 10 + VMware Workstation 6.5.0

After an upgrade to Fedora 10, VMware Workstation 6.5.0 would not run.  The kernel modules, as expected, needed to be compiled, but the only one that would not compile was the vmmon kernel module.

Attempting to run vmware-modconfig resulted in a segfault, and attempting to compile the modules manually (as suggested in one of the vmware community forums) resulted in compile time errors:

#> make
Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.27.5-101.fc10.x86_64/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.27.5-101.fc10.x86_64′
CC [M]  /root/vmware-modules/vmmon-only/common/vmciContext.o
In file included from /root/vmware-modules/vmmon-only/common/vmciContext.c:23:
/root/vmware-modules/vmmon-only/common/vmciSharedMem.h:28: error: expected declaration specifiers or ‘…’ before ‘VMCISharedMemInfo’
make[2]: *** [/root/vmware-modules/vmmon-only/common/vmciContext.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/root/vmware-modules/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.27.5-101.fc10.x86_64′
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2

After much digging, the end solution turned out to be VERY simple:

mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary.old

vmware-modconfig –console –install-all

The modules happily built and all was well with the world. 🙂