Bug 396116

VMware is supported.  But some workarounds for problems with old VMware
version were removed from the kernel. The link below gives you a bit
more information.

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2008-05/msg00376.html

    It didn't provide anymore info than I already have. Is there a list of which files had the patches so that I may re-install them??  The VMware Workstation version that I am using is 5.5.6 which I don't believe should be considered that old. Like I said in a previous e-mail, it worked fine in openSuSE 11.0 Beta2. Perhaps the "workarounds" could be made optional to VMware 5 users???
   Don't think that it was possibly made clear. The problem is not running VMware inside openSuSE 11.0 Beta 3 and above BUT the problem is running openSuSE 11.0 Beta 3 and above as a Guest inside VMware. Does that paint a different picture to you??

Greg, which versions are you referring to as "very old" in that mail? Is the version 5.5.6 used here affected?

See bug 392084 for details.  vmware has fixed this in their product already.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 392084 ***

>Is the version 5.5.6 used here affected?
i don`t hope so, but maybe vmware still didn`t fix it for their 5.x product series !?

5.x is still a maintained product, and i wondered if it still has the bug - there is just a new release from 5/29/2008:

VMware Workstation 5.5.7 for Windows
Version: 5.5.7 | 5/29/2008 | Build: 91707 | Release Notes

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/releasenotes_ws55.html#557
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ws55_manual.pdf

ok - besides that, table on page 26 in document http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf shows, that suse 10.2 already needs at least workstation 6.x and opensuse 10.3 needs at least 6.0.1.

workaround:
using virtual ide harddisk or virtual scsi disk , but with virtual buslogic controller instead of lsilogic.


if it`s not being fixed in 5.x, i`m not sure if it would be good to step back and re-integrate the patch. (to avoid hassle)

 

>Prior versions of SuSE up to and including openSuSE 11.0 Beta2 had absolutely
>no trouble finding the Virtual HD of VMware. I am running VMware Workstation
>5.5.6 inside openSuSE 10.3. 

that is because up to 11.0 beta2 suse had a patch which worked around a bug in vmware`s virtual lsilogic scsi controller emulation.

that patch was rejected by linux kernel developers - so every linux distro without that additional patch will fail with recent linux kernels on vmware products which haven`t been fixed.

>workaround:
>using virtual ide harddisk or virtual scsi disk , but with virtual buslogic
>controller instead of lsilogic.

buslogic was a bad idea, as i just see that they have the following lines a hundred times in http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf:

>NOTE With many Linux guest operating systems, various problems have been 
>observed when the BusLogic virtual SCSI adapter is used with VMware virtual 
>machines. VMware recommends that you use the LSI Logic virtual SCSI adapter 
>with this guest operating system.

so if lsilogic is broken in 5.x, buslogic is also broken, you may only choose ide or other virtualization product, like virtualbox ;)

>I noticed that a lot of code concerning vmware was removed between 
>Beta2 and Beta3.

i wouldn`t call that a lot.

http://marc.info/?l=linux-scsi&m=117432237404247
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=117469821528952&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=118352701624546&w=2

this issues are known for quite some time now.


>Perhaps the "workarounds" could be made optional to VMware 5 users???

just as an idea:
as you can add additional drivers from floppy or whatever at setup time - would it be possible to replace an in-kernel driver by some driver from additional setup disk, i.e. could a patched lsilogic driver be supplied separately (either by novell or by 3rd party/volunteer) ?