Description of problem: (Filing here because we are lacking RHEL4 vmware component.) http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/ vmware works great on FC3/RHEL4 after using the latest vmware-any-any-* patchkit from the above URL. vmware-config.pl successfully builds and inserts kernel modules vmmon and vmnet, and creates the /dev/vmnetX device nodes. However after reboot, vmware fails because the /dev nodes are gone. vmware's kernel modules need to be modified to be compatible with udev. <harald> warren, the kernel modules create a /sys/ file called dev <harald> warren, try "find /sys -name dev" <harald> warren, the contents of this file is the major:minor number <harald> warren, hotplug events call udev and udev looks for that file <harald> warren, then udev creates the device node <warren> harald, sounds like I need to edit the kernel module if the /sys entry is currently missing? <harald> yep <harald> warren, hint: class_simple_device_add <harald> warren, drivers/base/class_simple.c <warren> harald, other than the /sys entry, anything else I need to add? /etc/udev something? <harald> warren, not if the permissions should be 0600 and the device name should not be changes Technically this is not OUR problem as this needs to be fixed in vmware's vmmon and vmnet modules. These sources appear to be distributed in both vwmware and the vmware-any-any patch kit. However the license on those code are in question. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): VMwareWorkstation-4.5.2-8848
More info: * vmmon DOES successfully create /sys/class/misc/vmmon/dev so /dev/vmmon is correctly created. * Inserting vmnet alone does not create any entires in /sys/class/net/, but one vmnet entry does appear for NAT interfaces after using vmware-config.pl. Other vmnet interfaces for host-only or bridged do not appear. I am guessing that vmnet already does have code for /sys entries, but it only works when vmnet is loaded with certain parameters, and only once during loading? More investigation needed.
*** Bug 135084 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
vmware has been notified of this and is working on a long term solution.
the vmware kernel modules should provide a "dev" entry in the sysfs ... Workaround: manually copy the devices to /etc/udev/devices and they will be copied on system start to /dev see: http://people.redhat.com/~harald/udev.html
Keeping open for tracking purposes and to reduce duplicate reports.
A quick fix is to run the vmware-config.pl to create the appropriate /dev/vm* entries and then copy these to /etc/udev/devices with: # cp -rp /dev/vm* /etc/udev/devices/ vmware finds the devices correctly on subsequent reboots. Not a long term fix but eliminates the need to rerun vmware-config.pl every time the machine is rebooted.
The vmware-any-any toolkit now creates device nodes during the initscript, and the upcoming vmware 5 should have a similar solution. sysfs symbols have become GPL only, so it is impossible for them to use udev to create device nodes. In any case this is not our problem, so closing UPSTREAM.