Description of problem: unregister_netdevice: waiting for vmnet8 to become free. Usage count = 1 When you shut down FC3/RHEL4 systems with vmware's kernel modules loaded, vmnet loops forever with the above message preventing reboot/shutdown. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): VMwareWorkstation-4.5.2-8848 kernel-2.6.9-1.640
One related problem, if solved by vmware upstream, would effectively workaround this vmnet kernel problem. vmware's supplied script in /etc/init.d/vmware is improperly written, so that it is not installing K symlinks into runlevel 0. If you add it manually, then it successfull stops vmware service and unloads the modules during shutdown, preventing this problem. [root@ibmlaptop rc.d]# chkconfig vmware off && chkconfig vmware on [root@ibmlaptop rc.d]# find |grep vmware ./init.d/vmware ./rc2.d/S90vmware ./rc3.d/S90vmware ./rc4.d/S90vmware ./rc5.d/S90vmware /etc/init.d/cpuspeed demonstrated below properly sets the 0 and 6 runlevels. [root@ibmlaptop rc.d]# chkconfig cpuspeed off && chkconfig cpuspeed on [root@ibmlaptop rc.d]# find |grep cpu ./init.d/cpuspeed ./rc0.d/K99cpuspeed ./rc1.d/S06cpuspeed ./rc2.d/S06cpuspeed ./rc3.d/S06cpuspeed ./rc4.d/S06cpuspeed ./rc5.d/S06cpuspeed ./rc6.d/K99cpuspeed Fix: VMWare upstream must fix their /etc/init.d/vmware script.
This was fixed a while ago.