Fedora 20 update to kernel 3.17.2-200 and VMWare Workstation

Since I updated to VMWare Workstation 10.0.5 at the end of January 2015, things were again broken. Returning to this post I found that the link in the post now points to something that has changed and there is no patch nor instructions of what to do. So, I had to google again and now I placed the complete instructions in this post so that the next time I don't have to google again.

It turns out that there is a single line that has to be changed in the vmnet module in order for VMWare to be runnable again. So, here are the steps you have to do in order to patch the file:

1. Create temporary directory, e.g. /tmp/vmware and position yourself in that directory.
2. Create a file named vmnet.patch and put into it the following content:
   
   

   diff -ur vmnet-only.a/netif.c vmnet-only/netif.c
   --- vmnet-only.a/netif.c    2014-10-10 03:23:08.585920012 +0300
   +++ vmnet-only/netif.c  2014-10-10 03:23:09.245920008 +0300
   @@ -149,7 +149,7 @@
       memcpy(deviceName, devName, sizeof deviceName);
       NULL_TERMINATE_STRING(deviceName);
   
   -   dev = alloc_netdev(sizeof *netIf, deviceName, VNetNetIfSetup);
   +   dev = alloc_netdev(sizeof *netIf, deviceName, NET_NAME_UNKNOWN, VNetNetIfSetup);
       if (!dev) {
          retval = -ENOMEM;
          goto out;
   

   
   
3. Unpack /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar in the current directory (/tmp/vmware):
   
   

   tar xf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar
   

   
   
4. Patch the module:
   
   

   cd vmnet-only; patch -p1 < ../vmnet.patch; cd ..
   

   
   
5. Make a copy of old, unpatched, archive:
   
   

   mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar.SAVED
   

   
   
6. Create a new archive:
   
   

   tar cf /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar vmnet-only
   

   
   
7. Start vmware configuration process:
   
   

   vmware-modconfig --console --install-all
   

Hopefully, that should be it.

Old instructions (not valid any more!)

Well, here we go again. After recent update which brought kernel 3.17 to Fedora 20, VMWare Workstation 10.0.4 had problems with kernel modules. Luckily, after some short googling I found a solution. That solution works. There are two things that might confuse you though:

1. After cd command and before for loop you have to switch to root account (that is indicated by prompt sign change from $ to #).
2. The substring kernel-version in patch command should be replaced with a string "3.17". That is actually the name you gave to a file while executing curl command at the beginning of the process.

Anyway, that's it.