Re: vmnet.ko missing - but it's there! - vmware and crashes

Ben Paley wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm getting a total crash every time I try to run vmware. This is my system:
> 
> bash-2.05b$ uname -a
> FreeBSD potato.hogsedge.net 5.2-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT #0: Tue Jun 22 
> 07:07:08 BST 2004     root_at_potato.hogsedge.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/POTATO  
> i386
> bash-2.05b$ pkg_info | grep vmware
> vmware3-3.2.1.2242_7,1 A virtual machine emulator - a full PC in a window
> 
> For a while I was getting some sort of network error: vmware would start as 
> long as all the network stuff was disabled, but if I tried to have a 
> host-only connection (I haven't even bothered trying a bridged connection) it 
> wouldn't run (that is, vmware itself would run fine, but the virtual machine 
> wouldn't boot, and I'd get an error message about networking - sorry I didn't 
> make a note of it).
> 
> So I did
> 
> portupgrade -fR vmware3
> 
> and after a lot of waiting around I tried again: now I get a complete crash 
> (can't even change to another terminal and kill x) whenever I try to start 
> vmware.
> 
> On boot, I get this message:
> 
> kldload: can't load /usr/local/lib/vmware/modules/vmnet.ko: No such file or 
> directory

This message is misleading.  It likely means that the vmnet.ko binary
failed to link successfully into the kernel due to missing symbols.
Look on the system console when this happens and see what it says.

> 
> in amongst all the other system stuff, but I also get this:
> 
> -bash-2.05b# locate vmnet.ko
> /usr/local/lib/vmware/modules/vmnet.ko
> 
> even after updating the locate database.
> 
> Any ideas what's going wrong?

Recompile the vmnet.ko binary from source and see if that helps.

Scott