Why the hell is it so difficult to install vmware tools in a linux guest?

[WelshBloke]

NT am just cross :|

 

[sourceninja]

What do you mean? I've never had any trouble install it. Usually Its just a simple script and press enter like 5 times.

 

[GhettoFob]

What distro are you trying to install to?

 

[her209]

I know what you mean.

 

[Nothinman]

I've never had any problems either...

 

[degibson]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I've never had any problems either...

I find it varies a heckuva lot by disto. (I'm speaking about the fairly old VMWare 5.5 WS) It needs, among other things, a particular version of various things OR a compiler and kernel headers. For me, it has been hit or miss. Usually if I have to compile, I know the install will fail in some way or another.

What VMWare needs to do is make it a bloody package on the mainstream distros. Maybe they already have for some...

 

[Nothinman]

There's precompiled modules for specific kernels but as long as you have the kernel headers and a compiler installed you should be fine. I'm usually using debian so a quick 'aptitude install module-assistant' followed by 'm-a update && m-a prepare' takes care of that.

 

[aceO07]

Ubuntu 8.04 and VMtools 1.0.7 seem to be giving me grief lately. I think I initially installed some earlier 1.0.x before and worked fine. Vmtools, which comes with VMWare Server 1.x prior to 2, doesn't like the gcc compiler that Ubuntu 8.04 uses.

I'll have to give VMWare server 2 and vmtools at some point. I tried it once, but it's a huge beast. Cool features, but I don't use most of them.

 

[WelshBloke]

Sorry for the thread abandon, was at work all weekend.

Cheers for the replies, Ive tried Ubuntu, Mint and openSuse.

I'm a complete linux noob so its no surprise I'm having trouble really.

I cant remember the errors I was having in Mint and Ubuntu but the Suse one is


Error
Package /mediaNMware ToolsNMwareTools-6.5.O-118166.i386.rpm could not be installed.
I Details:
Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: file /etcNmware-tools/poweroff-vm-default from install of VMwareTools-7427-11 81 66 conflicts with file from package open-vm-tools-2008.04.1 4-21 .1
file /etcNmware-tools/poweron-vm-default from install of VMwareTools-7427-1 181 66 conflicts with file from package open-vm-tools-2008.04.1 4-21 .1
file /etcNmware-tools/resume-vm-default from install of VMwareTools-7427-11 81 66 conflicts with file from package open-vm-tools-2008.04.1 4-21 .1
file /etctvmware-tools/suspend-vm-default from install of VMwareTools-7427-1 181 66 conflicts with file from package open-vm-tools-2008.04.1 4-21 .1


🙁 When I installed it in winXp it was just 'do you want to install vmware tools y/n?'

anyway I think I'll give up as the virtual os seems ok without vmwaretools anyway.

 

[Nothinman]

The error is pretty self-explanatory, the package you're installing contains files that are also in the open-vm-tools-2008.04.1 4-21 package, you need to decide which one that you want to use.

 

[WelshBloke]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
The error is pretty self-explanatory, the package you're installing contains files that are also in the open-vm-tools-2008.04.1 4-21 package, you need to decide which one that you want to use.

Yeah I worked that out.

I thought I had decided when i told it to install, obviously my computer has other ideas.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

If you're running OpenSUSE why not just use their Xen vm? Its built into YaST and seems easy enough to use.

 

[WelshBloke]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
If you're running OpenSUSE why not just use their Xen vm? Its built into YaST and seems easy enough to use.

I'm running Vista, OpenSuse is running in a VM.