OK. Here is a workaround that seems to work:

I 'commented out' the check in vmware-config.pl that checks for the same 'address space size'. With this, vmware-config.pl completes and vmware starts up and works.

tom

--- /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl 2005-12-15 21:55:24.000000000 -0800
+++ ./vmware-config.pl 2006-02-04 09:45:36.000000000 -0800
@@ -1970,18 +1970,18 @@
. shell_string($pattern));
chomp($header_page_offset);
$header_page_offset =~ s/^$pattern \(?0x([0-9a-fA-F]{8,}).*$/$1/;
- }
+# if ($header_page_offset =~ /[0-9a-fA-F]{8,}/) {
+# # We found a valid page offset
+# if (defined($gSystem{'page_offset'}) and
+# not (lc($header_page_offset) eq lc($gSystem{'page_offset'}))) {
+# if ($source eq 'user') {
+# print wrap('The kernel defined by this directory of header files does '
+# . 'not have the same address space size as your running '
+# . 'kernel.' . "\n\n", 0);
+# }
+# return '';
+# }
+# }

return $answer;
}

Doing it this way will probably fail on 64bit kernel

How your kernel defines __PAGE_OFFSET macro (probably in include/asm-i386/page.h) ? BTW, right fix would be:

- of ($header_page_offset =~ /[0-9a-fA-F]{8,}/) {
+ if ($header_page_offset =~ /^$pattern (\?0x([0-9a-fA-F]{8,})/) {
+ $header_page_offset = $1;

Though I'm probably going to kill all these tests. They were good for 2.2.x kernels, were acceptable on 2.4.x kernels, but for 2.6.x kernels they are misfiring every month or so.

So how do you apply this to vmware?

Thanks selinux and petr.
Now, after updating my kernel from 2.6.15-rc4 to 2.6.16-rc4, I can install the VMWare Workstation 5.5.1

In brief, the needed operation:
- patching the vmware-config.pl scripts:

[cacao74@winnie bin]$ pwd
/opt/vmware/bin

[cacao74@winnie bin]$ diff -u vmware-config.pl.ori vmware-config.pl
--- vmware-config.pl.ori 2006-02-25 18:38:09.000000000 +0100
+++ vmware-config.pl 2006-02-25 22:19:06.000000000 +0100
@@ -1969,8 +1969,8 @@
. ' -E - | ' . shell_string($gHelper{'grep'}) . ' '
. shell_string($pattern));
chomp($header_page_offset);
- if ($header_page_offset =~ /[0-9a-fA-F]{8,}/) {
+ if ($header_page_offset =~ /^$pattern \(?0x([0-9a-fA-F]{8,})/) {
+ $header_page_offset = $1;
# We found a valid page offset
if (defined($gSystem{'page_offset'}) and
not (lc($header_page_offset) eq lc($gSystem{'page_offset'}))) {

- patching a file in a couple of compressed archives, by adding a line of code:

[cacao74@winnie source]$ pwd
/opt/vmware/lib/modules/source

[cacao74@winnie source]$ tar xf vmmon.tar
[cacao74@winnie source]$ vi vmmon-only/Makefile.kernel
add the bold line
vm_check_build = $(shell if $(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) $(CFLAGS_KERNEL) $(EXTRA_CFLAGS) -Iinclude2/asm/mach-default -DKBUILD_BASENAME=\"$(DRIVER)\"
-Werror -S -o /dev/null -xc $(1) > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "$(2)"; else echo "$(3)"; fi)

[cacao74@winnie source]$ tar xf vmnet.tar
[cacao74@winnie source]$ vi vmnet-only/Makefile.kernel
add the bold line
vm_check_build = $(shell if $(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) $(CFLAGS_KERNEL) $(EXTRA_CFLAGS) -Iinclude2/asm/mach-default -DKBUILD_BASENAME=\"$(DRIVER)\"
-Werror -S -o /dev/null -xc $(1) > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "$(2)"; else echo "$(3)"; fi)

[cacao74@winnie source]$ mv vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.ori
[cacao74@winnie source]$ mv vmnet.tar vmnet.tar.ori

[cacao74@winnie source]$ tar cf vmmon.tar vmmon-only/
[cacao74@winnie source]$ tar cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only/

By doing so, I have to re-launch the perl script
vmware-config.pl to install the software for the new kernel
on my system:
GNU/Linux Slackware 10.2
kernel 2.6.16-rc4
gcc version 3.3.6

Thanks again. Bye

Thanks a lot for the lines they helped

I do wish that you had posted the vmware-comfig.pl fil

Best Regards
Dennis

Nice job on commenting those lines