VMware server on SME8.0beta5

The SMEserver versions SME8.0 beta 5 and later will be based on CentOS version 5.4 (earlier SME8 betas were CentOS 5.3).

There is a known issue with the current version of VMware server (2.0,2) not to run as stable as it did on earlier CentOS versions and a workaround is required.

If you plan to run VMware server 2.x on SME8.0 beta 5, you need to setup a workaround after the SME server installation. The following steps try to outline, which steps exactly are required on SME server. More links to the full background information are provided at the end of this document.

On the SMEserver command-line (as root user), create a folder for the following work

mkdir /tmp/vmwareglibc
cd /tmp/vmwareglibc

Determine what hardware architecture your server is running on:

uname -a

The result will be similar to this:

Linux mdo002sv 2.6.18-164.11.1.el5 #1 SMP Wed Jan 20 07:39:04 EST 2010 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Depending on the details after the date information above, you will have to do one of the following 'i386/i686' or 'x86_64' block of commands:

For 'i386/686':

wget http://vault.centos.org/5.3/os/i386/CentOS/glibc-2.5-34.i686.rpm
rpm2cpio glibc-2.5-34.i686.rpm | cpio -ivd
mkdir /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6
mv lib/libc-2.5.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6/libc.so.6

For 'x86_64'

wget http://vault.centos.org/5.3/os/x86_64/CentOS/glibc-2.5-34.x86_64.rpm
rpm2cpio glibc-2.5-34.x86_64.rpm | cpio -ivd
mkdir /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6
mv lib64/libc-2.5.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6/libc.so.6

Now we need to edit the vmware script with an editor of your choice, eg. 'vi' or 'pico':

pico -w /usr/sbin/vmware-hostd

and add the following line just before the last line in this file:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

After this change has been save, restart the server and VMware server should work from now on.