Stefan Lasiewski

I’m testing out SuSE 9.1 on VMware 4.5.2 on top of Windows XP.

VMware comes with the ‘vmware-tools’ package, which enhances performance and usability when running SuSE or any flavor of Linux under VMware.

Unfortunately, vmware-tools fails to build with the following error:

# ./vmware-config-tools.pl
(… snip …)

make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.1-111′
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/cpName.o
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/cpNameLinux.o
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/dev.o
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/dev.c:20:
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/main.h:184: error: conflicting types for ‘kstrdup’
include/linux/slab.h:121: error: previous declaration of `kstrdup’
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/dev.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config4/vmhgfs-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.1-111′
make: *** [vmhgfs.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only’
Unable to build the vmhgfs module.

EWW! GROSS!

This is because the function ‘kstrdup’ in the vmware-tools source (in the vmhgfs module) is conflicting with the function ‘kstrdup’ in the Linux kernel source, in mm/slab.c , drivers/md/dm-ioctl.c , and a few other places.

To work around this error, you need to modify the vmware-tools source a little bit.

- Find the file vmhgfs.tar and untar it:

cd modules/source
cp vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs.tar.old
tar xvf vmhgfs.tar
cd vmhgfs-only

- in main.c main.h and driver.c , replace the string ‘kstrdup’ with something unique, like ‘vmkstrdup’.

Then tar it back up, remove your old temprary files and re-run the tool again:

cd ..
tar cf vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs-only
rm -rf vmhgfs-only

Rerun vmware-config-tools.pl and it should work!

I’ve been collecting quotes off the Internet since 1991, here are some of the gems of my collection:

“Can of worms? The can is open… the worms are everywhere.”
– Brian Wood, a coworker of mine at the Institute for Global Communications, Spring 2000
Used as my Slashdot Sig for many years.

I first saw this photo several years ago, and found it again after a long search on the web. It is one of the most horrible, yet inspiring photos that I have even seen. If I remember right, this scene takes place in Afghanistan, after the American invasion. The cities are destroyed, but the children demonstrate their magical ability to adapt to the horror and find a way to play.

There is always hope and play.

Many of you have a Yahoo account. Over the last couple years, Yahoo has been gradually changing it’s Privacy Policy to allow Yahoo to sell your name, email address, and postal address to other marketing companies.

This means you will receive more Spam in your email box and more Junk Mail and telemarketing calls at home. We all hate Spam, Junk Mail and telemarketing calls, right?

To counter this, I took a look the Yahoo Marketing Preferences page, and spliced a URL together which should turn off all of your Yahoo Marketing Communications at once. To turn off all of your Yahoo Marketing Communications, click this link, doublecheck the results, and then hit “Save Changes” for these changes to take effect.

Yahoo modifies this page a couple times a year, so I’ll need to update this URL from time to time. Please let me know if this URL fails to work for you.