it seems that from late 2008 on to at least Jun, 26th 2009 (that was yesterday when I stumbled into that stupid problem) one cannot install the newest vmware server2 on the newest ubuntu. There are two major problems. First the installation itself and second using vmware.

Actually installing goes well, but when trying to run vmware-config.pl to build the kernel-modules the tools says it cannot build the vsock-module which seems to be an essential part of the whole fun.

This is kind of weird, because vmware server2 and ubuntu are both widely used. Maybe vmware wants to encourage users to use their non-free versions instead. however. There is a solution !!

The solution and the patch can be found at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=975084&page=6 - all credits go there and none to me. My work was only copy/paste here !!

• tar –xvf <download file>
• apt-get install linux-headers-`uname –r` build-essential xinetd
• cd /vmware-server-distrib
• ./vmware-install.pl\\To most questions you will accept the default.
  If it doesn’t accept your Product Key, you can enter that after installation. You may want to specify a different directory than the default for your virtual machine location, I give them a big partition and mount it at vm, then share it with Samba so it is easy to put stuff there.
• The last question asks you to configure VMWare server. Answer No.
• You will need to create an account at Ubuntu Forums in order to download this file: http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=94477&d=1227872015 to /usr/bin/
• patch /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl.patch
• Now you can run /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl. This script will walk you through setting up your networks and compiles some support libraries. Generally go with the default.

and I also downloaded the patch-file to have a copy here. Such valuable things should not stay in one place only. (If the creator of the patch does not want me to offer a download here I will remove it immediatly - again : this patch is not my work. I’m just master of copy/paste :) )

vmware-config.pl.patch.txt (version by 20090629 downloaded from http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=94477&d=1227872015)

If you use the web-ui of vmware-server2 (which is the only way to create new machines, install new hardware ....) you will freak out. Out of the ordinary slowness of webbased GUIs you will face myriads of timeouts and even more null pointer exception-errors (operation failed: null pointer exception).

You will find your new vmware2 unusable.

Solution is to replace the java coming with vmware2 with a recent version like it is fully explained at //communities.vmware.com/thread/189011 (Thnx !!)

you mainly do the following:

1. download a recent version of jre for linux from java.com (you dont want the rpm-stuff you want the real thing. and you dont want jse : you want jre)
2. replace the old version in cp /usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/java/jre1.5.0_15 with the new version (by the time I write this its jre1.6.0_14) but keep the directory-name jre1.5.0_15 intact or create a symlink to the new version.
3. copy the following subfolder of the old jre to the new: bin/webAccess