Compiling VMware Player

[carrot]

Hi, I have been trying for a while now to compile VMware player (v12.1.1, v12.5.9, v14.1.1) and so far have had no luck. I have been referencing a post from several years ago where player 2 on tinycore 3 (Or similar) was successful, but alas I can’t get it to work. I am really keen to get this to work as I really like the concept of tinycore vs the bigger dists like Debian or streamlined dists like Arch.

Has anyone got this working before? Or is anyone keen to try along with me to get it working?

I would also be open to using virtualbox as an alternate option, however would prefer VMware player as I already have multiple VMs setup in Fusion (VMware for Mac).

Thanks

[Juanito]

Please give more details of what you've done and what error messages you got.

[carrot]

no problems, hopefully this will give a bit of detail:

the forum post I have used for reference is: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,7652.msg41221.html#msg41221

from these steps I have installed compiletc bash coreutils module-init-tools

for the linux headers I have used extension linux-kernel-sources-env and run the script that is installed. I do get a few errors in the (see image below) but it does seem to compile. file: linux-kernel-sources.png

from here I try to run the the VMWare Player bundle as root and get the following installer screen and errors on my terminal window:
file: player.png

as the player install screen cannot be read I cannot go any further.

I have also tried to run the player bundle using the --console option however this fails with the error: user interface initialization failed.   Exiting.
Checking the log for this attempt has a few config errors but then defaults to standard settings, and then fails with 'HostinfoOSData: Error: no distro file found' and an installer log file suggests the error is not being able to setup curses

[carrot]

I also get the following errors at the terminal window when I get the unreadable player install window in the previous post.

[Rich]

Hi carrot
Text is preferred over images for posting errors wherever possible. Try redirecting the commands results into file like this:

Code: [Select]

COMMAND > vmware_error.txt 2>&1Then you can either attach the text file or paste its contents between  code tags  in your next post.

[Juanito]

as the player install screen cannot be read I cannot go any further.

You could try a symlink /etc/fonts -> /usr/local/etc/fonts

[carrot]

thanks Juanito.

creating that symlink resulted in a new error on the terminal window:

symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined symbol: FT_Done_MM_Var

this also did not bring up the player install window at all.

[carrot]

no problems Rich, will do for future posts.

[Juanito]

symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined symbol: FT_Done_MM_Var

That means vmware is expecting a different version of fontconfig to that in tinycore - what version of tinycore are you using?

[carrot]

corepure64 v10

[Juanito]

The version of fontconfig is the same in CorePure-10.x and 11.x, so an update will not help.

Do you need to use the closed source pre-built vmware or could you use qemu?

[Rich]

Hi Juanito
According to this:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1645237
it says:

That symbol is provided by freetype-2.9.1 or later and fontconfig has proper dependency to it

TC10 and TC11 have  freetype-2.8.1  and  freetype-2.9.0  respectively.

[andyj]

I was able to get VMware player 15.5 installed and running on TC 11.1 64-bit as root, but I hit a policy kit error when run as user tc:

Code: [Select]

Error getting authority: Error initializing authority: Could not connect: No such file or directory
If I try to strace it, then I get:

Code: [Select]

pkexec must be setuid root
pkexec wasn't setuid when I loaded polkit so I fixed it but I still get the error. (bug in polkit.tcz? )

I didn't try to create a VM, as it is already in a VM. I believe it's possible but my VM doesn't have enough disk space for Inception-like behavior.

[carrot]

hi andyj, can you share your steps to compile? If I could get the latesr version to work in 11.1, that would be great.

thanks

[andyj]

I didn't compile anything. VMplayer is distributed as a binary package. Are you trying to use TC as a host for VM's, or TC as a guest VM on some other host OS?