vmware-player doesn't install with FAI

[Xavier Claessens]

Binary package hint: fai

Hi,

I'm trying to install vmware-player with FAI. But while the installation I got this message:

Setting up vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-23-686 (2.6.15.10-4) ...
WARNING: Couldn't open directory /lib/modules/2.6.15.7-ubuntu1-fai-kernels: No such file or directory
FATAL: Could not open /lib/modules/2.6.15.7-ubuntu1-fai-kernels/modules.dep.temp for writing: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-23-686 (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1

The problem seems that it tries to install the modules in the running kernel folder (from fai-kernels) but it doesn't exists because the installation runs in a chroot environment and that's the linux-686 kernel from ubuntu dapper which is installed in the chroot env.

I don't know if that's a FAI or a vmware-player-kernel-modules bug ...

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

Xavier Claessens wrote:
> The problem seems that it tries to install the modules in the running
> kernel folder (from fai-kernels) but it doesn't exists because the
> installation runs in a chroot environment and that's the linux-686
> kernel from ubuntu dapper which is installed in the chroot env.
>

No, FAI uses a socecial kernel at install time, so if the kernel modules
from the lkernelk running at install time _would_ be in the chroot, the
vmware player package would install the wrong modules, because there's
another kernel running on the installed system, the one you chose in the
FAI config.

> I don't know if that's a FAI or a vmware-player-kernel-modules bug ...

I see two possible solutions:

1) FAI needs to use the same kernel for installation as for runtime.
This is complicated to do, because it would also mean that you need a
different install kernel for each architecture/each different kernel you
want to run on your machines.

2) Make the vmware-player module package to not look into the kernel
that's currently running, but give a possibility to chose which kernel
modules to install manually, or via debconf, or just by having an
explicit package for each kernel.

How do similiar packages handle this? There are other packages with
kernel modules, which are specific for a kernel version, and there are
multiple, one for each kernel version? Do they also try to automatically
fugure the right kernek version at runtime?
I think not, they let the user chose the right package for their kernel
version. But I am not sure.

Henning

[Achim Bohnet (allee)]

The problem ocoured with pkg

vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-23-686

and this pkg is built to work with 2.6.15-23-686
kernel, not 2.6.15.7-ubuntu1-fai-kernels.

So it's IMHO definitely ;) not a bug in fai.

vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-26 in dapper
has in postinst:

...
case "$1" in
    configure)
       depmod -a
    ;;
...

but it should use 'depmod 2.6.15-26' instead.

Achim

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release and vmware player? Thanks in advance.

[Alex Denvir (coldfff)]

We are closing this bug report because it has not been updated for some time. Please reopen it if you have more information to submit, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!