Error installing vmware-tools 9.9 after upgrade to linux-image-3.13.0-46

Question

After having upgraded my guest ubuntu to linux-image-3.13.0-46 I got an error install vmware-tools and I cannot share folders any more.

I ran vmware player 7.0.0 build-2305329 both in Windows 8 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS host machine and during the installation I got the following error log out:

                 from /tmp/modconfig-NVbKuD/vmhgfs-only/inode.c:29:
include/linux/kernel.h:793:27: error: ‘struct dentry’ has no member named ‘d_alias’
  const typeof( ((type *)0)->member ) *__mptr = (ptr); \
                           ^

Is there any workaround about this issue?

Thanks

Answer 1

vmware-tools-distrib-9.9.2-2496486:

I have fixed the problem by going to the directory where vmhgfs.tar is located (in my case /usr/lib/vmware-tools/modules/source), unpack the tar and manually edit inode.c.

At line 1925(just search for "d_alias" to find the exact line) you need to add an if. In the end looks like that:

#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(3, 13, 0)
                           d_alias) {
#else
                           d_u.d_alias) {
#endif

Then again around line 1983 (search again for "d_alias"):

#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(3, 13, 0)
         struct dentry *dentry = list_entry(pos, struct dentry, d_alias);
#else
         struct dentry *dentry = list_entry(pos, struct dentry, d_u.d_alias);
#endif

Caveat: Not sure on the kernel version but I have put there 3,13,0 though my Ubuntu reports:

# uname -a
Linux md-ubuntu 3.13.0-46-generic #76-Ubuntu SMP Thu Feb 26 18:52:13 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

And this was working fine with 3.13.0-45.

So probably if you downgrade the kernel the above hack will not work properly.

Then you need to pack again the tar archive (just move the old one out of the way:

# mv vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs.tar.orig

and pack again the directory:

# tar cvf vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs-only

)

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

This patch should fix the problem.

Edit Working Gist patch

Instructions for use:

cd vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source/
tar -xvf vmhgfs.tar
cd vmhgfs-only
patch inode.c < inode.patch
cd ..
mv vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs.tar.orig
tar cvf vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs-only
cd vmware-tools-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl