I can share your frustration, many many times - yet I persevere knowing that the end mostly justifies the means.
As far as packaging goes, however I have learned in the last year or so (having been a Linux hobbyist for about a 14 years now) that Debian distros (in particular Ubuntu) have this thing pretty well sorted out. (I previously shied away from Debian because of the incredibly painful installation process - Ubuntu has fixed this maginficently). To do this exact process (installing Vmware server) a few weeks ago using Ubuntu I did 1. "apt-get install kernel-headers" which actually just returns a virtual package prompting to select the correct architecture 2. so then "apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.12-something" grabs the package and nice-ly puts it under /usr/src/ 3. Then running the vmware install, which all works without much coercion until you find that the gcc that the kernel was built with (3.4) doesn't match the standard gcc installed (4.0) 4. Again this is a pretty simple "apt-get install gcc-3.4" 5. Running vmware install again and it is all good. I suppose that this isn't "automagic", but Ubuntu certainly does a good job of solving dependencies on the fly. Because pretty well all of the known OSS software universe exists as Ubuntu/Debian packages then apt-get removes much of the heartache of trying to pull together dependant software. As far as the issue of kernel versions, CPU architectures and module interaction I do think this is a pain. I imagine that a kernel module could be built that is less strict on having kernel modules build specifically against the headers for the kernel. That is I should imagine "late-binding" of the modules should be possible in 90% or more occasions. Any idea why this hasn't be explored for the Linux kernel. I can't believe that the hooks that bind modules to the kernel really change all that often, and if they do it should be done exception and probably could be handled by some manner that is less painful than having to recompile the module. Martin Visser Technology Consultant Consulting & Integration Technology Solutions Group - HP Services 410 Concord Road Rhodes NSW 2138 Australia Mobile: +61-411-254-513 Fax: +61-2-9022-1800 E-mail: martin.visserAThp.com This email (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above and may contain information that is confidential, proprietary or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify HP immediately by return email and then delete the email, destroy any printed copy and do not disclose or use the information in it. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Peter Rundle Sent: Monday, 3 April 2006 3:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [SLUG] FC5 Kernel headers Sluggers, I've just installed FC5 onto a single processor P4 and it all went fairly smoothly, except that it claims to have detected my sound card but no sound comes out, (shrugs, par for the course with Linux). However, now I want to install VMware and compile the modules. Of course this requires the kernel headers, which, even though I ticked all the development check boxes, weren't installed by default and I can't find them on any of the distribution CD's. So a quick uname -a reveals that I'm running kernel 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp. So we download and install kernel-smp-devel which creates the directory; /usr/src/kernels/2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp-i686 I now try to run vmware-config.pl and when it asks for the kernel header source, I point it at said directory and of course being Linux it doesn't work, but returns the error; The kernel defined by this directory of header files does not have the same address space size as your running kernel. Any takers before I run screaming back to MS and admit that Linux was a mistake and that I'll never ever doubt the software from a monopolistic corporate giant ever again? Seriously though, why why why can't Linux ever just work? After many years of using Linux my bucket of tolerance for it's lack of polish is just about empty. I simply can't be bothered with Linux anymore precisely because of this sort of thing. How hard can it be to deliver the kernel headers for the kernel that you deliver on a supposedly polished distribution. TIA's Pete P.S sorry for the spray but really if Linux is ever gonna be taken seriously this sort of crap has to stop. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
