CentOS 6.x VMware Workstation 7.1 installation issue solved.

As this writing, VMware-Workstation 7.1 has issues building vmmon on CentOS 6.2 and therefore SL 6 and RHEL 6 also. After some head scratching, google'n and lots of reading, here is the easy way to get up and running.

This install example is for VMware-Workstation-7.1.5-491717.i386.bundle at the very least. Download that from VMware as you would normally.

First, make sure you have booted to the most recent kernel before installing. Otherwise you will not be able to build the VMware modules against the kernel you are running.

First, make sure to have some basic prerequisites before you start:

yum install gcc gcc-c++ kernel-headers kernel-devel

Next install (or update) the VMware-Workstation bundle as root and valid $DISPLAY set:

bash VMware-Workstation-7.1.5-491717.i386.bundle

Follow the promps as usual.

Bummer, vmmon won't load and produces errors in /var/log/messages like:
kernel: vmmon: disagrees about version of symbol smp_ops
kernel: vmmon: Unknown symbol smp_ops

First attempt at a work around yields the ever helpful Akemi Yag (aka "toracat")  blog and the perfect *helpful* comment by NomadAU. Why is that Redhat Bugzilla entry closed anyway??


Here is the portion that is key to fixing the issue; as root:

mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary/bld-2.6.32-*-rhel6 ~/

Finally run:

vmware-modconfig --console --install-all