I run VMware Server on a Debian server, and was (not so recently) installing version 1.0.4 which contains a few security fixes. It's always a bit of a crapshoot if the VMWare Tools install will go cleanly or not, depending on what kernel I'm using and which version of gcc that's installed.

The most common problem I've had is that I installed my kernel with gcc version X, but gcc version Y is what is currently installed. Just to make sure nothing is straightforward, debian also uses their own version scheme for the package names, and their dot releases are off by one.

$ /usr/bin/i486-linux-gnu-gcc-4.1 -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: i486-linux-gnu
Configured with: ../src/configure -v –enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,objc,obj-c++,treelang –prefix=/usr –enable-shared –with-system-zlib –libexecdir=/usr/lib –without-included-gettext –enable-threads=posix –enable-nls –with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.1.3 –program-suffix=-4.1 –enable-__cxa_atexit –enable-clocale=gnu –enable-libstdcxx-debug –enable-mpfr –enable-checking=release i486-linux-gnu
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.1.3 20070831 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-16)

Luckily you don't have to dig through piles of cached .debs to find the correct one, /proc/version contains both the gcc and debian version numbers. In my case it shows me that my kernel was compiled with gcc version 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-20).

I used dpkg to downgrade (you need debs for libssp0, cpp, g++, gcc, gcc-base and libstdc++6-dev), and re-ran vmware-config.pl. As directed by the installer I set the CC environment variable to the proper compiler, /usr/bin/gcc-4.

No go.

The Makefile ignores the environment setting and and path, so even setting the PATH environment variable to include the current directory first, and symlinking the proper gcc into the working directory won't fix it. In the end I ended up temporarily changing the /usr/bin/gcc symlink to point to the proper version of gcc.

 

Posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 7:24 pm | Filed under Software, Technology
You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments feed.
Post a Comment | Trackback URL | Permalink URL