VMware-workstation-4.5.1 on linux-2.6.4-x86_64 host fails on virtual ethernet setup

[Hans-Peter Jansen <hpj@urpla.net>]

[CCing LKML in order to give other people, which may suffer from this 
 in the future something to google for ;-)]

Hi Petr,

I'm suffering from a strange problem here. I tried to reach you on
vmware.for-linux.experimental without success (got a trollish answer only).

Here it is:
I'm trying to get VMware-workstation-4.5.1-7568.i386.rpm working on SuSE 
9.1b1, based on linux-2.6.4-x86_64. Thanks to some googling, I found related 
hints from you and your vmware-any-any-update54, which got me around the 
compile issues in vmmon with this patch:

--- vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c.orig	2004-03-21 20:53:35.042565778 +0100
+++ vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c	2004-03-21 20:53:40.284442570 +0100
@@ -516,13 +516,13 @@
 ClearNXBit(VA vaddr)
 {
    pgd_t *pgd = pgd_offset_k(vaddr);
-   pmd_t *pmd = pmd_offset(pgd, vaddr);
+   pmd_t *pmd = pmd_offset_map(pgd, vaddr);
    pte_t *pte;
 
    if (pmd_val(*pmd) & _PAGE_PSE) {
       pte = (pte_t*)pmd;
    } else {
-      pte = pte_offset(pmd, vaddr);
+      pte = pte_offset_map(pmd, vaddr);
    }
    if (pte_val(*pte) & _PAGE_NX) {
       pte_val(*pte) &= ~_PAGE_NX;


vmware-config.pl and /etc/init.d/vmware both fail at the same point,
setting up virtual networking [the latter with VMWARE_DEBUG=yes]:

Starting VMware services:
   Virtual machine monitor                                             done
   Virtual ethernet                                                    done
   Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0cd /usr/bin && /usr/bin/vmnet-bridge
-d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid /dev/vmnet0 eth0
eth0: Not a valid Ethernet interface
                                                                      failed


This triggers these syslog messages:

Mar 22 21:45:57 tyrex kernel: /dev/vmmon: Module vmmon: registered with major=10 minor=165
Mar 22 21:45:57 tyrex kernel: /dev/vmmon: Module vmmon: initialized
Mar 22 21:45:57 tyrex kernel: vmnet: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
Mar 22 21:45:57 tyrex kernel: /dev/vmnet: open called by PID 4871 (vmnet-bridge)
Mar 22 21:45:57 tyrex kernel: /dev/vmnet: hub 0 does not exist, allocating memory.
Mar 22 21:45:57 tyrex kernel: /dev/vmnet: port on hub 0 successfully opened
Mar 22 21:45:57 tyrex kernel: ioctl32(vmnet-bridge:4871): Unknown cmd fd(5) cmd(00008941){00} 
arg(ffffd268) on /dev/vmnet0

Replacing vmnet.tar with yours suffers from the same problem.

stracing vmnet-bridge command:
execve("/usr/bin/vmnet-bridge", ["vmnet-bridge", "-d", "/var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid", 
"/dev/vmnet0", "eth0"], [/* 72 vars */]) = 0
[ Process PID=4910 runs in 32 bit mode. ]
eth0: Not a valid Ethernet interface

syslog:
Mar 22 21:51:40 tyrex kernel: /dev/vmnet: open called by PID 4910
(vmnet-bridge)
Mar 22 21:51:40 tyrex kernel: /dev/vmnet: port on hub 0 successfully opened
Mar 22 21:51:40 tyrex kernel: ioctl32(vmnet-bridge:4910): Unknown cmd fd(5) cmd(00008941){00}
arg(ffffd288) on /dev/vmnet0

Surely, eth0 is up and running (I highly depend on a working lan here ;-)

Obviously it's some problem with i386 <-> x86_64 interfacing.

Any ideas, what to try next?

TIA,
Pete