Deaconsworld

Oh another Kernel update another VMWare problem, great. When you upgrade to 2.6.19, you get the following error
/tmp/vmware-config2/vmnet-only/userif.c: In function ‘VNetCopyDatagramToUser’:
/tmp/vmware-config2/vmnet-only/userif.c:629: error: ‘CHECKSUM_HW’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/tmp/vmware-config2/vmnet-only/userif.c:629: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
/tmp/vmware-config2/vmnet-only/userif.c:629: error: for each function it appears in.)
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config2/vmnet-only/userif.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config2/vmnet-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.19-1.2895.fc6-i686′
make: *** [vmnet.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config2/vmnet-only’
Unable to build the vmnet module.
After a bit of hunting on LWN, I found that CHECKSUM_HW has been remove from 2.6.19 and replaced with CHECKSUM_PARTIAL. Fortunately, Robin Kearney at usefulthings.org.uk has provided a patch.

It’s a little more complicated than the usual fixes, at the patched files are within a tarball, but you should be able to cut and paste from below.

As root:

cd /tmp
wget http://usefulthings.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/vmnet-only-2.6.19.patch
cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/
cp vmnet.tar vmnet.tar.orig
tar xf vmnet.tar
patch -p0 < /tmp/vmnet-only-2.6.19.patch
tar cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
vmware-config.pl -d


Wahoo! Flash player 9 for Linux is finally out of beta.

There’s even a nice RPM version. So ignore my previous instructions and go install now!

I really wasn’t looking forward to the office this morning. Was it because I’d had hardly any sleep? No - Was it because of that whoshing sound deadlines make as the fly by? No. So why wasn’t I looking forward to the office? Because I knew I’d have to listen to the gushing from the Apple-philes about Steveo’s keynotes speech yesterday.

So Apple have finally revealed the iPhone, probably the worst kept secret in the world!

The specs seem fair enough, 3.5 inch screen, 4-8GB, Quad band, Wi-Fi. A couple of nice functions I like is the accelerometer so as you turn the phone from portrait to landscape the screen also flips and the proximity sensor which locks the phone when you hold it to your ear. So no more excuses that “…my cheek hung up on you!”

The reason it’s not rocking my world is that I’ve seen it all before. The Sony Ericsson Walkman already does a lot of this and more. And more importantly it’s doesn’t cost an absolute arm and leg, which no doubt the iPhone will.

Well done Apple, your shiny new product has already been copied, release and sold cheaper before you’d even announced it!

Fedora Core 6 enables the internal crappy speaker by default. I don’t like this, it makes my sexy machine sound old and cheap. To disable it run the following as root:

modprobe -r pcspkr ; echo "install pcspkr :" >>/etc/modprobe.conf

You might remember I had a bit of a nightmare getting vmware to work on a dual core Intel. In the end it turned out that Fedora had chosen the wrong kernel arch (i586 rather than i686). This morning I was having a poke around the FC6 Common bug list (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/FC6Common) and found the problem. Apparently it’s bug in Anaconda, the Fedora installer. Here’s what they say:

Anaconda installing the wrong architecture kernel in some systems. cpuspeed is not working for the same reason. This does not affect out of box functionality much but if you are compiling third party kernel drivers you might run into this on x86 architecture. x86_64 and PPC systems are not affected. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=211941. You can bypass this bug in a new installation by specifying “linux i686″ in the installation boot prompt.

An updates.img is available for this issue http://people.redhat.com/pnasrat/211941-updates.img. Please follow the instructions here: Anaconda/Updates.

To check which kernel package architectures are currently installed:

rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n"|grep kernel|sortIf the installed kernel architecture is i586, but your machine is i686 capable (Pentium II or K6II or higher), use the following simple workaround:

1. Install yumdownloader. yumdownloader is part of yum-utils in Fedora Extras. You can also manually download the kernel.su -c "yum install yum-utils"
2. Get the current i686 kernel:yumdownloader kernel.i686
3. If the version of the kernel downloaded is larger than currently installed:su -c "rpm -ivh kernel-2*.i686.rpm"
• Alternatively, if the version of the kernel downloaded is the same as that currently installed:su -c "rpm -ivh --replacefiles --replacepkgs kernel-2*.i686.rpm"
4. Restart the machine.reboot