While attempting to install the VMware Tools on an Ubuntu 11.10 guest, I ran into the error
None of the pre-built vmmemctl modules for VMware Tools is suitable for your
running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmemctl module
for your system
The setup script then gives the opportunity to build the correct module but on my system it could not find the required header files to do the build. I used the following steps to install the missing header files and then re-ran the VMware tools setup script /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl.
Here are the steps I took build the missing vmmemctl module:
$ uname -r
Make note of the version number and use it in the next two commands
$ apt-cache search <kernel version>
$ apt-get install linux-headers-<kernel version>
$ sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
Re-run the setup script:
$ sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl
Take the defaults until you get to the following prompt:
What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include]
Enter the path to the just installed header files. For my system the path was:
/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.0-12-generic/include
Unfortunately, I now receive the error
The path “/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.24-19[or 2.6.24-19generic]/include” is a kernel header file directory, but it does not contain the file “linux/version.h” as expected
There are many other references to this issue but I have not found a solution.
The instructions in VMware KB 1008973 provided the primary steps used here.