Fedora 18 on nagg.eu

Linux Kernel 3.8.* – VMware failed to build vmci

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 15:59:47 +0000

Every time a new Kernel goes out there seems to be a new issue with VMware Workstation 9.
Today I updated a couple of Fedora 18 boxes, applied the usual workaround (I wrote a post about it one month ago or so) which consists in ONE OF the following steps:

ln -s /usr/src/kernels/_kernel_version_/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/kernels/_kernel_version_/include/linux/version.h
### OR
cp /usr/src/kernels/_kernel_version_/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /lib/modules/_kernel_version_/build/include/linux/

Rebooted and then issued the usual command (vmware-modconfig –console –install-all) to rebuild the needed VMware modules just to find out that it isn’t possible to rebuild the VMCI module.
On the VMware official forum I found a thread (http://communities.vmware.com/message/2182440#2182440) in which a user provides a patch.
Apply the patch is fairly simple:

Fedora 18: TRIM and luks

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:44:42 +0000

At a first glance enabling TRIM on a luks encrypted volume looks quite easy, and, as a matter of a fact it is.
The shitstorm starts when trying to enable TRIM on the root volume, but, let’s go one step at a time.

First of all, enabling trim on a regular not encrypted volume is pretty easy; just open the file /etc/fstab and add the flag discard.
You may also want to add the flag noatime to prevent the OS from writing additional informations regarding last access date and such, it’s not strictly necessary but it will save the SSD’s cells some useless write operations.
The fstab file should look like this (here only one row is reported):

File search in Thunar

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 23:44:40 +0000

Thunar 1.6.2 (the default XFCE file manager) doesn’t seems to provide any kind of built in search function by default.
A good way to address this issue is use catfish (which is installed by default in Fedora 18), just open Thunar, go to Edit and then Custom Actions and add the following line: catfish –fileman=thunar –hidden –path=%f

Fedora 18 and VMware Workstation 9

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 22:51:37 +0000

During the installation process of VMware Workstation 9 some modules need to be compiled but unfortunately Workstation 9.0.1 doesn’t seems to be able to find by itself the correct kernel headers directory.
If kernel headers aren’t already installed, open the terminal and type as root: yum install kernel-*.
Wait for the process to be completed and then: sudo cp /usr/src/kernels/kernel_version.fc18.x86_64/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /lib/modules/kernel_version.fc18.x86_64/build/include/linux/.
This should do the trick.