vmware 4.5 on FreeBSD 6.2

[JVD]

I setup VMware 4.5.2 workstation on my FreeBSD 6.2 machine and am having
some issues I can't make it through.  I know this topic has come up from
time to time throughout various mailing lists, and I understand there
isn't a large, current support base for VMware on FreeBSD .. but I was
hoping someone out there could point me in the right direction to get
this fully functional.

I have successfully installed the application, gotten the vmmon_smp.ko
and vmnet.ko modules compiled and loaded (even got vmmon_up.ko working
but with the same issues), all my /dev objects are there, and the vmnet1
interface comes up fine. All the start-up scripts work, even have rtc.ko
loaded.

I can launch the application (with sudo rights to avoid the
"NOT_IMPLEMENTED" errors), can use all the wizards, set up new guest
profiles, format (preallocate) the physical disk and so on with no
problems.  

My issue is actually starting the virtual machine.  I do not have a
vmware.log file anywhere, not in /tmp, not in /var, the vmware image
directory, not anywhere.  The only logging I have is from vmui
under /tmp/vmware-root.  When I try to start the virtual machine I get
these errors in the UI log:


Nov 11 03:13:04: vmui| VmSummaryIsScreenshotNew: failed to stat
image .png: No such file or directory
Nov 11 03:13:04: vmui| VmSummaryIsScreenshotNew: failed to stat
image .png: No such file or directory
Nov 11 03:13:04: vmui| VMHS: Exec()'ing /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx
Nov 11 03:13:04: vmui| VmSummaryIsScreenshotNew: failed to stat
image .png: No such file or directory
Nov 11 03:13:04: vmui| The VMX process died prematurely
Nov 11 03:13:04: vmui| VMHSLaunchVM failed: VMDB_E_LAUNCH_PEER_FAILED
Nov 11 03:13:04: vmui| VmSummaryIsScreenshotNew: failed to stat
image .png: No such file or directory

Launching vmware-vmx manually puts a log into /tmp/vmware-log/123.log,
just says it started up with no args to initialize the VMX VMDB
instance.  The only thing a ktrace shows are the configuration files and
preference files, and /etc/localtime being accessed.

The only issue I had when getting the vmmon module to build was with
vmmon-only/freebsd/mli_file.c under mli_conjure_vnode() -- I was getting
compile errors about the si_hlist struct member being missing.  Since I
couldn't figure out the fix I set the variable to NULL on the first
round and then commented the section like this, both with the same
results:

 /* vd = SLIST_FIRST(&dev->si_hlist); */
        vd = NULL;
        /* if (vd == NULL)
                return ENODEV; */

This got me past my compile errors, and I'm not quite sold that my
issues are related to this decision since I've read one or two mailing
list postings talking about this same issue on Linux (no resolutions
that I could use unfortunately).

If anyone has ran into this and fixed it, or has any information that
could help I'd appreciate it.

-jvd


Not that this will really help, but here's some basic output of how
things are working:

root at x:~ > uname -srp
FreeBSD 6.2-PRERELEASE i386

root at x:~ > vmware -v
VMware Workstation 4.5.2 build-8848


## vmmon_smp.ko and vmnet.ko are loaded properly
root at x:~ > kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   23 0xc0400000 731768   kernel
 2    7 0xc0b32000 1adb8    linux.ko
 3    1 0xc0b4d000 4a47b4   nvidia.ko
 4    1 0xc0ff2000 59f20    acpi.ko
 5    1 0xc707c000 6000     linprocfs.ko
 6    1 0xc71f5000 2000     blank_saver.ko
 7    1 0xc7211000 8000     vmmon_smp.ko
 8    1 0xc722a000 2000     vmnet.ko
 9    1 0xc722c000 4000     if_tap.ko
10    1 0xc7253000 2000     rtc.ko
11    4 0xc7d7b000 a000     netgraph.ko
12    1 0xc7d8b000 3000     ng_ether.ko
13    1 0xc7d8e000 4000     ng_bridge.ko
14    1 0xc7db3000 4000     ng_socket.ko


## All the appropriate devices are there
root at x:/dev > ls -al | grep vm
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel           10 Nov 11 02:30 net3 -> net/vmnet1
crw-------   1 root  wheel       0, 120 Nov 11 02:27 vmmon
crw-------   1 root  wheel       0, 106 Nov 11 02:27 vmnet1


## I have the logical vmnet interface
root at x:~ > ifconfig vmnet1
vmnet1: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu
1500
        inet 192.168.0.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
        ether 00:bd:e2:1f:03:01


## Straight forward kernel
include GENERIC

ident           X       

options         SMP

device          sound
device          atapicam
device          snd_emu10k1
options         HZ=1200
options         VFS_AIO