Today, I decided to update some of my boxes, one of my boxes is a VM-ware server host running on top of Gentoo. That host has two clients, another Gentoo server and a 2003 Windows server. Both of the Gentoo servers needed to go to 2.6.21-r4 kernels, so I thought this would be a good time to do it.
On the host I emerged gentoo-sources, ran make oldconfig and compiled the kernel. Afte the kernel was compiled, I ran ‘module-rebuild -X rebuild’ to rebuild all modules that need to be compiled against the latest sources. Sure enough it stated that it needed vmware-modules (as expected) and it rebuilt that.
I rebooted the server and everything appeard good, except that my guest boxes were not coming up. I open vmware-server-console to take a look and immediately received an error when trying to power them on. Here is what the logs looked like:
Today, I decided to update some of my boxes, one of my boxes is a VM-ware server host running on top of Gentoo. That host has two clients, another Gentoo server and a 2003 Windows server. Both of the Gentoo servers needed to go to 2.6.21-r4 kernels, so I thought this would be a good time to do it.
On the host I emerged gentoo-sources, ran make oldconfig and compiled the kernel. Afte the kernel was compiled, I ran ‘module-rebuild -X rebuild’ to rebuild all modules that need to be compiled against the latest sources. Sure enough it stated that it needed vmware-modules (as expected) and it rebuilt that.
I rebooted the server and everything appeard good, except that my guest boxes were not coming up. I open vmware-server-console to take a look and immediately received an error when trying to power them on. Here is what the logs looked like:
Jul 16 14:40:34 comp vmware-authd[5448]: The "/opt/vmware/server/lib/bin/vmware-vmx" process did not start properly. Exit 0xed00
Jul 16 14:40:43 comp vmware-authd[5454]: The"/opt/vmware/server/lib/bin/vmware-vmx" process did not start properly. Exit 0xed00
Jul 16 14:41:27 comp vmware-authd[5636]: The"/opt/vmware/server/lib/bin/vmware-vmx" process did not start properly. Exit 0xed00
Jul 16 14:41:53 comp vmware-authd[5644]: The"/opt/vmware/server/lib/bin/vmware-vmx" process did not start properly. Exit 0xed00
Jul 16 14:42:49 comp vmware-authd[5660]: The"/opt/vmware/server/lib/bin/vmware-vmx" process did not start properly. Exit 0xed00
Jul 16 14:46:35 comp vmware-authd[5397]: The"/opt/vmware/server/lib/bin/vmware-vmx" process did not start properly. Exit 0xed00
Ugh. I started to dig a little deeper in the logs /var/logs/vmware/vmware-serverd.log, and noticed this:
Jul 16 15:14:53: app| Msg_Post: Version mismatch with vmmon module: expecting 138.0, got 161.0.
Jul 16 15:14:53: app| You have an incorrect version of the `vmmon' kernel module.
Jul 16 15:14:53: app| Try reinstalling VMware Server.
This is weird, so I did what it asked and noticed that it tried to downgrade my version of vmware-modules. Downgrading the modules and recompiling server fixed the problem. The issue was related to module-rebuild. For some reason, it was trying to bring a newer version of vmware-modules down.
So now, I have my host happy. Powering on the Gentoo guest image, I received the following:
VFS: Cannot open root device "sda3" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
Okay, now.. I’m starting to get a tad pissed. This was suppose to be routine stuff, and I’m causing unexpected downtime. I verified that my configs were the same between 2.6.20-r8 and 2.6.21-r4, specifically in the scsi, since it appears it can’t see the drive after grub hands it over. I was about to post on the forums, but realized that I should take a look in bugs, and sure enough there were reports of fusion drivers.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185272
I think I’ll stick with 2.6.20-r8 until I see that this bug is resolved and try it again. What a day.