VMWare and the 2.6.20 kernel

If you’re running VMWare on the 2.6.20 kernel, it’s virtual FS monitor will crash and fail when you copy files.

And it crashes in a most brutal way …

You cannot destroy it because it’s a driver, and because it’s a driver not handled automatically by the system, it will never unset on bootdown. Trying to remove it the way you remove normal function drivers fails too.

However, with a little creativity, you can still get files onto your virtual drive without needing a network connection.

The solution is

mkisofs

, which allows you to make an ISO. The great thing about ISO, and the only reason DVD works, is because ISOs can be any size — well, within reason … I think the addressing mode taps out at 4.2GB when it hits the upper 64-bit limit.

Toss all the files you want to load into VMWare in a folder called ~/tmp/ or something similar, then run this command line:

mkisofs -l -R -o tempiso.iso ~/tmp/


Now mount ~/tempiso.iso as your CD-ROM device in VMWare and copy in the files you want.

This works well for getting games onto a VMWare install when you aren’t willing to suffer setting up bridged-networking or giving your VM its own IP address on the network.

You can always use the vmware-mount.pl script to mount the disc and copy your saves off it. Just don’t trust it to copy more than 1-8MB without locking.