VMware server cannot run on FC6

[Andy Green]

Paul Smith wrote:

> Unable to make a vmmon module that can be loaded in the running kernel:
> insmod: error inserting '/tmp/vmware-config4/vmmon.o': -1 Invalid module 
> format

Aha... while getting out-of-tree Wifi driver working on my stepson's 
laptop last night I saw the same.  I eventually tracked it down (Google 
had people asking and no real answers) to Anaconda having given his 
Athlon laptop an i586 kernel whereas the rest of the bits and bobs were 
i686.  Do a

dmesg | tail

and if you see a complaint about a vermagic mismatch, check the two 
strings full of tokens for the differences.  In our case it was i586 vs 
i686.  We confirmed we had the i586 kernel like this

rpm -q --queryformat "%{name}-%{arch}\n" kernel

What we did was to download the i686 kernel and kernel-devel from an 
http mirror, then

rpm -e --nodeps kernel kernel-devel

(don't worry about the grubby warning)  then added back in the i686 
stuff we just downloaded

rpm -i kernel*.rpm

On reboot, the previously compiled module "just worked" without a 
recompile, now it had an i686 arch kernel to get into.

-Andy