Sven Dens

So you’ve just installed a shiny new Sabayon Linux Guest in VMWare, and you can’t get VMWare Tools to install properly?  You’re getting messages like “the directory for rc0.d is not found” or saying that none of the precompiled modules is suitable for your kernel and that they can’t be built from scratch because the kernel headers are missing?  Let’s fix that, and while we’re at it let’s upgrade our packages to the latest available versions too.

I won’t be explaining all the commands used here, you can Google them to fnd out what they do exactly, this is just a quick guide to get you up and running with Sabayon in VMWare in a couple of minutes without any hassle.

First, open a terminal and become root (su).
Then, create 7 new directories under /etc/rc.d. You need rc0.d to rc6.d. So mkdir /etc/rc.d/rc0.d, mkdir /etc/rc.d/rc1.d, … mkdir /etc/rc.d/rc6.d.

Now it’s time to update our system by getting the latest available kernel and packages.
Still as root in the terminal, enter these commands in the following order:
1) equo update all
2) equo upgrade
3) emerge – -sync && layman -S
4) equo conf update
5) equo install – -ask linux-sabayon

Now cd to the directory /usr/portage/sys-kernel/linux-headers and type ls to see a list of what’s in there.
Note the highest available number for your kernel (mine today is 2.6.30-r1).
Now execute the following command to get the linux-headers so you can compile the vmware-modules later on: emerge -va =sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.6.30-r1

Note that you don’t specify sys-kernel/linux-headers/linux-headers-2.6.30-r1 but instead directly refer to the header version you want after sys-kernel!!

Also keep in mind to enter the right version. The 2.6.30-r1 you see here is the one that is on my system. Replace it with the one you have if necessary!

Almost there!
If everything went well, you should now be able to get past the initial dialogs for installing VMWare Tools, and then successfully compile all the needed modules.
Just keep the default answers to all questions, it’s almost too easy

If that install went fine as well, there’s one last thing to do: update all the packages in your system.
Once more, run these 2 commands:
1) equo upgrade
2) equo conf update

Et voilà, your very own bleeding-edge Sabayon VM is there to put a smile on your face

Sabayon-linux 4.2 in VMWare Fusion