VMware Server 2.0.2 Installation on CentOS 5, RHEL 5

VMware Server 2.0.2 was released on 26-Oct-2009. VMware Server 2.0.x worked well with EL 5.3, but since RHEL 5.4 became available in September, 2009, the vmware-hostd process began crashing, rendering the whole product pretty much unusable. This issue was reported in postings on VMware Communities (​http://communities.vmware.com/message/1364852), and then on CentOS Bug Tracker (​http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=3884) as well.

All the problems were caused by incompatible glibc version that was introduced with EL 5.4.

CentOS	Glibc	Compatible with VMware Server 2.0.x
5.3	2.5-34	yes
5.4	2.5-42	no
5.5	2.5-49	no

When installing VMware Server 2.0.2 on CentOS (RHEL) >= 5.4 one has to provide / force VMware Server to use older version of the libc.so.6 shared library.

# uname -srm
Linux 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5 x86_64
# cat /etc/redhat-release 
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)
#
#
# cd ~/RPMS
# wget http://vault.centos.org/5.3/updates/x86_64/RPMS/glibc-2.5-34.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm
#
# rpm -i VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.x86_64.rpm
#
# mkdir /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6
# cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6
# rpm2cpio ~/RPMS/glibc-2.5-34.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm | \
    cpio -idm ./lib64/libc-2.5.so ./lib64/libc.so.6
#
# ls -l /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6/lib64
total 1672
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1707512 Aug 13  2009 libc-2.5.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      11 May 19 20:08 libc.so.6 -> libc-2.5.so
#
#
# cp -a /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware.orig
# vi /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware
# diff -u /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware.orig /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware
--- /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware.orig        2010-05-19 20:01:22.000000000 -0700
+++ /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware     2010-05-19 21:21:55.000000000 -0700
@@ -880,6 +880,7 @@
 
 # Start host agent
 vmware_start_hostd() {
+   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6/lib64
    vmware_bg_exec "`vmware_product_name` Host Agent" \
       "$vmdb_answer_SBINDIR/vmware-hostd" -a -d -u "$vmware_etc_dir/hostd/config.xml"
 }
#
#
# /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl