Bug 1025

Summary:	kmod-open-vm-tools 210370 breaks network
Product:	Fedora	Reporter:	Harald Reindl <spam2>
Component:	open-vm-tools-kmod	Assignee:	Denis Leroy <denis>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	major	CC:	fedora, nneul
Priority:	P1
Version:	11
Hardware:	All
OS:	GNU/Linux
namespace:

Description Harald Reindl 2009-12-27 19:32:55 CET

After kernel/kmod-update today network was killed

The problem is that there is not only kmod with new version for kernel-build 105, at the same time "2.6.30.9-102.fc11.i586-0.0.0.179896" is also replaced what means that switch to the old kernel in the bootloader will not help

So i had to download the rpm manually, burn a iso-image with the rpm and add a cd-drive with the iso to the vm to switch back. This happens on i586 also as on x86_64

It is not really clear what is broken because two of my lokal buildmachines on vmware-server 2.02 are working fine with NAT-network and PING works also on the vmware-esxi-3.5U2 machines, but no network-proctocoll is working any longer
I have a lot of mails with "Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading authorization packet', system error: 0"

The host machine is a hp-pro-liant DL-380G5 with ESXi 3.5U2 110271
This is the first time i see any problems with the kmod-open-vm-tools
I hope someone upstream can figure out what happens here :-(

DEAD NETWORK:
kmod-open-vm-tools-2.6.30.9-102.fc11.i586-0.0.0.210370-1.fc11.i586.rpm

WORKING NETWORK:
kmod-open-vm-tools-2.6.30.9-102.fc11.i586-0.0.0.179896-1.fc11.11.i586.rpm

Comment 1 Jeff Rife 2009-12-31 03:19:58 CET

I also am experiencing this issue.

If the VM is configured to use the VMware Ethernet adapters (I tested vmxnet and vmxnet3), then TCP and UCP networking to/from a different machine fails.  ICMP still succeeds.  TCP works to either the loopback or configured IP addresses on the local machine.

In addition, if the "flexible" adapter is chosen, the same error occurs as long as /etc/modprobe.d/vmnics.conf contains the "install pcnet32..." line.

Basically, only NICs supported by the default kernel (Lance and e1000) and not by the vm-tools kmod will work correctly.

Comment 2 Jeff Rife 2009-12-31 03:26:55 CET

I just noticed that the original bug was against Fedora 11.

My system is Fedora 12:
kernel-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.i686
kmod-open-vm-tools-0.0.0.210370-1.fc12.1.i686
kmod-open-vm-tools-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.i686-0.0.0.210370-1.fc12.1.i686

Comment 3 Nathan Neulinger 2010-01-07 15:12:31 CET

I was about to open a new bug on this and found this one. The underlying cause is that 210370 breaks udp (and possibly tcp) checksumming. 

I have confirmed the breakage is not related to the RPM with builds of both 210370 and 217847 from sf.net tarballs. Upgrading to the Dec 19th (217847) build for just the vmxnet.ko and vmxnet3.ko kernel modules fixes the problem.

Please rebuild this package against the 217847 upstream package. If you need to fix without resyncing from sf.net, I can try and track down the actual code change that breaks/fixes it, but I'd think it'd be cleaner to just resync.

Comment 4 Nathan Neulinger 2010-01-15 04:27:19 CET

According to mvanzin on sf.net this bug was fixed in git cid 245e1fce520.

Comment 5 Denis Leroy 2010-01-15 10:56:27 CET

I've pushed updates to both F-11 and F-12. Let me know how they turn out for you.

Comment 6 Nathan Neulinger 2010-01-15 14:53:10 CET

Thank you! New RPM is now working smoothly on F12/x86_64.

Comment 7 Denis Leroy 2010-01-15 15:07:04 CET

Great! Closing this then.

Comment 8 Harald Reindl 2010-01-15 16:27:10 CET

Confirmed also on ESXi 3.5 U2

Thank you very much!

This package is soooo pretty cool because it makes it easy to test all functions after upgrade on a internal repo-server and distribute all with a simple scripts to our 10 other vm-instances without the fear to have a broken vmxnet

the packages from vmware are so ugly because the need of vmware-config-tools.pl with rsync-binary-distribute before rebooting other machines and the long update-time depending on the useless fat size