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Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:31:01 +0100
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From: devzero@web.de
To: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
Cc: greearb@candelatech.com, jesper.juhl@gmail.com,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-net@vger.kernel.org,
       yoshfuji@linux-ipv6.org
Subject: Re: unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free
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>Vmware has there own pseudo ethernet device and unless you have the source for it.
>It would be hard to tell if it correctly manages itself.

VMware is able to emulate three different network card types:

- AMD Am79C970A - PCnet LANCE PCI Ethernet Controller (linux pcnet32 driver)
- Intel E1000 (e1000 driver)
- VMXNET - VMware PCI Ethernet Adapter (vmxnet, vmware`s own driver)

so there are 3 different drivers being used inside the guest OS for networking virtual machines.

rumours tell, that the vmxnet driver is sort of a mess, but i have seen the unregister_netdevice problem with pcnet32 AND with vmxnet - and all of the vmware readme`s are telling:

"In many Linux distributions, if IPv6 is enabled, VMware Tools cannot be configured with vmware-config-tools.pl after installation. In this case, VMware Tools is unable to set the network device correctly for the virtual machine, and displays a message similar to
Unloading pcnet32 module
unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free"

so - this is the native linux driver for pcnet32 which fails get unloaded _before_ the driver being replaced by the vmware specific one and the virtual nic being switched to the VMXNET adapter.....

anyway - i got that problem while shutting down a VM, not while installing vmware tools.

btw - just came across this posting from jesper juhl:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115703768804826&w=2

roland


> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
> Gesendet: 03.11.06 20:57:54
> An: "roland" <devzero@web.de>
> CC: <yoshfuji@linux-ipv6.org>, <linux-net@vger.kernel.org>,   <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
> Betreff: Re: unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free


> On Fri, 3 Nov 2006 20:53:09 +0100
> "roland" <devzero@web.de> wrote:
> 
> > > The ipv6 module cannot be unloaded once it has been
> > > loaded.
> > 
> > sorry,  i thought i could rmmod evey module which was insmod/modprobe'd 
> > before and i didn`t know that there are exceptions
> > 
> > > I'm not sure what is happened with vmware.
> > 
> > i think this is not completely related to vmware - but maybe this is being 
> > triggered more often by vmware ?
> > http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=%22unregister_netdevice%3A+waiting+for+eth0+to+become+free
> > 
> > it`s really strange, but after taking a look,  vmware seems to recommend 
> > disabling ipv6 for _every_ linux based guest OS in general:
> > http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=gos_ww5_output&file=choose_install_guest_os.html
> > 
> > since there are already running millions of  linux based VMs in this world, 
> > i think this isn`t very good "promotion" for ipv6, if vmware recommending 
> > disabling it.
> > ok, there are not that much people already needing ipv6 NOW, but the later 
> > they are running it and the later outstanding bugs being fixed, the harder 
> > it will be to convert from ipv4 to ipv6....
> > 
> > roland
> > 
> > 
> 
> Vmware has there own pseudo ethernet device and unless you have the source for it.
> It would be hard to tell if it correctly manages itself.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>


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