2008-11-09

request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000

When trying to upgrade my kernel on a Gentoo box I got the above error. Many people discussed it, but all the solutions seemed to be "it went away." However, I couldn't get it to stop occurring until I told Gentoo to rebuild the entire toolchain used by genkernel:


emerge --emptytree genkernel

and then rerunning genkernel solved the issue. The best hint seems to be that it is something to do with a bad version of CPIO or similar, or some library that changed and didn't get fully recompiled.

I've filed a bug on this with Gentoo:

2008-11-04

VMware Fusion incorrectly assigns user ids for hgfs shares

Because VMware is aimed at CentOS, by default the hgfs shares are set up to be owned by the user with id 501; you'll need to change this so that it's owned by your user. To do this, first run `id`:

$ id
uid=1000(user) gid=1000(user)

Then edit `/etc/fstab` and change the line:

# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software

to

# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software

Where the values for `uid` and `gid` come from the output of the `id` command as above.

Remount `/mnt/hgfs`:

$ sudo umount /mnt/hgfs
$ sudo mount /mnt/hgfs

Note that you'll have to do this EVERY TIME you upgrade VMware tools.