VMware-server 1.0.7 on 2.6.27 kernels

Last Friday lots up upgrades were released for Slackware-current, including a new kernel, 2.6.27.5
Since changing a kernel usually has some consequences, I waited until today, Sunday, to apply all upgrades.
As anticipated, my VMware-server stopped working. Normally I run the /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl script to reconfigure VMware and recompile the needed modules for the new kernel.
But this time I had no success.

So this is where the fun starts!

I started searching several sites (Google really helps) and discovered that the problem is caused by the fact that VMware-server 1.0.7 still uses the "kernel_thread" feature that has been marked for removal since August 2006 (see your /usr/src/linux/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt file). It had finally been dropped in the 2.6.27 kernel.

But, since the 2.6.27 kernel has been out in the open for a while, I started looking for patched and found one in the Ubuntu community, written by a guy called Kang.
It was originally written for VMware 5.5 but works flawlessly on VMware-server 1.0.7 too.

Simply download the patch from Kang's page, untar it and run the runme.pl script (as root):

wget http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz
tar -xzvf vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz
cd vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2
perl runme.pl

After this, your VMware-server should run fine again!