[Bug 332323] [NEW] vmware-user-suid-wrapper does not properly activate vmblock

[William Cattey]

Public bug reported:

Bug #302226 gives the remedy for getting vmware-user to start, but once
started vmware-user is not fully functional.

This is because vmblock is not being properly started.

The man page of vmware-user-suid-wrapper leads me to believe it has
responsibility for this:

[The purpose of vmware-user-suid-wrapper is to] acquire a  filesystem  file  descriptor,  drop
       superuser  privileges, and then execute vmware-user(1).  In particular,
       prepare the system for vmware-user means that it unmounts  the  vmblock
       file  system,  unloads  the  vmblock  module,  then reloads the module,
       mounts the file system, and opens a file  descriptor  that  vmware-user
       can use to add and remove blocks.

Although there is a directory /tmp/VMwareDndD there is no /proc/fs/vmblock
"lsmod | grep vm" shows the other open-vm kernel modules are loaded, but not vmblock.

If I do "sudo modprobe vmblock"

The expected entries under /proc/fs/vmblock appear, and Drag and Drop
starts working.

I dug into the source of vmware-user-suid-wrapper, and I see that the code to do the unload and reload
of the vmblock module is simply not there.  wrapper.h defines TOGGLE_VMBLOCK only for sun
 and __FreeBSD__.

I then reviewed the source for what is going out for Jaunty. It too
lacks the code to toggle vmblock.

It looks to me like the remedy here is to add the following code:

in wrapper-linux.c:

    UnmountVMBlock to call unmount(mountPoint)
    UnloadModule to call modprobe -r
    LoadVMBlock to call modprobe
    MountVMBlock to call mount (mountPoint)

And then add linux to the list of platforms that define TOGGLE_VMBLOCK

Does anyone have this code laying around?  (I'm a bit frightened of just
doing {system ("modprobe -r vmblock")}.

Or is there some very sensible reason why doing the toggle vmblock is
still inappropriate on the Linux platform?

** Affects: open-vm-tools (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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vmware-user-suid-wrapper does not properly activate vmblock
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/332323
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