So a comment on the first of my entries about Gentoo on a T23 reminded me to make an update regarding my now working system...

I also sorted out my VMWare issues.

Kernel Configuration

Here is my working kernel configuration

Significant points:

• APM compiled in
• ACPI y, with sub-items as modules
• PCMCIA/Cardbus support compiled in (emerged pcmcia-cs with cardbus disabled)
• IPSEC as a module
• Only the EEPRO module for PCI network support
• Wireless PCI and Wireless PCMCIA and network PCMCIA support in modules
• Only Sound support and OSS sound support, both as modules. Emerged alsa-driver for sound support.

VMWare configuration

This kind of sorted itself out. I spoke to a co-worker, and he said he hadn't had to do anything funny to get VMWare to stop complaining. So, I deleted /etc/devfs.d/vmware (a file I'd created to recreate the devfs link for vmmon), I removed vmnet and vmmon from /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4 (I'd tried a few variations with the two modules here.. ).

I'd forgotten tweaking the VMWare start-up script to load the vmmon and vmnet modules. When I upgraded the VMWare-workstation ebuild (because of some minor change), etc-update reminded me, and I scrapped those changes to. For some reason, with absolutely no intervention on my part, VMWare now remains configured on it's own.

I probably thought it was having trouble because I was recompiling the kernel between reboots, something extremely unusual for me to do, but something that would cause the vmware modules to complain when they were loaded.

<sighs>

Everything is smashing, now!