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.

Everything is smashing, now!