VMware Web admin vs SL5.4: fight!

Recently, we've acquired some hefty servers for the purposes of running virtual machines (initially for test purposes and cheap dev boxes, but potentially for service hosting depending on how well it goes). We're using VMWare Server, which, although it comes with some command line tools, very much wants you to use the fancy web interface that it runs on non-standard ports.

This was fine, except that it seemed extremely flaky on all our test servers - randomly crashing, sometimes taking out a running VM with it.

It turns out that this is all the fault of our running an up-to-date version of SL. SL5.4 (actually, anything based on RHEL5.4, one assumes) has a version of glibc that VMWare really doesn't get on with well.

Once we copied the 5.3 release of libc.so.6 from a 5.3 server into a suitable place, and pointed VMware's LD_LIBRARY_PATH at it, it seems much more stable.

(The relevant bug report, including fix suggestions is:

http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=3884 )