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It's been a long time since I compiled a linux kernel, but it appears that I need to do it now.

After installing package kernel-server-devel-4.9.50-1.mga6-1-1.mga6 (kernel sources), I'm unable to run make menuconfig. Or actually, it runs fine but I'm not shown any menu.

My mageia machine is running under VMWare. I've tried to access it by using puTTY and using the VMWare (VMRC) console and both show the same result.

Am I doing something wrong ? Is anybody having the same issue ?

yoho wrote:It's been a long time since I compiled a linux kernel, but it appears that I need to do it now.

It appears because of what reason in particular, do you mind to share that as well?

yoho wrote:After installing package kernel-server-devel-4.9.50-1.mga6-1-1.mga6 (kernel sources), I'm unable to run make menuconfig. Or actually, it runs fine but I'm not shown any menu.

Well, the kernel-devel packages are NOT the kernel sources, those only include the headers to build modules against the kernel. You want to install the actual kernel-source package.

1) Yes, I need it because I want to install VMWare tools on my mageia guest virtual machine. VMWare tools come with a loadable kernel module but it has to be compiled against the kernel you're currently running on the machine. To compile the module, you need to run a command-line wizard and provide the path to your kernel headers (default is /usr/src/include but this path doesn't exist in Mageia). For some reason, the wizard is not pleased with "/usr/src/kernel-4.9.50-server-1.mga6/include/", I read somewhere that it's searching for a file named "linux.h" but I indeed can't find it. The wizard tells that a potential reason why this file is not present may be that the kernel has never been compiled... hence the reason why I'm now trying to compile it, although I'm not really sure if it will solve my problem.

2) Ok. I thought the headers were in kernel-userspace-headers. Then, there is a problem in kernel-devel package: it comes with /usr/share/doc/kernel-server-devel-4.9.50-1.mga6/README.kernel-sources which appears to indicate this is the right package to compile the kernel... I'll install kernel-source too and will try again to compile, then.

yoho wrote:1) Yes, I need it because I want to install VMWare tools on my mageia guest virtual machine. VMWare tools come with a loadable kernel module but it has to be compiled against the kernel you're currently running on the machine. To compile the module, you need to run a command-line wizard and provide the path to your kernel headers (default is /usr/src/include but this path doesn't exist in Mageia). For some reason, the wizard is not pleased with "/usr/src/kernel-4.9.50-server-1.mga6/include/", I read somewhere that it's searching for a file named "linux.h" but I indeed can't find it. The wizard tells that a potential reason why this file is not present may be that the kernel has never been compiled... hence the reason why I'm now trying to compile it, although I'm not really sure if it will solve my problem.

See, this is a good example for a typical XY problem, and this is also pretty important information that should be contained in your original post in the first place.

Your question should have been simply "how do I install vmware tools on my mageia guest virtual machine ?" with the information added what you already tried so far and the copy&paste of the commands and errors you got.

Well let's say I had 2 problems and you've already solved this one. I wanted to open another thread for the VMware stuff once I had made enough progress on this one. I'll try to solve the second now.