Unable to install VMWare Tools on Debian Squeeze guest

Question

• Host OS: Mac OS X 10.7.3
• VMWare Fusion Version 4.1.1 (536016)
• Guest OS: Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze, kernel 2.6.32-5-amd64

The installation process gets stuck when trying to compile modules:

.....
Before you can compile modules, you need to have the following installed... 

make
gcc
kernel headers of the running kernel


Searching for GCC...
The path "/usr/bin/gcc" is not valid path to the gcc binary.
Would you like to change it? [yes] 

gcc is installed:

# dpkg -l | grep gcc
ii  gcc                                 4:4.6.2-4                    GNU C compiler
ii  gcc-4.3-base                        4.3.5-4                      The GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
ii  gcc-4.4-base                        4.4.7-1                      GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
ii  gcc-4.6                             4.6.3-1                      GNU C compiler
ii  gcc-4.6-base                        4.6.3-1                      GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
ii  libgcc1                             1:4.6.3-1                    GCC support library

and the binary exists where VMWare Tools installer tries to find it:

# stat /usr/bin/gcc
  File: `/usr/bin/gcc' -> `gcc-4.6'
  Size: 7           Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   symbolic link
Device: 801h/2049d  Inode: 1279246     Links: 1
Access: (0777/lrwxrwxrwx)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)

Googling the issue has pointed that the problem might be the gcc version — version 4.3 is required. Funnily enough, when I try to install kernel headers (also required by the VMWare Tools installer), it leads to the same problem:

# apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64 : Depends: gcc-4.3 but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

Any ideas how to resolve this? Thanks!

Solution

apt-get install libglib2.0-0 in super user shell or with sudo

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1883496?tstart=5

Comments

[Bryan Hunt]

The following packages have unmet dependencies: linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64 : Depends: gcc-4.3 but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages - glib has got nothing to do with gcc - in this regard.