I ran into the same problem, and I was able to make the same patch work by editing a version number in the script which applies it.

WARNING: I don't actually know what I'm talking about when it comes to
VMware patching, I just made an educated guess that seems to work.

Whether you want to try this yourself depends on how risk-averse you are. But hey, your VMware Player install is already broken, right? I figured worst-case scenario I could uninstall and reinstall version 4.0.2.

I based this on the instructions I found here: vmware player compile issue. To boil it down to the simplest steps:

1. Download this tarball: http://weltall.heliohost.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz


2. Extract the tarball in your home directory


3. Edit the file patch-modules_3.2.0.sh. Look for the line plreqver=4.0.2 and change it to plreqver=4.0.3


4. Save the file, then run it. sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

If you have run the same patch on version 4.0.2 before, you may get this error: "/usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched found. You have already patched your sources. Exiting". If you see that, just delete the /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/.patched file and try again.

Please remember to have patch packet installed: apt-get install patch. My default installation of latest Kubuntu didn't have it, so I got error:

./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh: line 42: patch: command not found

Sometimes, the version check does not properly. In this case, you could remove it by deleting the 4 lines following "unset product", all of them begin with "[". This again may increse the risk of breaking something.