title: Unable to install VMWare Tools on Debian Squeeze guest
body: <ul>
  <li>Host OS: Mac OS X 10.7.3</li>
  <li>VMWare Fusion Version 4.1.1 (536016)</li>
  <li>Guest OS: Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze, kernel 2.6.32-5-amd64</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>The installation process gets stuck when trying to compile modules:</p>
  
  <pre><code>.....
  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] 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>gcc</code> is installed:</p>
  
  <pre><code># 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
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and the binary exists where VMWare Tools installer tries to find it:</p>
  
  <pre><code># stat /usr/bin/gcc
    File: `/usr/bin/gcc' -&gt; `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)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>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:</p>
  
  <pre><code># 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
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any ideas how to resolve this? Thanks!</p>