Upgrade to RHEL 5.4's glibc has rendered vmware-hostd inoperable in some systems. I don't know if Centos 5.4 has the same conflict between glibc and VMware Server as RHEL (no reason it shouldn't).

If you run VMware Server 2.0.1 make a copy of /lib64/libc-2.5.so (or /lib/libc- 2.5.so) before upgrading to 5.4. If you encounter this problem follow dirkgf 's instructions in http://communities.vmware.com/thread/229957

from which I quote:

Re: vmware-hostd crashes repeatedly after upgrade to RHEL 5.4 Sep 5, 2009 7:49 AM

just for reference in case somebody else is having this issue. We seem to have been able to resolve the problem for us. Following the steps we performed.

* Log on to your VMware host.
* Create the directory /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6
* Log on to an RHEL 5.3. machine. Grab /lib64/libc-2.5.so (or
  /lib/libc-2.5.so in case you're running an 32 Bit host) and copy it to the
  VMware host into /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6
* Rename the file libc-2.5.so within /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6 to
libc.so.6 * Open /usr/sbin/vmware-hostd and add
/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6 to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH. I just added an
"export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
before the last line. * Restart your vmware services (or just the host)

Downgrading libc might be also an option, but I'd like to keep the host unchanged other

Works for me on a x86_64 system which exhibited similar symptoms. I agree with his last line because I don't know what else retaining the old glibc wold break.

regards,

benm