Alpine Linux 2.3.0_rc5 running under VMWare requires pax_nouderef kernel option to boot
It was my understanding that at one point, some VMWare detection code was put into syslinux (or another part of the bootloader/initial kernel loading) so that the pax_nouderef option was passed to the kernel whenever Alpine is running under VMWare. It’s possible that since uderef was disabled for a bit then re-enabled in http://git.alpinelinux.org/cgit/aports/commit/?id=f6f718575335c86eb6d93dcc8df345eab3da460b that re-enabling it caused this behaviour. If it’s worth fixing before 2.3.0, that’s fine, but otherwise can probably wait for 2.3.1 or 2.4.0.
(from redmine: issue id 791, created on 2011-10-29, closed on 2012-01-02)