I have been seeing this same problem. Unfortunately remove/install of tools didn't seem to fix it.

It happens around drag and drop. I also have seen it when launching an URL from inside the guest to Firefox in the host. I also have seen it when I am just working in Firefox in the host, so no direct guest usage that I know of.

I am also a Parallels Desktop import, so perhaps there are is some common importer problem we are seeing.

It is usually accompanied with a lot of disk access and with the following lines over and over again in the log:

Sep 24 14:26:50.256: vcpu-0| VMXVmdbGuestBinaryHandlersCB: failed: ret = VMDB failure
Sep 24 14:26:50.257: vcpu-0| VMXVmdbGuestBinaryHandlersCB: failed: ret = VMDB failure
Sep 24 14:26:50.256: vcpu-0| TOOLS call to unity.get.binary.handlers failed.

I also am seeing this line a fair amount:

Sep 24 15:15:48.816: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found

I just tried removing and reinstalling vmware tools. Unfortunately it didn't seem to solve the problem. When I start the guest I see hundreds of the "VMXVmdbGuestBinaryHandlersCB failed" lines in the log. Also, after an hour or so of use I ran into this issue again starting with these log entries

Sep 24 15:40:26.818: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 24 15:40:27.502: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 24 15:40:38.996: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 24 15:40:39.097: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 24 15:40:39.098: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 24 15:40:39.161: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 24 15:40:39.225: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 24 15:40:47.144: vcpu-0| VMXVmdbGuestBinaryInfoCB: Could not get name

As a final note, initially (after initial import and before my remove/install of vmware tools) my menu choice was "Install VMware Tools" rather than "Update VMWare Tools", which makes me think the importer did miss something. After remove/install my menu option is now "update vmware tools".

My logs are attached.

Thanks,
d

Matt,

The stack trace 'appears' (though this can sometimes be misleading) to point to the drag and drop code - had you recently performed a drag-n-drop operation ? Could you also do a '.dump ma <file>' and let us know how big the resultant dump is and then we can work out the most efficient way to get it to us ?

Thanks very much for your help.

Andrew 8-)

Andrew,

I'm still not exactly sure what triggered the problem, but here are the events leading up to the current state:

1. VM window was not in focus.
2. Dragged & dropped a file from Finder to another Mac application, it passed over a portion of the background VM window in the process, which did start acting on it.
3. Brought the VM window into focus a few minutes later.
4. Connected VPN client and launched Outlook.

This was the point where I noticed the CPU spike. Based on this and R1ch's experience it does seem to indicate a drag & drop issue. Here's the dump file:

http://codeworkshop.net/files/vmwareuser.zip

Matt

Thanks very much for your feedback and dump files. Now I can reproduce the bug. What happened is that when you drag something into guest, we will start a DnD thread in guest, but it may take time. And when you drag it out, we will cancel the DnD. But if you drag out right after drag in, guest DnD thread may be not up yet, so will miss the cancel signal. And unfortunately, DnD thread is very expensive. Actually there is a workaround. If you got into this bad case again, just drag a file into the VM and stay inside for a while, and drag out again. This will reset our DnD status and kill the DnD thread. Let me know if the workaround works or not. This will help me to know if it is the cause of the bad situation.

Actually, I am not sure I am seeing the exact same problem, though it may be related. To recap what I am seeing:

Every few hours in Unity (and less often when not in Unity) windows within the guest become non-responsive. This is coupled with a bunch of messages in the log like the following:

Sep 29 08:54:10.854: vcpu-0| TOOLS call to unity.get.binary.handlers failed.
Sep 29 08:54:10.854: vcpu-0| VMXVmdbGuestBinaryHandlersCB: failed: ret = VMDB failure
Sep 29 08:54:10.854: vcpu-0| VMXVmdbGuestBinaryHandlersCB: failed: ret = VMDB failure
Sep 29 08:54:22.697: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 29 08:54:55.863: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 29 08:54:59.025: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 29 08:55:54.430: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 29 08:55:57.313: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 29 08:56:02.575: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 29 08:56:05.451: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
...
Sep 29 09:00:01.455: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 29 09:00:08.993: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 29 09:00:13.556: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 29 09:00:20.319: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 29 09:00:24.120: vmx| VMXVmdbCbUnityCmd: failed: ret = Schema path not found
Sep 29 09:00:28.490: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 29 09:00:28.555: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.
Sep 29 09:00:29.043: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.

I am also seeing this when the guest starts up in the vmware-vmfusion.log:

Sep 29 09:28:16.061: vmfusion| Failed to get guest app info: VMDB failure
Sep 29 09:28:37.373: vmfusion| Failed to get guest app info: VMDB failure
Sep 29 09:29:24.317: vmfusion| Failed to get guest app info: VMDB failure

The vmwareuser.exe sometimes spikes, but not always to 100%. Though its hard to say because really the whole guest becomes non-responsive for a bit and then catches up.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling tools with no improvement. It may be worth noting that even with tools uninstalled I still get the "vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out." lines in he vmware.log.
As I mentioned above this is a parallels import, so it may have something to do with the import.

I've attached my latest vmx and logs. Hopefully we can find a fix for this because when this isn't happening I am enjoying vmware's responsiveness and the dual-monitor support, but if we don't get it figured out before my trial expires I will have to go back to parallels since I am not having these lockup problems with it.

Thanks,
d

To help isolate the problem I created a new image from scratch using default settings. It seems to have similar issues making me think the issue is at the host level rather than the guest level. I've attached its logs as well. Generally I continue to see errors like the following in the log:

Sep 29 11:41:31.884: vcpu-0| VMXVmdbGuestBinaryHandlersCB: failed: ret = VMDB failure
Sep 29 11:41:31.885: vcpu-0| VMXVmdbGuestBinaryHandlersCB: failed: ret = VMDB failure
Sep 29 11:41:31.946: vcpu-0| TOOLS call to unity.get.binary.handlers failed.

Thanks,
d

Thanks, here are the guest logs zipped with the other logs. I hadn't realized this was a different log (the guest log) or I would have included it sooner.
Thanks,
d

How long it will take to save the file to virtual disk? Also looks like your setup is not very powerful. Can you provide more information about your setup? Mac Pro or Mac Book? How big is memory? Also what is your guest OS? XP?