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6 Replies Last post: Oct 28, 2009 12:19 PM by exppi163  

VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux posted: Oct 20, 2009 8:55 AM

Click to view exppi163's profile Novice
exppi163
18 posts since
Oct 19, 2009
I've successfully installed a native CentOS and rEFIt using Bootcamp,* then made a VMware virtual machine that boots the native partition,** then installed VMware Tools***, and an NVIDIA driver.**** Problem is, now the CentOS won't boot up properly in native -- the native boot gets stuck on "Starting vmware-tools", and X just doesn't work. Everything works great when booting as a VM, though. I suppose I could run vmware-uninstall-tools and vmware-install (or whatever the install procedure command is) alternately, but that's highly inconvenient and possibly not very robust.

Does anyone have an easy way of setting up the dual native + virtual CentOS so that it boots up nicely in both? There must be a simple virtual machine detector shell command that can be put in the appropriate init files on boot and X initialization.

*See here. Make sure that you use the rEFIt option to sync the MBR and GPT partition tables before grub-install; otherwise, you'll get the /boot/grub/stage1 error.


**See here. This just worked for me when I used "/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk0 3 nativeDiskBoot ide" and "... 4 nativeDiskRoot ide" (my partition, with /dev/sda4 an LVM), then created a new VM (don't copy files!) with these two virtual disks, nativeDiskBoot and nativeDiskRoot.


***See here, here, and after setting the non-XEN kernel to be default in /boot/grub/grub.conf and "grub-install /dev/sda3".


****See here, here; run nvidia installer with "-k$(uname -r)" option.

Re: VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux

1. Oct 23, 2009 2:23 PM in response to: exppi163
Click to view astiegmann's profile Enthusiast
astiegmann
19 posts since
Aug 28, 2008
Hi exppi163,
I am currently looking into this and will give you an update when I have more information.

Re: VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux

2. Oct 23, 2009 5:13 PM in response to: exppi163
Click to view astiegmann's profile Enthusiast
astiegmann
19 posts since
Aug 28, 2008
Hi exppi163,
Can you please let me know the exact steps you followed so I can build my machine the same way you built yours. I would like to be able to see if I can reproduce all of the issues that you mentioned.

Here is what I did and what I saw...

1. Partitioned my drive and installed rEFIt.
2. I installed CentOS 5.3 on one partition and rebooted
3. I used the partitioning tool to get rEFIt to properly see my new Linux partition, then booted into the CentOS 5.3 emergency console and ran "grub-install /dev/sda3' to get GRUB working
4. I booted into CentOS and ran through the whole first boot procedure. I logged in successfully and then rebooted the machine.
5. I started up OS X and then setup the special phaux vmdk for access to the physical partition.
6. I started CentOS in the VM.

* I noted that I had to use an IDE device. The lislogic SCSI device caused the kernel not to be able to mount /proc and /sys and hence panicked. I will file a bug for this internally.
* When GDM tried to start, it failed because the underlying video hardware had changed (xorg.conf was not correctly configured). Running through the automatic re-configuration of Xorg fixed the problem for me.

7. I installed tools.
8. I rebooted the machine and booted back into the native CentOS 5.3

* The tools service noticed that it was not running on a native environment and did not try and start up the services.
* Xorg failed to start correctly.

Ok, so the Xorg failing to start properly is a funny situation. The reason this happened is because when I invoked the automatic Xorg configuration in step 6 to get get a working xorg.conf, the script created a new xorg.conf that would work for the VM and not for the native environment (because it was running in a VM environment at the time and not the native one). The auto xorg.conf configurator backed up the orignal xorg.conf to xorg.conf.old. Next when I installed tools in step 7, the tools installer created a new xorg.conf and backed up the xorg.conf created in step 6 to xorg.conf.BeforeVMwareToolsInstall.

So what happened was when I started up CentOS in the native environment, tools restored xorg.conf.BeforeVMwareToolsInstall to xorg.conf because it thought it was the working xorg.conf for the native environment when the real working xorg.conf script was xorg.conf.old. So my solution to get around this issue was to

1. Boot into CentOS via the virtual machine method
2. As root, move the xorg.conf that worked on the native enviroment to xorg.conf.BeforeVMwareToolsInstall.

After I did that everything worked for me and I could easily switch between the two environments without any hiccups. I have filed a bug internally to see what we can do to potentially alleviate this problem.

When you can please let me know the steps on how you built your CentOS machine and I will see if I can reproduce the tools problem you mentioned as well. Hope that helps.

Re: VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux

3. Oct 27, 2009 12:06 PM in response to: astiegmann
Click to view exppi163's profile Novice
exppi163
18 posts since
Oct 19, 2009

astiegmann wrote:Hi exppi163,
Can you please let me know the exact steps you followed so I can build my machine the same way you built yours. I would like to be able to see if I can reproduce all of the issues that you mentioned.

Here is what I did and what I saw...

1. Partitioned my drive and installed rEFIt.
2. I installed CentOS 5.3 on one partition and rebooted
3. I used the partitioning tool to get rEFIt to properly see my new Linux partition, then booted into the CentOS 5.3 emergency console and ran "grub-install /dev/sda3' to get GRUB working
4. I booted into CentOS and ran through the whole first boot procedure. I logged in successfully and then rebooted the machine.
5. I started up OS X and then setup the special phaux vmdk for access to the physical partition.
6. I started CentOS in the VM.

  • I noted that I had to use an IDE device. The lislogic SCSI device caused the kernel not to be able to mount /proc and /sys and hence panicked. I will file a bug for this internally.
  • When GDM tried to start, it failed because the underlying video hardware had changed (xorg.conf was not correctly configured). Running through the automatic re-configuration of Xorg fixed the problem for me.

7. I installed tools.
8. I rebooted the machine and booted back into the native CentOS 5.3

  • The tools service noticed that it was not running on a native environment and did not try and start up the services.
  • Xorg failed to start correctly.

Here's what I did:

  1. Fresh OS X install
  2. Bootcamp a 7 GB partition; shutdown
  3. Boot-C the CentOS 5 x_64 DVD, run though the install:
    • For the paritioning part, choose to erase any existing Linux partitions, and get the default and examine it.
    • The default partition has a Logical drive with root and swap, a boot drive, and an "extra" ext3, which was taking the entire 7 GB, minus the 100 MB for /boot. I deleted this extra, leaving me /boot in /dev/sda3, and the Logical paritition, in which I gave 1 GB to /swap and the rest to root /. The CentOS install partitioning tools took care of most of the details.
    • I believe that I chose a virtualization kernel on the install, which gave me an XEN kernel. You have to yum update everything anyway, so (later) I installed a non-XEN kernel which was giving me problems with the vmware-tools install.
  4. Boot-C into OS X, download and install rEFIt. shutdown.
  5. Boot into rEFIt, choose the parition tools to sync the MBR and GPT partition tables.
  6. Boot-C into CentOS Install DVD, go into linux rescue mode, and grub-install /dev/sda3.
  7. Boot into Linux via rEFIt, "yum -y update", "yum -y install kernel-`uname -r`" (but without the xen in the kernel name). Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf so that the non-XEN kernel is default (0 in my case), grub-install /dev/sda3. Shutdown.
  8. Boot into OS X via rEFIt. Create the native virtual machine as described above. Boot the native VM. Install the VMware-tools. All this should just work. Shutdown VM, OS X.
  9. Boot into Linux via rEFIt. X FAIL.
Hold on -- painted myself into a corner -- now I've got to reboot to test the xorg.conf solution, and post so I don't lost this message. Hold on...

Re: VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux

4. Oct 27, 2009 2:44 PM in response to: exppi163
Click to view exppi163's profile Novice
exppi163
18 posts since
Oct 19, 2009
Changing the xorg.conf.Before... file worked for native boot, but now the VMware boot doesn't work, so this whole process is very fragile. Now I'm struggling to log back in as root in the VM -- it always fails while starting X, though failing without complaint. Strangely, I'm able to log in as a user without problem, so I'm trying to figure out which root-specific files to clean up/delete so that X starts again. This may have something to do with desktop effects, though I'm not sure.

Once I get root functional again, I believe that I'll stick with the virtual boot of ther native install -- attempting to use both alternately with CentOS is quite fragile.

... It was the desktop effects. If you enable Desktop Effects (after yum install compiz), then VM's X will fail without error on that account. You have to boot iinto native, turn them off, then boot back into OS X.

This is another fragility in native versus VMware booting.

Re: VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux

5. Oct 27, 2009 10:08 PM in response to: exppi163
Click to view astiegmann's profile Enthusiast
astiegmann
19 posts since
Aug 28, 2008
Hey exppi163,

Thanks for the detailed explanation. In step 8, did you reconfigure X and configure tools within an X session or did you do install tools without ever reconfiguring X? It looks like the tools are getting confused about which xorg.conf file is the correct one to be using for the native environment. I have already opened a bug for this internally and will update it with these results. Also, you didn't mention anything about the services in your most recent posts. Did those work all work this time around?

Also did you ever try it without compiz?

Re: VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux

6. Oct 28, 2009 12:19 PM in response to: astiegmann
Click to view exppi163's profile Novice
exppi163
18 posts since
Oct 19, 2009
astiegmann, thanks for your inputs. Yes, I restarted X and followed the instructions for vmxnet at the end of vmware-config-tools.pl. And yes, compiz works on native after installing an NVIDIA driver, but having compiz stuff enabled kills logging in under VMware. I think that there should be a check for this -- compiz messes up VMware.

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