Hi,

I'm hitting the same problem with VMplayser 4.0.3 and 3.3.4-3.fc16.x86_64 #1 SMP (see attached file extracted with dmesg).

Regards,

Gottfried

Similiar kernel  panic with FC 17 (same with  FC 16).  VMware Program installs,  key can be registered  , can create a VM,  then  panic when VM is powered on or when opening an existing  VM copied form Windows or other  Linux distro  Doesn't  look like  look like all the servicer are running.  I can't find anything on Google or on the  Fedora forums.  This is without a doubt  a  Fedora not a VMware problem. I don't try anymore.

I hate to ruin your whole day, but I've had this same problem with VMWare Workstation 8.0.0, 8.0.2 and now 8.0.3 ever since I upgraded from Fedora 15 to Fedora 16 back in early March, with all of the 3.x 64 bit kernels.   This problem was brought up by various people over in Redhat's bugzilla, with trace logs attached, at both https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=810894 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=805984 

Both bugs were closed back in March and April with comments like

Josh Boyer                                                  2012-04-09 12:32:15 EDT

Bug in vmware.  Please contact them.

in contrast to the opinion expressed by mfelker.   Maybe the Fedora and VMware gurus can arm-wrestle over who gets to fix this problem?

Note that this issue is hardware dependent.   I copied a couple of my VMs over to a small box with 8 GB and a quad processor with the same versions of Workstation and VMware - no problems.   My bigger box has a Tyan S8230GM4NR board, dual Operton 6128s, 64 GB memory (DDR3 1333MHz ECC),  with a 64 GB SSD for the host OS accessing 18 TB of Raided SATA2 disk space for VMs and data.   My latest trace from the latter is attached below.

May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886121] ------------[ cut here ]------------
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886127] kernel BUG at include/linux/mm.h:402!
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886131] invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886135] CPU 1
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886137] Modules linked in: vmnet(O) vsock(O) vmci(O) vmmon(O) parport_pc tcp_lp fuse ppdev lp parport bnep bluetooth rfkill ip6t_REJECT ip6t_ipv6header nf_conntrack_ipv6 nf_defrag_ipv6 ip6table_filter nf_conntrack_ftp ip6_tables nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 xt_state nf_conntrack raid0 usblp joydev snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_intel snd_virtuoso snd_oxygen_lib snd_hda_codec snd_mpu401_uart snd_hwdep snd_rawmidi sp5100_tco snd_seq microcode snd_pcm serio_raw i2c_piix4 snd_seq_device amd64_edac_mod e1000e snd_timer igb edac_core snd edac_mce_amd fglrx(PO) snd_page_alloc soundcore i2c_core k10temp amd_iommu_v2 dca nfsd lockd nfs_acl auth_rpcgss sunrpc uinput ata_generic pata_acpi usb_storage pata_atiixp [last unloaded: vmnet]
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886203]
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886207] Pid: 22997, comm: vmware-vmx Tainted: P           O 3.3.4-3.fc16.x86_64 #1 empty empty/S8230
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886214] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffffa06692d8>]  [<ffffffffa06692d8>] get_page.part.0+0x4/0xd2c [vmmon]
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886229] RSP: 0018:ffff880ee807bd38  EFLAGS: 00010246
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886232] RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffffea000fc61d00 RCX: 0000000000000000
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886235] RDX: ffffea000fc61d40 RSI: ffffea000fc61d00 RDI: ffff8803f1875000
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886238] RBP: ffff880ee807bd38 R08: 0000000000430000 R09: 00000000002eb280
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886241] R10: 0000000000000003 R11: ffff880ae7d90a50 R12: ffff880407113738
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886244] R13: 0000000000000004 R14: 0000000000000003 R15: 0000000000000001
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886248] FS:  00007f51a7e19740(0000) GS:ffff88041fc40000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886251] CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886254] CR2: 0000000000987720 CR3: 00000004070b2000 CR4: 00000000000006e0
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886257] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886261] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886264] Process vmware-vmx (pid: 22997, threadinfo ffff880ee807a000, task ffff880f19cdc590)
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886267] Stack:
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886269]  ffff880ee807bdc8 ffffffffa065fa28 0000000000000001 0000000000000000
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886280]  ffff880ae650adc0 ffff880407113710 0000000000000003 0000000000000004
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886286]  0000000400000003 ffff880407113700 00000002000200d2 0000000000000000
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886292] Call Trace:
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886300]  [<ffffffffa065fa28>] LinuxDriverMmap+0x2a8/0x2d0 [vmmon]
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886308]  [<ffffffff8114cc89>] mmap_region+0x369/0x510
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886314]  [<ffffffff8114d178>] do_mmap_pgoff+0x348/0x360
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886320]  [<ffffffff8114d256>] sys_mmap_pgoff+0xc6/0x230
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886325]  [<ffffffff8106efc0>] ? sys_setresuid+0x140/0x160
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886332]  [<ffffffff810189e2>] sys_mmap+0x22/0x30
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886337]  [<ffffffff815fbee9>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886340] Code: c7 c7 7a b8 66 a0 e8 48 9f ff ff 31 c0 e9 82 fc ff ff c7 83 78 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 66 b8 00 e0 e9 eb fb ff ff 00 00 55 48 89 e5 <0f> 0b bf f2 ff ff ff e9 f4 9d ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886379] RIP  [<ffffffffa06692d8>] get_page.part.0+0x4/0xd2c [vmmon]
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886386]  RSP <ffff880ee807bd38>
May  9 17:55:25 itgs-server01 kernel: [77022.886390] ---[ end trace f3774dccb61daab7 ]---

You have not ruined my entire day!.  Since this kernel panic only occurs with Fedora  and NOT  other distros it still seems likely to me (no VMware or Fedora guru)  that the issue involves the Fedora kernel alone.Since I have a FC 17 image which I can restore I'll download FC 15 with only the development libraries and executables.  If I still get the kenell panic  I'll install VMware WS 6/7 and try that.   I am not over concerned about this issue - Virtualbox works fine and I have Ubuntu 12.04 and openSUSE  12.2 Milestone 3  as well and VMware 8 ankd TP  works  fine on those distros. It's too bad the issue is closed on Redhat bugzilla - saves  me the effort  however of reporting it.

Thank for the info!!.  It maybe quite awhile befofe I run these tests or other permutations.  Other people have reported similar problems.  Please respond to those threads as well

Marty

Hi Martin,

If it helps, I had no problems with FC15 and Workstation 8.0.0 on the system which barfs with FC16.   That is,  with the 2.6.x kernels current as of January.   If these kernels have morphed to sharing the memory mgmt of the 3.x kernels since then, well...

I've dropped a note over in fedora-land itself to see if I get a reaction there, with references to the threads on the vmware community as well as related threads to prod them along.   We shall see what we shall see.

Good luck and good hunting with FC15!

Best Regards,

Johnny

Thanks for this information Johnny.  I seem to recall there

was not a problem with earlier 2.6.x kernels.  With an

experimental machine however my interest more lies with

kernels no less than  3.2.   The latest versions of FC 16

with test-updates   enabled in Anaconda is shipping with 3.2

if not 3.3.

The VMware TP beta is very much better  in dealing with more

recent kernels - not even needing  kernel patches for

installation.  I would be interested in the Fedora community

responses to the VMware problems.  So far I haven't found

any mention of this on the Fedora Forums although of course

that doesn't mean its not there only that I may not have

searched more thoroughly.  And as I say any problems(kernel

panics) seem to be closed on the Redhat bugzilla as a

problem with VMware and not Fedora Core kernels.

Regards  and good luck!!

Hi Martin,

My last attempts with FC16 were with 3.3.4 and 3.3.5 kernel flavors, but no luck.   I added onto an existing bug related to the  mm.h:402! bug in fedora's bugzilla at

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=818630

Not much of a response yet, but the problem is getting more visible, esp. since there seem to be other apps having similar problems in FC16 at the same code location.  It could be just a side effect of them having VM_DEBUG on by default in their standard kernel builds, but I'm not convinced.

I'll give both sides a few more weeks before I move back to FC15 or try working around the memory problem myself in whatever will be the latest FC16  3.3.x kernel .

Good luck to you.   I've not yet looked at VMware's TP beta, but I'll probably give it a try soon as well.

Best Regards,

Johnny

I get the same crash in mm.h:402 on Fedora 16 with their 3.3.0-4, 3.3.2-6, and 3.3.5-2 x86_64 kernels on an AMD processor, but I do not get that crash with the same distribution and kernels on another system with an Intel processor.

That is very interesting.   My VMs over to my smaller box run 8.0.x on FC16 without issues , using an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750.  My bigger box, which Workstation 8.0.x choked on with all FC16 kernels, is running on dual AMD Opteron 6128s.

Also, in the bug I'm tracking in fedora-land on this issue (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=818630),  Eric Smith reported a similar result  -  8.0.x did NOT work with FC16 3.3.x kernels running on an  AMD Athlon II X3 450 processor, but did on a system with an Intel Core i3 M330 processor.

This may very well be my problem.  I am using an AMD Athlon Quad-Core.

Here's a possible clue...  Upgraded from at 22xx Opteron to a 24xx Opteron and the problem appeared.  Downgrading back to the 22xx

Operton fixes the problem.  Nothing else was changed.  Running Fedora 16 x86_64 kernel 3.3.5-2

Well, seeing no clean solution coming in the near future, I bit the bullet and followed the instructions 
(mostly) at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Building_a_custom_kernel 
to build a 3.3.7.1 custom fedora kernel with DEBUG_VM deactivated via menuconfig.  The results are the 
custom kernel works just fine with Workstation 8.0.x with my AMD Opteron 6128s.  So here are your options, 
in increasing desirability and decreasing probability, if you've had the same problem with your AMD CPUs:
(a) Do as I have done with your favorite 3.x.x.x kernel
(b) Wait for fedora to provide a kernel with DEBUG_VM turned off as is done with the other distros 
(see Dave Jones' comment at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=818630)
(c) Wait until the kernelmeisters correct the issue with generic 3.x kernels for AMD CPUS with DEBUG_VM 
turned on.  Hello, AMD contributors to the kernel?

I had the same issue on a 64 bit quad core AMD.  My work-around is not with the kernel, but with VMWare settings.  Go to the Hardware tab, and under Processors change the Virtualization Engine Preferred mode from Automatic to Binary Translation.  My guess is that setting disables the AMD-V feature.  Don't see any crashes after this, but one issue is that even though I can specify 4 cores to my Win7 guest, it only operates with 2 cores.

I will try this1   this!  Makes sense.  I will need to reinstall TP on Fedora 18 Rawhide. Assuming I can I know I can create a VM and then will change the default processor setting.   I wondered what that setting was for.   I will let you know.