2 Replies Latest reply on Sep 18, 2019 6:56 AM by ec5778

    CentOS Guest hangs when laptop resumes

    ec5778 Lurker
    ec5778 Jul 18, 2019 2:35 AM

      I'm running VMWare Workstation 14 on a Windows 10 laptop with a CentOS guest.

       

      I have been struggling with intermittent problems when returning to the laptop and entering my password to unlock the host OS that the virtual machine seems to be frozen. It seems to be a little unpredictable, normally it will get stuck showing the last thing that was displayed on the screen but sometimes it gets stuck showing the guest OS welcome screen or a black screen.

       

      Sometimes it freezes itself after a short time, say 30 sec - 1 minute, but sometimes it takes much longer than that - even 15 minutes occasionally. And some of the time it doesn't happen at all. Whenever it does happen, normally once the virtual machine starts responding again the display flashes as if to suggest that the window manager or some other component of the GUI has restarted, and there is a pop-up notification to say that systemd (or something like that will edit later with exact name) has crashed.

       

      I also had this problem using Workstation 12, but it seems to have got worse (i.e. takes longer to respond) since upgrading to Workstation 14.

       

      Any ideas how to troubleshoot this please?

        • 1. Re: CentOS Guest hangs when laptop resumes
          continuum Guru
          Community WarriorsUser ModeratorsvExpert
          continuum Jul 18, 2019 6:59 AM (in response to ec5778)

          To get predictable results simply change your habbits.

          Now you do:

          1. start a VM

          2. leave the laptop alone until it goes to sleep

          3. come back and resume laptop

          4. run into roblems

          Change that to

          1. start a VM

          2. suspend VM

          3. leave laptop until it goes to sleep

          4. come back and resume laptop

          • 2. Re: CentOS Guest hangs when laptop resumes
            ec5778 Lurker
            ec5778 Sep 18, 2019 6:56 AM (in response to continuum)

            continuum Thanks for responding.

             

            This isn't always practical, I use the vm more or less all day and apart from the inconvenience and time taken to explicitly suspend and resume the virtual machine, there are times when you don't know in advance that you're going to leave the laptop for a while e.g. if someone comes over to you, or you get a phone call etc, or if you plan to be away from the laptop for 15 minutes and end up not arriving back for an hour.

             

            Is there no way to prevent the virtual machine from freezing up - it doesn't always do this, only sometimes?