Errors when booting Ubuntu: SMBus Host Controller not enabled! - Failed to connect to lvmetad - Falling back to internal scanning

[VirtualMac2009]

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) generates the following errors when booting in VMware Fusion 11.1.0 (13668589) on macOS 10.12.6 (16G2016) Sierra on iMac 27‑inch Retina 5K 2017:

[    1.546521] piix4_smbus 0000:00:07:3: SMBus Host Controller not enabled!

[    2.101002] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through

     WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to internal scanning.

Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device

/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root: clean 252473/1872304 files, 2142129/7476224 blocks"

Eventually, it shows the Ubuntu desktop.

How to fix it? Thanks.

[wila]

Hi,

For the SMBus Host Controller error, add it to the blacklist:

https://whitehatty.com/2012/09/30/vmware-fusion-5-fix-ubuntu-linux-12-04-host-smbus-controller-not-e...

As for the lvmetad error, afaik it is a kernel bug that also happens on real hardware.

See:

https://support.linuxhint.com/question/lvm-issue-ubuntu-18-04-failed-to-connect-to-lvmetad/

WARNING : Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning – Come and Tech it !

--

Wil

[VirtualMac2009]

Thanks. I wonder if doing as you indicate would have negative effects or somehow compromise the system in the future. I mean, I know almost nothing about Ubuntu and do not want to break something now or in the future. Do you think that these issues will be factory-fixed by new versions of Ubuntu or VMware in the future? For me that would be the best and safest approach. Thanks again.

[wila]

Hi,

I doubt VMware will create a virtual SMBus Host controller, as it makes little sense to make a virtual system management bus controller apart from getting rid of that error.

As for the lvmetad... it's been an warning/error since at least 3 years according the debian bugtracker.. (it isn't for vmware to fix)

Down here I see those warnings at boot too and I chose to ignore them. It's more informational than anything else.

--
Wil

[VirtualMac2009]

Thanks. I have been using Ubuntu in VMware Fusion in Mac for many years, and I have never seen such errors, except now with the Ubuntu update indicated in my first message.

[wila]

Hi,

The SMBus host error has been there as long as I can remember.

See here an example of the problem as described for Ubuntu 8.x

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1099261

The lvmetad error however I think I have only seen on a VM of mine which has an encrypted lvm partition.

I don't always use lvm, so don't know how common it is to see that warning.

If the lvm partition works though then I doubt it is that bad.

AFAIK, the lvmetad is a daemon that caches information about LVM layout for the lvm command line tools and if the daemon isn't running then there's no cache and it will have to scan for finding the layout.

See here for what it does:

4.6. The Metadata Daemon (lvmetad) - Red Hat Customer Portal

and the man page:

https://linux.die.net/man/8/lvmetad

--
Wil

[VirtualMac2009]

Thanks. I do appreciate your kind support. I have not changed anything except updating Ubuntu and Vmware Fusion. No encryption on any of them or macOS in my case.

[wila]

Hi,

The encryption part is just where I was seeing it. As mentioned before I rarely use lvm containers. On a VM it isn't offering me much beyond just an extra layer.

VM disks are easy to grow in contrary to physical disks where LVM can be pretty useful. The reason I opted for lvm on that machine was because I needed to encrypt customer data.

Doing that via an encrypted lvm container is the better solution imo.

So yes, just using lvm is enough to be able to trigger this warning.

Oh forgot to say that using lvm is a default nowadays on distributions such as ubuntu/debian/RHEL, so it isn't strange to have a disk with lvm containers.

--

Wil

[UlyssesOfEpirus]

Would blacklisting i2c-piix4 give hard to diagnose issues if the VM were ever converted to a physical machine?

[wila]

Hi,

Well, it won't simplify the troubleshooting...

This link gives a bit background info:

faq [HWMon Wiki]

If you do a V2P and your sensors won't work then the kernel module not showing up in list of loaded kernel modules might be a good hint.

As I mentioned earlier, I just ignore the error.

I know what it is about and it is "fine", but I can understand that people rather see a boot without errors, for a variety of reasons.

--

Wil

[mahdiansari]

if you found this error massage like this “

Spoiler

SMBus Host Controller not enable!

” and you want to fix it here is solution,

here is solution,

1-Edit blacklists.conf by 

 sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

2-add “blacklist i2c-piix4” on the last line in blacklist.conf

blacklist i2c-piix4

3-execute

sudo update-initramfs -u -k all 

after modifying /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

4-reboot your virtual machine by $reboot

Finish, the massage “SMBus Host Controller not enable!” had already fixed.

Best Regards

Mahdi Ansari

[mahdiansari]

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1432173/piix4-smbus-host-smbus-controller-bus-not-enabled/1432174#14...

[immortalt]

This works for me!

The most important command is 

sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

[autonomousx]

Just to be clear,  because I cannot get to the ubuntu desktop, you're saying I must rebuild the virtual machine and then use your solution by modifying blacklist.conf. Is that correct? Because I've never seen the memory test complete when attempting to go forward after this corruption occurs. 

[Technogeezer]

What “corruption” are you referring to? Nothing in this thread talks about corruption in the VM or rebuilding a VM. 
if you are experiencing corruption of some kind, can you provide more details?

[autonomousx]

The gist of my question was about how to use the proposed solution. Can never get to a desktop -> rebuild machine? Yes? I found it troubling that the same symptom appeared for me, but others simply waited and then saw a desktop.   

"Corruption" is possibly a poor word choice. But in all the forums I've seen with this SMBus symptom described, the most logical proposed root cause was in regard to a clock sync issue, which would imply corruption. I've read through several forums in search of a reasonable cause, a workable solution, available in the context of any versions of environments and tools similar to mine. 

[Technogeezer]

Can you boot to a text console instead? (adding the "3" argument to the boot arguments in GRUB boot menu, although I admit that to get to the boot loader menu in Ubuntu is a royal pain in the back-side).?

Or is the VM really available and the gdm graphical login widget just isn't appearing? See if the Virtual Machine Library window has an IP address displayed for the VM, and then use ssh to get into into the VM.