Kernel panic in OSX guest on Fusion 10.0.1 when configured for 3 or more CPU's

[raiford]

I have had a lot of kernel panics when booting OSX guests if I configure 3 or more cpus.  It never panics with 1 or 2 cpus, rarely happens with 3 cpus, and almost always happens with 4 or more cpus.  Stragely it does eventually boot after many failed attempts.

I don't see the problem on an ESXi server so I'm guessing it may point to a hardware problem on my laptop (Late 2016 15" MBP w/ touchbar), but the machine passes all Apple hardware diagnostics.  Is it possible this a known problem with Fusion?  Is it possible to set cpu affinity to prevent Fusion from using certain cpu cores?  I believe I have a directory full of boot failure logs but I forget where they are written.  Should I attach a bunch of them?

Thanks in advance!

Edit:  The same behavior occurs on Fusion 10.1.0 as well as 10.1.1.  It appears that several other people experience the same issue, so it may indeed be a bug in Fusion.

[ColoradoMarmot]

What version of OSX?  If it's old, there weren't any machines with more than 2 cores.

[raiford]

Thanks for the reply.  I'm seeing this in both 10.12 (Sierra) as well as 10.13 (High Sierra). I have not tried previous versions yet.

[raiford]

Bump.  Any thoughts?  Or is this something I need to create a paid support ticket to resolve?

[daphnissov]

Fusion 10.1 was just released yesterday. Update and see if still present.

[emerrill]

I'm seeing the same problem in Fusion 10.1.0 with a 10.12.6 guest OS. Even starting a new guest OS install fails for me. Tested on both 10.12.6 and 10.13.2 host OSs.

Dropping the machines down to 2 cores "fixes" the problem.

Here is an example of what I see before the KP screen comes up and the machine resets:

[DomG64]

I have the same Issue.

MacOS 10.13.2 with Fusion 10.1.1 (this was released 9th Jan 2018) Also had this issue with 10.1

May be a bigger problem that needs a fix from VMware.

[raiford]

Yes, I just upgraded to Fusion 10.1.1 and I still see the kernel panics as well.  I don't have problems like this with Linux or Windows guests, so I'm pretty sure it is a bug in Fusion.

Maybe there is something in common about our Macs that are having the problems.  For those of you who are seeing this, please report what hardware you are running.  Maybe it will help VMWare isolate the problem.  Also, if you are running VMWare Fusion and don't have this problem, please report your hardware config.

I'm running:

MacBookPro13,3 (2016 15" with TouchBar)

2.9 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

Radion Pro 460 4096 MB

Intel HD Graphics 530 1536 MB

Edit: Added my hardware config

[ColoradoMarmot]

It's also possible that OSX doesn't like odd numbers of cores - physical machines only have either 2 or 4 (not counting the new iMac Pro).

[raiford]

dlhotka​ - Thank you for taking a moment to reply, but it seems that you are only replying to the thread title.  This problem occurs almost every time with 4 cpu's configured. Often I have to wait for 5 minutes or more of repeated kernel panics before it will boot successfully with 4 cpu's assigned to the vm.  Oddly enough, it works perfectly once it boots successfully.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Ahh, missed that, doh!

I'll give it a go and see if I can replicate.  I generally don't run with more than two for an OSX VM.

[prometheus2]

I am seeing this regardless of the cores I have. This is on VMWare Worktation 12 PRO 12.5.9.build-7535481

Windows 10 16299.192

10.12 Sierra

[raiford]

I'm not sure that is a supported configuration.

[JCATX]

Got the same problem when I configure 4 CPUs for a 10.13.0-10.13.3 VM in Fusion 10.1.1 (7520154). Problem gone when I configure the VM for 2 CPUs. Ended up at this thread looking for a solution to the kernel panic problem. Looks like it is some kind of bug with Fusion. My host computer is an "iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)" currently running 10.13.3. System report info:

Model Name: iMac

Model Identifier: iMac17,1

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 4 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 8 MB

Memory: 16 GB DDR3

Graphics Chipset Model: AMD Radeon R9 M395

[ColoradoMarmot]

Nope...Sierra isn't supported on workstation, even on mac hardware (and illegal on non mac hardware).

[ColoradoMarmot]

On a 4 core machine you should never allocate more than 3 to any individual VM.  Otherwise you're going to starve the host.  Not related to your issue of course, but something to keep in mind.

[Mikero]

Hey folks,

Just wanted to chime in on this one.

We can reproduce the issue in-house with the latest MacOS updates that we have access to.

The issue persists without any of our (guest) code involved (before VMware Tools even gets installed).

We're doing our diligence, and we've filed a Radar bug which Apple is actively investigating with us.

[raiford]

Thank you very much for letting us know!  Hopefully this isn't too hard to track down.  At first I was afraid it was a hardware issue.  Since it isn't possible to remove the hard disks in the MBP, getting Apple to do warranty work is a real pain.

[alexlissy]

I'm happy to read this, I have been fighting with that for a couple of weeks now. At first, I thought it was the amount of memory that was triggering the issue. Then I started to consider the MacBook Pro where I have the problems as failing. We have two MacBook Pro's, running the same VMs (different instances generated from the same clone). One is mid-2015, Sierra, i7 4980HQ, and I can get my VMs with 8 CPUs, 16 GB of RAM to run smoothly. The other one is late 2017, Sierra (then High Sierra), i7 7920HQ, and starting with 4 CPUs / 8 GB of RAM I get the exact same behavior as described.

Now, I understand that this might be an OSX issue, but I'm still puzzled as to why it would gets 100% repro on one of the mac's and not the other. Maybe you have some hints you can share publicly? I'm eager to see news from Apple anyway.

Thanks!

[ColoradoMarmot]

You're likely going to have issues with assigning either 4, or especially 8, cores to a VM, and more than 12 GB on a MBP.  It may work, but it'll eventually starve the host and cause performance and stability problems.  The rule of thumb is N-1 cores to any individual VM, where N is physical (not virtual) cores, and RAM-4GB aggregate across all VMs.