Ubuntu 16.04 Guest Running OpenGL Application Hangs Graphics

[nbetham]

Hello,

I'm currently running an Ubuntu 16.04 guest on a MBP 14,2 with macOS 10.13.1. In the guest whenever I run an OpenGL application the graphics of the guest lock up and it stop drawing the display after a minute or two of the application running. The kernel of the VM still seem to be functioning underneath because I can still SSH into the VM and execute commands without issue. The application doesn't seem to matter as long as it's using GL calls. I even tried some simple GL application examples from http://www.opengl-tutorial.org​ just to minimize the number of variables involved and the graphics still hung.

Interestingly enough though, If save the VM state and then restart it later the Ubuntu guest will start drawing the display again but only for a short period of time till it hangs again. This is leading me to believe the issue is somewhere in the virtualization of the graphics hardware.

Has anyone encountered this sort of thing before and know a way around it?

Thanks,

Neil

[daphnissov]

What version of Fusion are you running?

[nbetham]

Currently i'm running 10.0.1 (6754183).

[bluefirestorm]

You could try switching off Metal as the render device. Add the following line in the vmx configuration file of the Ubuntu VM.

mks.enableMTLRenderer = "0"

[RickShu]

Hi nbetham,

Which version of Tools have you installed in your Ubuntu VM? open-vm-tools or vmware tools?

Also, would you please inform about the specification of the graphics card in your host? Thanks.

Regards,

-Rick

[nbetham]

Well disabling Metal seems to have done the trick. The VM is no longer hanging while running OpenGL applications. Thanks for the suggestion!

[nbetham]

The VM is running VMWare tools. Currently running this version: VMware Tools daemon, version 10.1.15.6211 (build-6627299). The laptop has an integrated Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650.

[nbetham]

Well, now that I've said it works I've run into another problem where the graphics of the host hangs too which was not the case before... Very strange.

Edit: It seems that the pauses in the host graphics is macOS restarting the GPU from a hang.

[bluefirestorm]

If the VM was created in an earlier version of Fusion, make sure that the Compatibility settings for the hardware version is set to 14 (to be current to the Fusion version 10).

You may want to give the Metal another if the VM was previously it was not set to hardware version 14. You can always switch off Metal again if the OpenGL hanging occurs (seems almost immediate by the way you described it).

As for the hanging of the host graphics, there isn't any possible workaround as the 2017 13" MacBook Pro does not have discrete graphics otherwise that would also be worth a try (switching to use discrete graphics); assuming that there is some sort of bug with the Intel graphics driver in High Sierra.

[nbetham]

The VM was created with this version so there shouldn't be any conversion issues. The hangs are not immediate but within a minute or two of starting the application. The host graphics hangs are due to GPU restart. This is definitely specific to Fusion though, Parallels doesn't exhibit the hangs running the same VM.