Unrecoverable error, Unexpected signal: 6

[dunwich42]

Hi all,

I seem to be having a fairly repeatable error pop up and kill off my VMware Player guest machine.

My host is running Ubuntu 11.04 & the guest is a WinXP machine.

I mostly use a copy of my guest on a Win7 host with VMware Server (which works fine) but occasionally I copy it over to my Ubuntu 11.04 laptop for when I'm working remotely.

At first I thought it might be a flaky copy, but taking a new copy of the guest didn't help.

Yesterday the problem showed up quite consistently, whenever I was trying to do some certain network acceses (for licensing an application).

Jun 23 15:35:37.218: mks| Msg_Post: Error

Jun 23 15:35:37.218: mks| [msg.log.error.unrecoverable] VMware Player unrecoverable error: (mks)

Jun 23 15:35:37.218: mks| Unexpected signal: 6.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Should I just be holding out for a new version of VMware Player (& crossing my fingers)?

Darren.

[CrvenaZvezda]

Sorry, but all I can say is "Me too!" :smileyplain:

For me this happened after putting my Linux host vmnetX into promisuous mode.

[rdmost]

I have the same problem.  However, reading beyond the short heading, the error message says that it is trying to locate a site license (!) in a non-existent directory.  I suspect the problem lies with the 64-bit Linux version of VMware.  It would be nice if VMware would do something about it, but I'm not holding my breath.

For what it's worth, I've installed a virtual Windows XP machine successfully on several previous versions of Ubuntu using VMware Player.  However, this is the first time I've tried it with a 64-bit version of Ubuntu (11.04), and I'm trying to install a 32-bit version of XP using a 64-bit version of VMware Player.

[marcp201110141]

I have a similar problem. It seems to happen randomly on my VM.

The guest is a 32bit Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.

Host is Ubuntu 11.04, with kernel 2.6.38-8-generic (from VMware player About screen)

VMplayer is version 3.1.4 build-385536.

No networking or licensing messages in log file, just the usual "switching absolute mouse on" and "switching absolute mouse off", then suddenly:

"Caught signal 6 - - tid 1153"

and a bunch of Backtrace lines.

[rdmost]

You got farther than I ever did.  I tried several times to install an XP guest OS on an Ubuntu host, but I would get that error every time when I closed down the XP window -- i.e, I never did get the XP guest installed.

I finally gave up and am now using VirtualBox OSE.  I don't like it as well as VMware, and installing USB support is a major pain.  However, it gives me a working XP guest OS on the Ubuntu host, which is all I really want.

[Hico]

Same here. Host x64 Ubuntu first 10.10 now 11.04, guest XP 32bit, vmplayer first 3.1.3 now 3.1.4. Getting "mks| Caught signal 6 -- tid 2291" and stacktraces. It seems to crash less often with "export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=force" (see /usr/bin/vmplayer for info on this). The crash garbles host OS keymap (shift keys not working), that's reparable with running "setxkbmap". If I restart XP guest and continue working, chances are to get a full freeze of host machine - possible to reboot only via linux magic SysRq (REISUB) then.

[Hico]

More info: I was using the XP guest for remote access, i.e. Cisco VPN client + Remote Desktop was all that was needed there. Had to work through a list of things to be deleted in one application on the remote machine, the routine was pressing "Del ; Space ; Space" over and over ~1000 times. This was bringing down the XP guest after every 10 or so items. Beyond annoying, this was showstopper. Went for Ubuntu 11.04 64bit guest + vpnc + rdesktop (Applications > Internet > Terminal Services Client) and happily clicked through all the deletions without crash.

So for me, at least partial workaround. Fix for the root cause of the crash remains on top of my wish list :-).

[DerekShaw]

in our situation, we have host ubuntu 8.04.4 (32bit) Desktop and VMware Player version=2.5.0 build=build-118166

guest is win2K

this has been a very stable config 'til the last couple of months.  Now this error crops up about every 10 days or so.  The windows session hangs, console kbd is locked (can't even switch to a virtual terminal).  Logging in to the ubuntu from another machine lets us see the log entries at exactly the time the windows session hangs.

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| Caught signal 6 -- tid 14262

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: eip 0xb7f1a410 esp 0xb430c30c ebp 0xb430c328

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: eax 0x0 ebx 0x37b5 ecx 0x37b6 edx 0x6 esi 0x37b5 edi 0xb7da5ff4

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C30C : 0xb430c328 0x00000006 0x000037b6 0xb7c86085

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C31C : 0xb7da5ff4 0xb430c3c8 0xb430db90 0xb430c454

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C32C : 0xb7c87a01 0x00000006 0xb430c3c8 0x00000000

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C33C : 0xb1100010 0x4b3ebd10 0xb7da5ff4 0x00000000

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C34C : 0xb1100010 0x4b300000 0xb7cc8d4d 0xb1100010

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C35C : 0x00000074 0xb7da5ff4 0x00000074 0x4b3767e8

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C36C : 0xb430c438 0xb7cbda2a 0x4b3ebd10 0x4b3ebd10

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| SIGNAL: stack B430C37C : 0x00000073 0x4b3767e8 0x00000000 0x00000073

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| Backtrace:

Nov 01 12:47:36.764: mks| Backtrace[0] 0xb430bec8 eip 0x80544e0

  ...etc...

Nov 01 12:47:36.768: mks| Msg_Post: Error
Nov 01 12:47:36.768: mks| [msg.log.error.unrecoverable] VMware Player unrecoverable error: (mks)
Nov 01 12:47:36.768: mks| Unexpected signal: 6.
Nov 01 12:47:36.768: mks| [msg.panic.haveLog] A log file is available in "/0data/vmware/vm_pat/vmware.log".  [msg.panic.requestSupport.withLog] Please request support and include the contents of the log file.  [msg.panic.requestSupport.vmSupport.windowsOrLinux.player]
Nov 01 12:47:36.768: mks| To collect data to submit to VMware support, run "vm-support".
Nov 01 12:47:36.768: mks| [msg.panic.response] We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

One assumes that since it's its Player, the support entitlement is nil, so I've not bothered with vm-support.

I am going to upgrade ubuntu and player, continue to use the same win2k guest, and see what happens.

any other course of action likely to be useful?

[BlackTrenchCoat]

I have this exact error.  It hapens with any VM I try.  I've also tried with VMs from backups

a couple of weeks ago.  This worked last week.  Host OS is Linux Mint 15 (MATE) 64 bit.

My guest OS is (1) 32 bit Windows 7 (2) 64 bit Windows 7.  I'm using VMware Player 6.0.0.

This isn't intermittent.  It happens every single time.

Log file attached.

Problem goes away if I do 'Edit Virtual Machine Settings', click on 'Display', and uncheck

'Accelerate 3D Graphics'.  This is fine with me, not using anything graphics-intensive on

the Windows guest.