Fatal crash of virtual machine on OpenGL call (12.x)

[MarKol4]

Hello,

It was very exciting moment when version 12.0 was released - so many improvements and OpenGL 3.0 support looked very impressing and promising. Unfortunately initial enthusiasm went away as soon as it turned out that entire virtual machine would crash when OpenGL is in use.

The application (kind of Map/Gis tool) I run in host (which happens to be x64 Windows Server 2012 R2) requires OpenGL 2.1 as minimum. Considering requirements application it worked quite well on VMWare 7.x (tools 9.3). Most of the application functions were working well and just a few did not. Those functions which did not _never_ crashed a virtual machine (the also never crashed the application) - they just did nothing - as never used. I hoped that things can only get better with an update to VMWare 12. Better OpenGL support (3 version) and lot of improvements.

Actually things got much worse. Some functions which used to work well before upgrade now are not working at all. The worst news, however, is the fact that entire virtual machine goes down when some of the application functions are used (functions which worked well before). This is what happens when thing go wrong:

My Environment:

Host OS: Windows 7 Professional (x64)

Host Graphics: Radeon R390 (checked with several drivers - currently latest stable version installed)

Guest OS: Windows Server 2012 R2 (x64)

VMPlayer 12.0.0, 12.0.1, 12.1.0 (latest VMWare Tools installed in each case)

Considering the situation I would like to ask two questions:

1. Is the VMWare Team aware that a problem exists (I could not find any notes addressing kind of issues I'm experiencing and describing here). Do they have a fix on the roadmap? And if they are aware could someone please redirect me the place where I can find more information related to the problem?

2. If they are not aware what is the best way to let them know about the problem?

For those who are willing to help I can provide additional info (log file or other remnants of virtual machine crash) or perform some extra test scenarios. As you can see I'm using Player here but I have a strong feeling that Workstation would experience exactly the same problem.

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Mark

[dariusd]

Hi Mark,

Sorry for the trouble you're encountering there.  We've done extensive testing of the OpenGL driver and OpenGL 3.x applications are known to run well with it.  However, every application is unique and there is always the possibility of hitting something unusual which triggers a bug.

May I provide your email address to the engineer who will be investigating the issue?  (If you're OK with continuing to use the same email address you used for this forum account, I can obtain it directly from the forum system and pass it along.)  They are interested in getting in touch directly to collect additional information from you.

Thanks,

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Darius

[rachelsunsm]

Thanks for using WS 12, you have provided very detail environment information.

And if possible can you also help to provide some steps about how to reproduce this error like which application are you using when this happened?

I will try to reproduce on my own environment, that may be helpful to developer to find root cause if I can rep it.

Thanks a lot

[MarKol4]

Hi,

Sorry for the delay but I took a short break at work.

My email in profile is valid and you can use it to contact me. To be honest It would be the only way for us to exchange more details about the problem (of course If there are any conclusions we I going to post them here) because the software I use should not be discussed on open forum.

Please contact me by email.

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Mark

[MatthewGagliard]

A quick note here...we have experienced something very similar at my place of work.  Circumstances are similar in that the application relies heavily on OpenGL.  Different in that we're on ESXi.  I have worked it to the point of which specific versions of VMware Tools aren't compatible and the fact that it's the video driver that's the problem.  If you'd like you're welcome to put anyone at VMware in touch with me as well.