Major Crashing Bug in Gnome 3 and vmware workstation 8

[zquad]

Please see the attached log.

Ubuntu 11.10 Gnome 3.1, vmware workstation 8

im using gnome 3.1 on ubuntu 11.10. when vmware is fullscreen and i move the mouse over the the lower right corner of the screen (where gnome icons appear) the computer freezes. anyone else had this problem?

This occurs everytime I move the cursor over the lower right of the screen and the gnome icons popup.

[jonnjonzzn]

Confirmed here as well.  Same behavior... key repeat, X freeze.

Fedora 16 x86 host up to date, gnome-shell (gnome-shell-3.2.2.1-1.fc16.i686)

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz

16GB RAM

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Cedar PRO [Radeon HD 5450] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) using OSS driver:

Understood running WS8 (8.0.2 build-591240) on unsupported host OS

Thank you.

[quynguyen]

Another workaround is start the vmware from command line

vmrun -T player start ~/vmware/server1/server1.vmx nogui

Then you can work by rdp/vnc to the VM.

[crashradtke]

Probably a bit early to tell, but I recently updated my Fedora 16 install to current and I have been able run Workstation without issue using Gnome 3 Shell.

[jradtke@neo ~]$ uname -a

Linux neo.matrix.private 3.2.7-1.fc16.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Feb 21 01:40:47 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[jradtke@neo ~]$ cat /proc/cmdline

BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.2.7-1.fc16.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/vg_neo-lv_root ro rd.lvm.lv=vg_neo/lv_swap rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.lvm.lv=vg_neo/lv_root LANG=en_US.UTF-8

I'll angrily recant this post if/when it locks up again.

[zquad]

I just upgraded from vmware workstation 8.02 from 8.0 and far i am not having the stalling issues referenced in this thread.  Can anyone else confirm?

Here are the release ntoes for 8.02:  http://www.vmware.com/support/ws80/doc/releasenotes_workstation_802.html

[crashradtke]

Mine was locking up with 8.0.2 (with the custom patch for the 3.x kernel)

[jradtke@neo ~]$ vmware --version

VMware Workstation 8.0.2 build-591240

After patching my system (around 2012-02-26) I haven't had issues, but I have not used my vmware very much lately.  I will try to use it quite a bit this evening and see what happens.  Specifically my Windows 7 Pro VM.

[slozano]

Mine was still crashing with workstation 8.0.2 build-591240 and linux 3.0.0-16-generic. The problem stop when I started using gnome 3.0 in fallback mode.

[crashradtke]

Mine just stalled (again

This time I had just plugged my Thinkpad Tablet into my Thinkpad T520 and the VMware pop-up letting me know that it could only be attached to one of the hosts was the last thing to happen on my display.

[jonnjonzzn]

I've upgraded to latest kernel available for fedora: 3.2.7-1.fc16.i686.PAE #1 SMP and still experience the freezes.  It does seem to run longer before it freezes but it is still doing it.

Does everyone else also experience extremely heavy i/o load when using WS7/8 on Linux?  I never experienced this with VirtualBox.  Just curious.

Mike

[aishen944]

Same problem here! I'm using archlinux 64bit!

vmware version:8.0.2

kernel:3.2.8

[nappyrat]

It might not be isolated to vmware workstation 8 either.  I had the same thing happen today while running view client 1.4 for linux

[josejuan05]

I don't know if this is limited to VMWare even. I haven't experienced it much, but I had a functionally identical crash last night in (File Manager) Marlin last night. I can't reproduce it, however, so it may be nothing.

[ristepan]

Hi

Same problem on Asus whit Intel HD 3000, kubuntu 11.10 whith gnome-shell manual installed.

workaround Ctrl+Alt+F1 and kill gnome-shell and back whit Ctrl+Alt+F7 and everything is OK,

P.S.

Just discovered another workaround, keeping virtual mashies on first desktop solves the problem, at least in my case

[Modeller]

same issue here.

had kept the vm running win 7x64 on desktop 1 and left it untouched for more than an hour.

Worked in Browser and nautilus on desktop 2. Everything seemed ok.

Then all of a sudden without activity in the vm all frozen.

Restarted lightdm from shell

My system

Ubuntu 11.10

3.0.0-17-generic #30-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 8 20:45:39 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

GNOME Shell 3.2.2.1

vmware VMware® Player 4.0.2 build-591240

Lenovo Thinkstation S20

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           W3550  @ 3.07GHz

12 GB RAM

nvidia graphics Quadro 2000

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF106GL [Quadro 2000] (rev a1)

[josejuan05]

Well, I think there's a solution to this problem. I had the crashing problem routinely under Gnome 3.0 and 3.2 (Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, kernel 3.0). As another poster mentioned, it only occurred on my second monitor.

After upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 (with Gnome-shell 3.4 and kernel 3.2) I have not had any crashes. As of this writing I've had the same VM running stable on my second monitor for upwards of two hours.

I can't say for certain whether it was the new kernel or the new Gnome that did the trick. I should note, however, that to get VMWare Workstation 8 to run on kernel 3.2 (here, Ubuntu 12.04) you need to apply the patch attached to this post: [http://communities.vmware.com/message/1902218#1902218] in order to compile the VMWare kernel modules. The patch itself is available here: [http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/1902218-80055/vmware802fixlinux320.tar.gz]

[DNGoins]

I actually just gave up on Gnome 3 and vmWkstn 8 all together. It was freezing so bad I couldn't do any work. I switched to XFCE, and all my problems were gone.

Currently running:

Kernel: 3.2.12-gentoo

Distro: Gentoo

WDM: XFCE 4.8

Laptop Sony Vaio VPCF1

8GB RAM, 256 SSD, Intel Core i-7

[buckmaster]

DNGoins,

You probably would have posted an update but I wanted to make sure switching to XFCE fixed your issue?  Before I read this thread I was thinking about doing so, and after reading your post I AM.

I'm Running OS 12.1 64bit and GNOME, laptop has Nvidia, and desktop has Intel video, both lockup.  When my desktop locks it's a pain but I can restart, when my laptop locks it's unacceptable as it is my work laptop and I'm in front of VMware customers performing work.  Embarrissing to say the least.  I've run linux as my host OS since 2004 when I got my VCP, figured I needed to know linux better to be a good VMware engineer.  Most of the time I've run Opensuse but got tired of fighting graphic issues so I tried Ubuntu until they switched to Unity.  So I switched backed to Opensuse to find the video issues still exist.  I choose to run Gnome as my desktop verses KDE because of plasma in KDE.  Why we can't just have a plain desktop that works is beyond me.  I really hate to say it but I've thought about just switching to W7 since that's what I run as a VM.

I'd be interested in your thoughts around XFCE.

Thanks

Tom

[DNGoins]

Yes it fixed my issue dealing with vm

Not a single crash. I've been running it straight for 3 months. Only thing happened is bsod on windows.

[irixpower]

I have a HP 8740w with 16 GByte RAM and i7 quad core CPU and nVidia Quadro (+Dream Color display I have been running Ubuntu 11 and workstation 7 for quite some time. A few days ago I updated to Ubuntu 12 LTS and Workstation 8. Ubuntu / Workstation just kicks me out without warning. As this has happened quite a few times now I went back to Ubuntu 11 and and upgraded to Workstation 8.

[jmchristopher]

You should really try going to the Tech Preview version of Workstation...  This solved all of my problems, and has been very stable.

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/beta/workstationtp2012

[MisterY]

I'm getting this with WS 9, Gnome 3.6, kernel 3.6.9-4, Fedora 18 x64, NVidia drivers.

Will try the workaround, though ("workaround Ctrl+Alt+F1 and kill gnome-shell and back whit Ctrl+Alt+F7 and everything is OK").

Edit: Trying using Gnome in Fallback Mode seems to have more luck. No crash so far. Better yet, I'm trying using Mate since risking corruption when Gnome crashes and a session has to be killed with VM running, is a bit too much at the moment.