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JFITServices
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[Ubuntu] Had to downgrade 16.2.1 to 16.1.2

I had to revert today to keep on working. Using Ubuntu 20.04LTS as my main host OS with vmWare Workstation 16.x. Updated from 16.2.0 to 16.2.1 yesterday and it worked until today when I found that could not start up my regular VMs any longer. They would fail with one or both of the following messages:

Message 1:

Unable to change virtual machine power state: Transport (VMDB) error -32: Pipe: Read failed.

Message 2:

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (svga)
ISBRendererComm: Lost connection to mksSandbox (2713)
A log file is available in "/media/johannes/Data/vmware/DEV2008/vmware.log".
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To collect data to submit to VMware support, choose "Collect Support Data" from the Help menu.
You can also run the "vm-support" script in the Workstation folder directly.
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What I need for daily work is:

  • a Windows Server 2012R2 system (containing SharePoint, Project Server, Office 2016)
  • a Windows 10 x64 with just a VPN connection software to connect to a customer
  • another Windows 10 x64
  • a Windows Server 2008R2 for code repository

I have not modified these VMs so far since the update to 16.2.1, for instance did not update vmWare tools yet, and did not upgrade their hardware version. Starting one of the VMs affected would cause vmWare Workstation to lock up for about a minute before giving up and showing me the errors. The rotating startup logo would appear larger, and just the top-left quarter would be visible while it is frozen.

The logs did not contain any useful information for me personally, neither the ones per VM nor the main logs in /var/log/vmware/.... But it seems that after going back to version 16.1.2 it's all resolved. Luckily I had backups of all VMs so even the ones that were shot after multiple failures to start up could be recovered. (I played around with 3D acceleration as that was one hint from the forums - the VM in question would start up then but crash on a blue screen soon)

But how could this happen? The release notes did not indicate any risk of incompatibility or anything else pointing towards issues like the ones I saw today. That did not instill a lot of confidence in updates actually...

I have tried to collect support data but the process never finished - at least not within 30 minutes so I cancelled it.

Anybody else have the same issues?

I have to say I'm fine for now with v16.1.2 and can continue to work. But it took me well over two hours to troubleshoot, restore, research in forums, and just out of curiosity to revert to the previous version. What a start for a business day...

 

Cheers,

Johannes

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wila
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Hello Johannes,

Seems I have not been clear.
Let me try again.

VMware Workstation 16.2.0 has a major new feature for Linux hosts.

That feature is support for Vulkan rendering.
See also this link: Release Notes VMware Workstation 16.2.0
Quote:

What's New​

  • This release contains security updates and bug fixes.

  • Vulkan Renderer Support for Intel, AMD, and Nvidia GPUs on Linux 
    Workstation 16.2.0 Pro supports Vulkan renderer on a Linux host with Intel, Nvidia, and AMD GPUs. Vulkan renderer provides support for Direct3D 11 (and earlier) and OpenGL 4.1 (and earlier) in the guest.

    The Vulkan renderer support is limited to the following GPUs:

    • Intel Skylake and later GPUs (for example, Kaby Lake and Ice Lake)

    • AMD RDNA/NAVI14 and later GPUs (for example, the Radeon RX/Pro 5300 and 5500 series)
      Note: Presently, for AMD GPUs, use the AMDVLK driver. You can download the AMDVLK driver from here: https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/AMDVLK/releases

    • Nvidia Turing and later GPUs (for example, the RTX series)
      Note: For pre-Turing GPUs, Workstation will use the legacy OpenGL renderer.

As such I suspect that your issue might be triggered by this change.

You can revert to how it used to work before Vulkan support, like in VMware Workstation 16.1.x

That's what those extra lines are for.

To disable the new Vulkan support and go back to how it used to work.

Hope this makes it more clear.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva

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9 Replies
Parazythum
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Same problem for me under Ubuntu 18.04, with a NVidia GTX 1050.

I had installed version 16.2.0, which seemed to work well, apart 3D support which was about a hundred times slower than before (I test 3D support with the GPU CAPS Viewer utility, and had excellent results before).

I installed version 16.2.1 tonight and my VMs didn't even start ! (Windows 7 and Windows 10 guests).

I finally found that disabling 3D support in the options allowed me to start successfully my VMs again...

But I NEED 3D/OpenGL support as I'm using Photoshop under my Windows guests, some plugins need it 😞

The only solution for me was to downgrade to version 16.1.2, like you.

I'm a bit disappointed because I switched to VMWare several months ago, because of the poor 3D/GPU support of Oracle VirtualBox, and now... that 😞

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camtt
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I also had do downgrade due to broken 3D support on my Nvidia GTX 1060 on linux gentoo host.

I'm guessing if I had a Nvidia Turing chipset (GTX1650 and above), it would be ok with the new vulkan renderer support.

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JFITServices
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Oh, I completely forgot to mention the host's hardware. It's a Lenovo ThinkPad P50, Xeon E3-1535M, 64GB of RAM, and an nVidia Quadro 2000M GPU. nvidia-detector tells me the driver version could be 495, however, due to problems with more recent drivers, it's currently running the proprietary nVidia drivers 460 as offered in Ubuntu's Software & Updates settings.

Desktop is Gnome 3.36.8 on x11, not Wayland. And I didn't have any success switching 3D acceleration off for my virtual machines, they would still not boot up. The only thing that got me back working was the vmWare downgrade.

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Talmakeen
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Hi ,

I had sort of the same situation. After upgrade to 16.2.1 I got alot of problems. The started Vm's began to hang and I could do nothing beside kill the completet work sation task and reboot. I then did a downgrade to previous version 16.2.0 and luckily my VM's are working again

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wila
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Hi,

This sounds very much like the issue below.

Basically it is the new Vulkan rendering oopsing on something.

There's a workaround:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/VMware-16-2-1-Display-3D-acceleration-not-w...

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
JFITServices
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Thanks for your reply but I'm not totally convinced yet. Does v16.2.1 make more use of the Vulkan API than older versions? Because nothing in that respect has changed about my system.

First, I cannot see these settings (mentioned in the forum you referred to) anywhere in my main vmWare config nor in any VM's .vmx file:

  • mks.enableX11Presentation=TRUE
    mks.enableVulkanPresentation=FALSE

There's just nothing that sort here so I think I would not be able to resolve the issues. Maybe I looked at the right files but eventually there aren't that many vmWare-related configuration filesI don't know about built-in default values, but prefer not to play around with the configuration files and add values to them that were not present before.

Second: none of the error messages I got points towards graphics rendering (except "mks" is something about that, I don't know what acronym that is). The logs also didn't indicate that the problem might be in this area.

Third: just reverting to 16.1.2, and no other change to the system, resolved it and everything keeps going since then. So my suspect is still vmWare Workstation, and I really hope this is resolved soon.

If I can help with any logs, I'll happily dump them here, however, I would not like to go back to the problematic setup as it has caused some damage already. So all I can offer is files that are still left from the short visit of v16.2.1 to my system.

Cheers,

Johannes

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wila
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Hello Johannes,

Seems I have not been clear.
Let me try again.

VMware Workstation 16.2.0 has a major new feature for Linux hosts.

That feature is support for Vulkan rendering.
See also this link: Release Notes VMware Workstation 16.2.0
Quote:

What's New​

  • This release contains security updates and bug fixes.

  • Vulkan Renderer Support for Intel, AMD, and Nvidia GPUs on Linux 
    Workstation 16.2.0 Pro supports Vulkan renderer on a Linux host with Intel, Nvidia, and AMD GPUs. Vulkan renderer provides support for Direct3D 11 (and earlier) and OpenGL 4.1 (and earlier) in the guest.

    The Vulkan renderer support is limited to the following GPUs:

    • Intel Skylake and later GPUs (for example, Kaby Lake and Ice Lake)

    • AMD RDNA/NAVI14 and later GPUs (for example, the Radeon RX/Pro 5300 and 5500 series)
      Note: Presently, for AMD GPUs, use the AMDVLK driver. You can download the AMDVLK driver from here: https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/AMDVLK/releases

    • Nvidia Turing and later GPUs (for example, the RTX series)
      Note: For pre-Turing GPUs, Workstation will use the legacy OpenGL renderer.

As such I suspect that your issue might be triggered by this change.

You can revert to how it used to work before Vulkan support, like in VMware Workstation 16.1.x

That's what those extra lines are for.

To disable the new Vulkan support and go back to how it used to work.

Hope this makes it more clear.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
Parazythum
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Seeing your answer, I installed again v16.2.1. I added the two lines in my config.

Yes the VMs are launched, everything works.

BUT 3D/OpenGL performance has dropped drastically. I am using the "GPU CAPS viewer" utility to test and get awful FPS counts compared to v16.1.2.

I also updated the mesa driver to 20.2 just to see if there was an impact... nothing.

What's bugging me is if I enable vulkan support => freeze, but my system is supposed to support vulkan ! vulkaninfo gives good results, glxinfo too.

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Parazythum
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Hey, I found the solution,it is just that Vulkan choosed to launch with the wrong GPU...

See my second answer here : https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/VMware-16-2-1-Display-3D-acceleration-not-w...

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