VMware Workstation-10.0.1 fails after RedHat-6 software update.

[lpatters35254]

After updating software on a RedHat-6 system (yum update), workstation-10.0.1 will 'crash' the system.

The update included:

kernel-2.6.32-431

glib2-2.12-1.132

The 'Bug Tracking' tool reports problems with glib2 and kernel 'hang'.

Suggestion?

Thanks!

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[Cfantroy]

log4ay,

I'm having the same problem, have you got any information from red hat or vmware? Vmware says its red hats problem and red hat says its there's. I just spent a week working with the kernel engineer at red hat and don't know where to go from here?

Thanks

[Cfantroy]

Is the a kernel problem for vmware or Red Hat? If it is red hat I would like to pass the work around to them.

[NobuoSha]

Cfantroy,

Yes, the workaround has been posted and works for many people. Please read the thread carefully and you will find the "solution" (such as the one Jack10z posted above in this page.) Good luck!

[Wes_W_]

Count another user impacted by this and had been reverting to the older kernel, but fortunately, now [happily] resolved by Jack10z's instructions based on okurth1's post.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to getting this problem identified and resolved!

[jonathanpallant]

Picked up a new kernel after by Christmas reboot. Wasted a couple of hours trying to debug before finding this thread. I had this kind of problem with Ubuntu fairly often, and I switched to ScientificLinux to get away from it.

Compiling the modules myself as outlined above worked for me.

[RLynch]

I ran into the problem right after the first of the 2.6.32-431 kernels came out.  I worked around it by updating grub.conf to boot the older kernel.   I found this thread and tried kurth's procedure and it works great.  I'm now running for two days without issue.

Questions:  1) I'm assuming I'll have to repeat this procedure every time a new kernel gets installed, right?

                   2) This has been a problem for a couple of months now.  Is there a good reason why VMware hasn't

                       published a fix?  I can't even find a reference to the problem on there web site.  It's pretty serious when

                       none of your Windows guest will run!

In any case, thanks for addressing this issue here.  It is much appreciated!

Richard Lynch

[okurth1]

Hi Richard,

1) you do not need to repeat this procedure since the offending modules modules are being removed by the steps I posted. For the next kernel upgrade modules will be recompiled automatically.

2) this issue should be fixed with the next update (10.0.2), and we will publish a kb article.

[RLynch]

Outstanding!  Thanks for the quick response.  That addresses all of my concerns.

[SimonHampel]

Jack10z wrote:

Worked great! No problems in XP or Windows 7 VMs anymore.

Summary of what I did:

Had no problem booting the host, so skipped steps 1-7.

$ sudo service vmware stop

$ sudo mv -v /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary.orig

$ sudo rm -v /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc/v*.ko

$ sudo depmod -a

#I already had gcc, make, and the kernel headers, but if anyone is following this, they should probably make sure

$ sudo yum install make gcc kernel-headers-$(uname -r)

start vmware

Thanks okurth1!

Thanks - I successfully used these instructions to get my VMware working - Workstation 10.0.1 running on Ubuntu 13.10 with Windows 8.1 guest

Only difference was that I had to use apt-get rather than yum:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

[takao46]

Hi Richard,

As okurth1 says, you will not need to repeat the procedures posted.

FYI, I updated to the latest kernel about last week and no problem with my environment has found until now.

Regards,

takao46

[SteveWampler]

Sigh.  I had used okurth1's instructions to successfully bring up Workstation 9.0.3 under the 431 (64bit)

CentOS 6.5 kernel.  Yesterday I upgraded to 10.0.1 and starting Win7 as a client promptly locked

up the host (not too surprising).  So I reran the instructions that worked before.  Now the

OS doesn't lock up - instead X11 crashes and I get logged out.  Better, but not much better...

Video driver is NVidia.

Any ideas on what I can do to get VMware running again w/o crashing X11?

[NobuoSha]

Steve,

Have you checked the /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old (or whatever log the X server was using before crashing)?

Make sure that your VMware tools is up-to-date inside VM (after updating to 10.0.1).

In the worst case, disable the 3D acceleration of VMware to see if that makes any difference or not.

Good Luck!

[SteveWampler]

Thanks for the quick response.  The X.org log showed a segmentation fault with backtrace:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ 69691.406] (EE)
[ 69691.406] (EE) Backtrace:
[ 69691.406] (EE) 0: /usr/bin/Xorg (xorg_backtrace+0x36) [0x46d196]
[ 69691.406] (EE) 1: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x400000+0x72f99) [0x472f99]
[ 69691.406] (EE) 2: /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x7f47efc2e000+0xf710) [0x7f47efc3d710]
[ 69691.406] (EE)
[ 69691.406] (EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x0
[ 69691.406]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I couldn't even get the VM running long enough to boot to Windows safe mode (even

when forcing the VM to boot to bios X windows would crash before the bios screen).

Turning off 3D acceleration let me boot to safe mode, however, where uninstalling

VMware tools allowed me to boot to 'normal' Win7.  Reinstalling VMware tools also

worked, but turning on 3D acceleration still crashed X windows.

Finally, I forced a reinstall of the Nvidia drivers on the host machine (I was running

the latest version, but hadn't reinstalled since the last kernel upgrade.)  *That* seems

to have fixed the problem - 3D acceleration in the VM now works and no more crashes.

This discussion has been great!

[jonathanpallant]

I've certainly found that even glxinfo or glxgears would crash if your nvidia drivers hadn't been rebuilt for your kernel.

Mental note. New kernel => recompile nvidia + delete all VMware drivers.

[dkt]

Hi all,

I have experienced crash issue in this setting:

Vmware workstation 10.0.1 Linux 64bit on Centos 6.5 or Fedora 19 (latest kernel 3.12.8-200.fc19.x86_64)

When trying to suspend guest, it just freeze the computer.

After using the stock Centos 6.4 kernel or the stock Fedora 19 kernel. Everything is fine.

I suspect there is issue with Vmware and Linux host kernel between since 2013 Q3/Q4.

Thanks,

Patrick

[NobuoSha]

Patrick,

This issue has been resolved. Please check out the earlier thread (such as #49 above).

[kuespert]

I had the corresponding issue with VMplayer and CentOS (see my thread: https://communities.vmware.com/message/2326978#2326978).

Currently my system runs under kernel 2.6.32-431.3.1.el6.x86_64.

After following the instructions of Jack10z within his post 32 (instead with sudo I did it in a shell with root permissions), from "start vmware" (without root permissions) came the message "start: Unknown job: vmware". Than I tried "service vmware start" with root permissions and received the same message as Jack10z reports in post 24, even though I had renamed binary to binary.hidden.

okurth1 can you help me?

[NobuoSha]

kuespert,

What's the output of 'chkconfig --list | grep vmware'? I am running VMware Workstation 10.0.1 on a 4-bit RHEL 6.5 with kernel 2.6.32-431.3.1.el6 and the output looks like:

vmware             0:off    1:off    2:on    3:on    4:off    5:on    6:off
vmware-USBArbitrator    0:off    1:off    2:off    3:off    4:off    5:off    6:off
vmware-workstation-server    0:off    1:off    2:on    3:on    4:off    5:on    6:off

If you don't see "vmware" in the output, then you won't be able to do 'service vmware start'.

[NobuoSha]

Also check if the /etc/init.d/vmware script exits or not. If it does, then you can do (as root and make sure that the script is executable. If not, do "chmod 755 /etc/init.d/vmware' first. )

/etc/init.d/vmware start

Good luck!