VMware Workstation Pro 16.2.1 update on Pop!_OS - All VMs "Waiting for Connection"

[jziobro]

Updated to 16.2.1 this morning and no VMs will run on this build. The host is Pop!_OS 21.10 x86_64, 64GB Ram, Intel i7-8750H. All VMs were running fine on this system until this update. VMs are all located on NAS using NFS shares.

Waited forever and then it finally timed out with this error:

Unable to change virtual machine power state: Transport (VMDB) error -14: Pipe connection has been broken.

Which means absolutely nothing to an end-user such as myself. Anyone else seeing this problem on a Linux host? Any ideas how to fix this issue?

P.S.

Moved one VM to the local disk. The owner and group are me and still the same issue.

P.P.S.

I connect to this machine using XRDP, so the display hardware may be an issue with the latest updates.

[jziobro]

On Ubuntu 21.10 I get this:

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (mks)
ISBRendererComm: Lost connection to mksSandbox (2878)
A log file is available

[wila]

Hi,

You don't provide the log(s), so hard for anyone to say something about it, but perhaps it is the same issue as this one:
https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/VMware-16-2-1-Display-3D-acceleration-not-w...

--
Wil

[jziobro]

mks.enableX11Presentation=TRUE
mks.enableVulkanPresentation=FALSE

Does not fix the issue. 

Using Windows 11 Remote Desktop to login to Pop!_OS machine using XRDP. Start VMware Workstation and then try to start any VM and I get this error. Easy enough to repo without log files. This issue is new to this latest update and yes it is most probably related to the 3D changes.

[wila]

Hi,

Maybe @banackm can take a look, but he'll need the mkssandbox.log as well as the vmware.log file.

--
Wil

[jziobro]

Added logs to previous reply.

[banackm]

Are those the logs from when it failed?  Or was that from a time when it was still working?

The error message you're describing normally means the UI couldn't talk to the VM anymore, which usually means the VM crashed, but I don't see that in your logs.

It's possible things are going wrong very early in PowerOn and it hasn't saved the logs into the VM folder yet, in which case you can check for logs in /tmp/vmware-username/ .

Can you double-check that for me and get me a failing log or else confirm those are the newly generated logs when you hit this?

[jziobro]

Here is a log from when one of the VMs I have when it fails. It just hangs displaying the message "Waiting for Connection".

I've tried everything and at this point, I have to revert back to the previous build. I need this working.

[banackm]

So that log doesn't have 3D enabled?   You're saying this reproduces without 3D ?

The log just stops in early PowerOn, so if you're sure that's a case where you hit it (and the timestamps aren't stale, and there's nothing else in /tmp/vmware-youUserName that looks more recent), then something on your system is hanging right there, or else something killing it very suddenly (like the OOM killer or something).

Can you power on a VM with very low memory settings and 3D disabled?

[jziobro]

After uninstalling this version and reinstalling the previous one, I still have the same problem so it has become obvious that something other than the last Workstation update is the culprit. It just happened at the same time and is most probably the result of some Pop!_OS update. I decreased the memory to 1GB and removed almost all the other H/W, USB, SOund, even Network, and I still have this same problem. The "Waiting for Connection" is a normal message I've seen starting VMs on other machines so it would be a BIG help if someone could tell me exactly what it is waiting for? A connection to what? This VM is on the local machine.

This hangs Workstation and I can't power off or reset the VM. I can't kill the vmware-vmx process and it takes forever to reboot as the system times out waiting for this process to die. Even creating a new VM, I get this same problem.

[banackm]

Normally it means the UI process is trying to connect to the process running the VM itself.  So it looks like your VM is hanging very early in start-up, before the UI can properly connect to it to open your console.

Can you check if the vmware-vmx process is still running at that point?  And if so, is it using CPU or is it hung?

[jziobro]

Added a dump from ps -aux | grep vmwar

[banackm]

So it looks like your vmware-vmx exists there, but it's in some kind of kernel call or something?

You might see if you can attach a debugger and get a backtrace.  If something's going wrong on your system, I'd expect to see that in some kind of a system call into your kernel that might tell us what's going on.

It's also possible it's trying to call into VMware's kernel modules, and something there is broken?  You might try uninstalling and re-installing Workstation.  If your host kernel upgraded for instance, maybe it's not correctly figuring out it has to re-compile our kernel modules.

[jziobro]

I did uninstall and re-install without any luck. It doesn't appear to me that the uninstall actually removes everything. Is there a better way to insure it is all gone?

[jziobro]

Is there a way to force it to recompile the kernel modules?

[jziobro]

There was a Pop!_OS update today. I ran Workstation after the update and it recompiled those modules and everything is working again. Thanks for the help.