gbohn's Posts

Hi;   I was trying to set up a Windows 7 Ultimate Guest using Bitlocker on the boot drive (as a test). But, I can't seem to get Bitlocker to enable in the Guest for the boot drive for some reason.   I installed a new Guest with Windows 7 Ultimate w/SP1 using EFI instead of BIOS.  I encrypted the Windows 7 Guest from workstation (as apparently required by Workstation). I added a TPM 2.0 to the hardware list, and then installed the Windows 7 hotfix for TPM 2.0 in the Guest. I then updated the TPM 2.0 driver by selecting the driver manually from the list of security devices. It now shows up under device manager without an apparent problem. When I try to enable Bitlocker on the C: drive, I get an error saying "The boot manager of this operating system is not compatible with bitlocker drive encryption. Use the bootrec.exe tool in the Windows recovery environment to update or repair the boot manager..." Creating a system recovery disk and running 'bootrec /rebuildbcd' doesn't seem to help. Did I miss a step? Has anyone got this working for a Windows 7 guest? I can apparently add a 'D:' drive, and get bitlocker to enable on it, just not the boot c: drive. Thanks; P.S.: In case it's relevant, this is with a Windows 7 Host.

Hi; Every once in a while I have run into a situation where (on a Windows 7 host) I have used 'VM / Power / Restart Guest' to try and restart a guest, but the guest stalls and doesn't restart. It appears to stall. When this happens, I can no longer try 'VM / Power / Power-off' to force the guest to power-off instead. All the power choices are now greyed out. Is there an official way to recover from this? I ended up restarting the Windows host (and using 'force restart'), but it seems like there should be a better way. Or perhaps this should never happen? I have Workstation Pro configured to keep the guests running if I end the Host UI, so simply ending the GUI on the host presumably won't help by itself. Thanks;

Hi; I am running a RHEL 7.4 Linux Guest under VMWare workstation 14.0 (on a Windows 7 host). I installed the vmware Guest tools (VMwareTools-10.1.15-6627299) and noticed the following warning from the tools installation: ... Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel. Broadcast message from systemd-journald@XXXX-oc7 (Thu 2017-11-23 16:59:39 EST): dracut[42875]: Failed to install module i915vmxnet3 Message from syslogd@XXXX-oc7 at Nov 23 16:59:39 ... dracut:Failed to install module i915vmxnet3 The configuration of VMware Tools 10.1.6 build-5214329 for Linux for this running kernel completed successfully. Is something wrong or can this be ignored? I am running open-vm-tools-10.1.5-3.el7.x86_64 in the guest, but as far as I can tell I also need to install the vmware guest tools to be able to get the shared folder support (/mnt/hgfs/......). Thanks. P.S.: This is running Guest hardware version 12.x

I was checking out Workstation 14, and noticed that it appears from the documentation that in order to use a virtual TPM, you must encrypt the VM. Why is that? I've bumped up against annoying limits on encrypted VMs in the past that make me reluctant to encrypt a VM when I otherwise wouldn't need to. For example, I've found it very annoying in the past that Encrypted VMs apparently have no way to edit the .vmx short of decrypting the entire machine. Also, using tools to change the .vmdk type from single to multiple files also appears to require decryption of the VM. Is there an inherent security vulnerability with the Virtual TPM implementation which requires the Guest be encrypted?

Hi;   Running RHEL 7.4 as a Guest under VMWare Workstation 12.5.7, I just recently applied an update to systemd and libgudev1. Now, when I boot I get a stall of over a minute during the boot. It seems like this might be related to the audio driver. (The host is Windows 7 64-bit with a realtek audio). I am running open-vm-tools-10.1.5-3.el7.x86_64.   In the guest, running 'systemd-analyze blame', it seems to show a boot delay in 'systemd-udev-settle'.   2min 330ms systemd-udev-settle.service   5.268s plymouth-quit-wait.service   Looking at the current /var/log/messages, I see some suspicious entries from around the time of the boot stall: Nov 3 14:57:36 xxxxxxxx systemd: Received SIGRTMIN+20 from PID 246 (plymouthd). Nov 3 14:58:33 xxxxxxxx systemd-udevd: slow: '/bin/sh -c 'echo 180 >/sys$DEVPATH/timeout'' [2878] Nov 3 14:58:34 xxxxxxxx systemd-udevd: worker [527] /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/0000:02:02.0 is taking a long time lspci seems to say that 02:02:0 is related to the sound 02:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371/ES1373 / Creative Labs CT2518 (rev 02) The sound is not working after boot now, but disconnecting and reconnecting the sound card in 'removable devices' seems to fix things. This seems to have been somehow triggered by the systemd update when I updated systemd to systemd-219-42.el7_4.4.x86_64 and libgudev1 to libgudev1-219-42.el7_4.4.x86_64 libgudev1-219-42.el7_4.4.i686 This all seemed to work without a problem back at systemd-219-42.el7_4.1.x86_64.  Anyone know if there is a compatibility problem with this systemd update and the guest audio driver? Thanks;

Hi;    Using VMWare Workstation 12.5.2 on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Host, I've noticed that I get multiple 'hcmon/Event ID 0' warning in the System Event log.   As best as I can tell, this is related to the VMware Workstation driver 'hcmon'.  The entries all say the source is 'hcmon'. There are several event log entries calling out other drivers in these hcmon entries. The drivers I've seen called out so far are:    Detected unrecognized USB driver (\Driver\asmtxhci).       Detected unrecognized USB driver (\Driver\ACPI). and    Detected unrecognized USB driver (\Driver\pci) As best as I can tell, ASMTXHCI.SYS is related to the motherboards  "ASMedia USB 3.1 eXtensible Host Controller". This is using ASMedia driver version 1.16.33.1. I don't know what the 'PCI' and 'ACPI' drivers are associated with. Anyone see these or know what's going wrong? Is it that Workstation needs to be updated to recognize the drivers? In case it's relevant, the motherboard is an Asus 'X99-E WS/USB 3.1' which I just assembled into a new system. Thanks;

Hi;   What is the current suggested way to access shared folders on a Windows 7-64 Host from a Linux Guest (using Workstation Pro 12.1)? Is this possible with only open-vm-tools?   I've been using Centos 7.2/RHEL 7.2 Linux guests. I've been using open-vm-tools/open-vm-tools-desktop for the guest tools. But, the only way I've figured out to get access to the hosts shared folders from the Guest is to go ahead and also install the vmware tools package on the Guests. This then ends up automatically mounting my shared folders in /mnt/hgfs/xxxxx as specified in the Host VM settings.   Is there a better way to do this so that I don't need to install the VMware tools anymore? The reason I ask it that I frequently end up with fatal compiler errors when an updated version of the guest OS comes out.   For example, I just updated a Guest from RHEL 7.2 to RHEL 7.3. The Guest tools failed to compile (in page.c) for the hgfs stuff. I found an entry in the workstation forum that suggested that I try to download and use the 10.1.0 Linux Guest tools (instead of the 10.0.x ones that seem to come with Workstation 12.1). I did this which ultimately seemed to work, but I saw a concerning warning during install that says: WARNING:  It appears your system is missing the required /usr/bin/vmhgfs-fuse So, is installing both the open-vm-tools and the VMware guest tools the necessary/right way to access the Hosts shared folders from the guest?  Should I be concerned about the missing 'vmhgfs-fuse'? Thanks;