The Virtual Machine Is Unable To Reserve Memory

[mgaylard]

I've been unable to start VMs for a while now. The only time I can get it to work is just after a reboot. I think this started around the time I went to 3.1, but I'm not 100% sure.

This is happening even with brand new VMs with 256mb of memory.

Activity monitor says I have heaps of memory free (~6gb at the moment).

OSX 10.6.6

Fusion 3.1.2

There are other posts on here with the same issue, but no resolution or activity for months so I'm starting a new thread.

Mark.

[admin]

We're tracking this as PR 421369. It seems to happen on machines with large amounts of RAM with fragmented virtual address space. The recommended workarounds are to use the 64-bit kernel (I don't think this is an option for you) or to start a virtual machine soon after boot (you can then shut it down, the point is to make Fusion's kexts claim not-yet-fragmented memory).

[jmendo]

A MacPro2,1 should boot into k64, my MacPro1,1 can. With 10.6.6 and 11gb RAM you should not be limited to k32. Mind giving that a try?

Thanks,

-jesse

[mgaylard]

Starting a VM soon after boot is a good workaround for me.

Thanks

[shinyorangebutt]

How do I use this 64-bit kernel workaround on Lion? Rebooting every time I want to start a virtual machine is not an option for me, I work with many of them in different combinations.

Edit: It seems my mac boots k64 by default already, Lion on a MacBookPro8,1. That workaround doesnt seem to work then?

[clibera]

When starting virtual machine,

(First popup window), The virtual machine is unable to reserve memory.

(Second popup window) Failed to lock shared memory.

My system,

VMware Fusion 4.1.1

Macbook PRO, 8gb RAM, 500gb SSD

On VMware, Windows 7 (2gb memory reserved, 2 core MPU) and Ubuntu Mint (1 gb memory reserved, 1 core MPU)

The problem above occurs on ANY virtual operationg system that I try. I made sure that all other applications on the MAC are closed.

Everything was working until a couple of weeks ago.

The only way to get around this is to reboot my MAC.

Is there a permanent fix to this?

Thanks for any help.

[BenBruhl]

I am seeing the same behavior on my system with Fusion 4.1.1 (Mac Pro 2008, 10GB RAM, with Lion).  No problems with the previous version (3.1.3) of Fusion, but this version can only be run once.  If you shutdown Fusion, then you will have to reboot to get it working again.  Very frustrating.