Suspend guest on host sleep, resume on host wake?

[mccrew]

Running a Windows 10 host and Ubuntu 20 guest.

At night, host goes to sleep and in the morning I wake it up.  I notice that my user session on the guest is logged out, but a check of the 'uptime' command shows that the guest is long-running and was not rebooted or power cycled.  As far as I can tell I don't have any automatic logout-on-idle set on the guest.  Not sure if this is a VMWare issue, Ubuntu issue.

I'd like to resume the guest where I left it - logged in with certain programs still running - rather than  having to log in and set it all up again when I wake the host.

Is there a setting to suspend the guest when the host is going to sleep, and to resume on wake?

Thanks for any insight!

[Mits2020]

I was interested in your observation because I never attempted this, and I tried to replicate your problem.

I opened a linux guest and suspended the host (Windows 7 x64, WS 15.5.6) manually by Start -> Shut Down -> Sleep.

When I woke the host up, I found the guest exactly as I had left it, logged in and all applications still running.

So maybe this is a Windows 10 thing? Or maybe you use some special features (e.g. guest snapshots, I don't know) and Workstation in some cases is programmed to logoff to protect the integrity of the guest? I'm sure some more advanced users have more ideas.

Also, as it may be relevant for troubleshooting, how much RAM does your host have and how much have you provisioned for the guest?

[mccrew · Accepted solution]

I am starting to think my situation may not be a VMWare issue.

In other recent installations of Ubuntu 20, I am seeing possible SEGVs coming from gdm, which controls the X login session.  I get these random pop-ups saying that an error occurred, would I like to send details to the developers?  Clicking on the details button indicates that the problem was in gdm.  I figure that dialog must be triggered by a signal handler for a segmentation violation or other badness.

If gdm in the guest is dying upon host sleep /awakening, that would explain why my old session is gone and I am looking at a new login screen, and machine still being up.

[scott28tt]

Moderator: Thread moved to the Linux guest area.