Cannot boot manjaro-20 on workstation 16?

[leventeliu]

I constantly use manjaro on workstation 15, but after upgraded the VM to 16.x it won't boot anymore (ran into a black screen).

Then I tried starting from a new ISO image, succeeded to enter the boot menu, but failed to boot after selected the installation program. Same thing -- black screen, and cannot switch to another tty session.

Attachment is the collected data for support request.

[bluefirestorm]

You could try any of the following on the existing VM.

(1) disabling the 3D acceleration in the VM Display settings

or

(2) keep the 3D acceleration enabled but change virtual machine hardware compatibility to Workstation 15.x

When 3D acceleration is enabled, Workstation uses the graphics cards present in the host hardware for rendering. As the Surface Book 3 you have has both Intel Iris and GTX 1650, you can set the default in the Windows Graphics settings to high performance (i.e. use Nvidia). This should consistently make VMware use Nvidia and avoid possible problems when the host switches in between graphics.

For the virtual CPUs in VM, it looks like you allocated 8. Your host CPU is i7-1065G7 which is 4 cores/8 threads. It is better to not allocate 100% of what is available to a VM. Leave some for the host OS. Probably could do enough with 4vCPUs; maybe at most 6 if the VM really need that much CPU.

[leventeliu]

Hi, thanks for the help.

By the suggestion, do you mean 16.x doesn't work properly on 3D acceleration currently? So, I tried two things: downgraded the profile to 15.x, everything worked again; used 16.x without 3D acceleration, still couldn't boot.

And one more thing, while using Workstation 15, I noticed that a running Linux VM would prevent the Surface Book tablet detach progress, cause it selectively occupied GTX graphic I guessed, even if I didn't specify the high performance graphic setting for VMware. But with Workstation 16, it doesn't prevent detaching anymore. Does this mean anything?

So what's next I can do? Do I have to keep using the 15.x profile on Workstation 16  ? My original intention was to acquire a better graphic experience in a Linux VM. Although most of my work is done in the terminal, graphical IDE like VSCode is needed sometimes. And it's still running very very laggy in 15.x, even with a fairly high-end hardware set.

Looking forward to any useful advice!

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

I have not tried version 16 so much (even the beta version).

From what I know, there was a major change in the way guest graphics were handled. They call it MKS Sandbox.

Version 16 provides DX11 (to Windows VMs) and OpenGL 4.1 to the VMs.

Version 15.5 provides DX10.1 and OpenGL 3.3 core profile.

Running with 15.x profile on version 16 software, you lose those capabilities (DX11/OpenGL 4.1 in guest VMs). I don't know what else you forgo.

One thing that is still the same from the vmware.log file is version 16 still uses the underlying graphics hardware to deliver the rendering engine. That's why it is better keep the default graphics engine to the Nvidia 1660 Ti Max Q as it is should be much faster than the Intel Iris Plus G7 graphics; albeit at the expense of battery power duration.

From mksSandbox-2.log

2020-09-16T03:51:03.856+08:00| mks| I005: MKS-RenderMain: Starting DX11Renderer

2020-09-16T03:51:03.891+08:00| mks| W003: DX11Renderer: Enumerating adapter 0

2020-09-16T03:51:03.891+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: `Intel(R) Iris(R) Plus Graphics` vendor=0x8086 device=0x8a52 revision=7

2020-09-16T03:51:03.891+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: video=128MB system=0MB shared=16179MB

2020-09-16T03:51:03.891+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: LOCAL     budget 15411M usage     0M avail  7833M res     0M

2020-09-16T03:51:03.891+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: NON-LOCAL budget     0M usage     0M avail     0M res     0M

2020-09-16T03:51:03.986+08:00| mks| W003: DX11Renderer: Using device unknown; adapter `Intel(R) Iris(R) Plus Graphics`

2020-09-16T03:51:03.986+08:00| mks| W003: DX11Renderer: Enumerating adapter 1

2020-09-16T03:51:03.986+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: `NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design` vendor=0x10de device=0x2191 revision=161

2020-09-16T03:51:03.986+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: video=5993MB system=0MB shared=16179MB

2020-09-16T03:51:05.212+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: LOCAL     budget  5225M usage     0M avail  2740M res     0M

2020-09-16T03:51:05.212+08:00| mks| I005: DX11Renderer: NON-LOCAL budget 15411M usage     0M avail  7833M res     0M

I think if you set the default to Nvidia, adapter 0 should be the GTX 1660 Ti instead of the less powerful Intel Iris Plus G7.

Alternatively add the following to the vmx file to force the use of Nvidia for this particular VM.

mks.dx11.vendorID = "0x10de"

[bonnie201110141]

We are aware of this issue and has an internal bug to track it. You can try to add below line to the VM 's .vmx file as a workaround:

cpuid.7.edx = "----:----:----:----:----:----:---0:----"