Powering on ANY virtual machine freezes host OS - Fedora 7 Intel Core2 Duo

[mcgd]

Hi,

I've installed Fedora Core 7 on my new machine, and then VMWare Workstation 6. If I create ANY machine and then try to power it on, I get the black window come up for about a second and then the whole system freezes. No display update, no keyboard/mouse. I can ping it from outside but nothing else.

I have the following hardware:

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 mother board with 4GB RAM

Intel Core2 E6700 64 bit CPU

Gigabyte (NVidia) NX8500GT video card

The VMware test program says the machine is capable of running 64 bit guests, but I don't get that far - I can't even get the BIOS messages to come up!

I have had to boot the kernel with "agp=off" parameters because of problems with the video card.

There are lots of messages in the ui log, but they all appear before I try to power on the machine. After that, nothing. I can't find the vmware.log. Here's what's in the ui log:

Jun 23 16:58:59.527: vmui| Log for VMware Workstation pid=3939 version=6.0.0 bui

ld=build-45731 option=Release

Jun 23 16:58:59.527: vmui| Hostname=genesis2

Jun 23 16:58:59.542: vmui| Using log file /tmp/vmware-root/ui-3939.log

Jun 23 16:58:59.543: vmui| HAL05LoadHALLibraries: dlopened libhal.so.1.

Jun 23 16:58:59.543: vmui| HAL05LoadHalLibraries: dlopened libdbus-1.so.3.

Jun 23 16:58:59.543: vmui| HAL05LoadGlibLibrary: dlopened libdbus-glib-1.so.2.

Jun 23 16:58:59.583: vmui| HAL05Init: HAL05 Initialized successfully.

Jun 23 16:58:59.669: vmui| HOSTINFO: Seeing Intel CPU, numCoresPerCPU 2 numThrea

dsPerCore 1.

Jun 23 16:58:59.669: vmui| HOSTINFO: This machine has 1 physical CPUS, 2 total c

ores, and 2 logical CPUs.

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve FIPS_mode_set: /usr/lib/vmwa

re/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: FIPS_mode_set

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve FIPS_mode: /usr/lib/vmware/l

ib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: FIPS_mode

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve SHA256: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/

libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: SHA256

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve SHA512: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/

libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: SHA512

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve EVP_sha224: /usr/lib/vmware/

lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: EVP_sha224

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve EVP_sha256: /usr/lib/vmware/

lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: EVP_sha256

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve EVP_sha384: /usr/lib/vmware/

lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: EVP_sha384

Jun 23 16:58:59.763: vmui| DLSYM: Failed to resolve EVP_sha512: /usr/lib/vmware/

lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: undefined symbol: EVP_sha512

Jun 23 16:58:59.845: vmui| Foundry Init: setting up global state (0 threads)

Jun 23 16:58:59.845: vmui| Foundry Init: version 2, hostType 1, hostName (null),

hostPort 0, options 0x203

Jun 23 16:58:59.853: vmui| connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1182581488205176_36

14/testAutomation-fd: File not found

Jun 23 16:58:59.853: vmui| connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1182581488205176_36

14/testAutomation-fd: File not found

Jun 23 16:58:59.985: vmui| Reloading config state: /disk2/vmware/Windows Vista x

64 Edition/Windows Vista x64 Edition.vmx

Jun 23 16:59:00.012: vmui| Dlg::GetButtonInfo(): Duplicate GTK icon/label pair:

_Stop and _Stop

Jun 23 16:59:00.013: vmui| Dlg::GetButtonInfo(): Duplicate GTK icon/label pair:

_Forward and _Forward

Jun 23 16:59:00.014: vmui| Dlg::GetButtonInfo(): Duplicate GTK icon/label pair:

_Information and Information

Jun 23 16:59:00.058: vmui| connect to /var/run/vmware/root_0/1182581488205176_36

14/testAutomation-fd: File not found

HELP! Where do I go from here??

Thanks in advance

-Matthew

[mcgd]

I found the vmware.log. Nothing partiularly odd looking in it. It can be found here:

http://www.datadeliverance.com/vmware.log

That was for a (very brief) run powering on a virtual machine created through the wizard with everything set to the defaults.

Sometimes parts of the system seem to be still alive, but the display always dies. I was able to log into the system once, but the login hung after asking for a password.

Nothing in the /var/log/messages file. The system just seems to silently lock up.

[mcgd]

Tried turning on debugging, but I don't see any debug files anywhere. I got a couple of lines printed out as output from the vmware application - the last one was about there not being a valid NVRAM and one being created.

I should also mention that I'm running the 2.6.21 kernel. Are there any issues running with this kernel?

Not sure where to go from here. Anyone have any ideas?

[nick_couchman]

Debugging is done in the same vmware.log file in the VM's directory.

2.6.21 is a very new kernel - you might want to try going to 2.6.18. There may still be some bugs in the VMware modules for that kernel.

[mcgd]

Thanks for the suggestion - I may have to resort to this. I have tried compiling 2.6.18, but the standard Fedora 7 install has put my root filesystem onto a logical volume, and I haven't found any way yet to make the 2.6.18 kernel find it at boot time, try as I might. There doesn't seem to be any info about this anywhere. I guess I'd have to do a full reinstall of the system, and set it up without LVM.

It does seem that other people have got VMWare 6 going on Fedora 7. Does VMWare not support the 2.6.21 kernel? 2.6.18 seems a long way back to have to go to get VMWare working. VMWare seems to get a \_very_ short way into starting the VM before it freezes the machine. If there's a bug in one of the modules it seems to be a pretty fundamental one.

[mcgd]

Should also mention that when I turn on debug mode, I get no debug messages in vmware.log after the warning about running vmware in debug mode. This is the last thing written to the vmware.log file, so it seems that pretty much the first thing vmware does after this is freezing the machine, whatever that is.

[nick_couchman]

When you say logical volume, are you using LVM2? 2.6.18 supports LVM2 perfectly fine - my SuSE Linux 10.2 hosts run this kernel and use LVM2 without a problem. Have you rebuilt your initrd image after compiling the 2.6.18?

[mcgd]

Yes, LVM2. I rebuilt the initrd image using make install from the kernel directory, and that got me a kernel which couldn't find any volume groups when it booted. F7 doesn't come with the lvmcreate_initrd script, but I got it from somewhere else and ran it, but this got me a kernel which died with messages about reading past the end of the device. Maybe I just need to ensure that the volume group devices are created in the initrd file - not sure at the moment. I don't know how the standard F7 initrd files were made, or how to recreate one.

[mcgd]

No luck changing kernel versions, but have got somewhere. I found that if I turn off VT support in the BIOS, the virtual machine starts up ok - well gets to the BIOS stage at least. Of course this won't let me run 64 bits guests which is what I want to do. But it seems to be something to do with VT support.

[mcgd]

I've managed to get different kernels running with F7 now. Nick you were on the money. It worked fine with 2.6.18. But CD writing didn't. Tried 2.6.19 with the same result. CD writing works with a custom-built 2.6.20 kernel, and so far VMWare seems to be stable too. Thanks for your help Nick.

[mcgd]

Oops - forgot to mark the question as answered.