Fedora 41 Workstation VM is unusable after Mesa 3D library updates are installed

[Technogeezer]

If you're running a Fedora 41 Workstation VM with the GNOME desktop environment on any VMware desktop hypervisor -- Fusion (on both Intel and Apple Silicon) or Workstation -- don't apply Fedora updates without reading this if your VM is working. If you update Fedora, you'll find that the gdm graphical login greeter no longer displays - you are faced with a blank screen. The only way to log in is to switch to another virtual console in the VM or to boot the VM to a multi-user target (not graphical target). 

The cause of this problem appears to be the Mesa 3D 24.3.2 packages that are now being distributed by Fedora. Changes have been made that breaks them working with the VMware SVGA II graphics (Linux vmwgfx driver). 

To work around the problem, you can either disable the vmwgfx driver in the VM, or use dnf to downgrade the Mesa libraries back to 24.2.x. You may need to drop into multi-user mode at boot to perform the dnf commands needed to downgrade the Mesa libraries. I'd also suggest modifying /etc/dnf/dnf.conf in the VM to prevent all Mesa packages from being updated until this issue is fixed. 

This issue also seems to impact Fedora Rawhide (the rolling development version of the next Fedora release) on both x86_64 and aarch64 (ARM) architectures. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[ColoradoEric]

I ran into this same issue this morning. I hadn't used this VM in a couple weeks, and let it do updates when I launched it.

I was able to get gdm running by disabling Wayland in /etc/gdm/custom.conf:

[daemon]
# Uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg
WaylandEnable=false

However, the desktop (in my case, Cinnamon) still didn't start.

Thanks for the tip on Mesa 3D, though – downgrading to 24.2.x got everything back online (with gdm back in its default configuration)!

-Eric

[Brian Paul]

Please try again w/ the latest Mesa code.  I believe this is an issue I just fixed a few days ago.

[Technogeezer]

I just tried updating Fedora Rawhide. No change.

I'm not seeing any updates to Mesa. There was just a push of new gnome-terminal code to both Rawhide and F41, no difference. What got fixed, and what should I be looking out for.

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Brian Paul]

I should have been more specific - the fix is checked into the Mesa git repository.  I'll make sure it's included in the next Mesa 24.x release.  Fedora will take it from there.

Until then, one can downgrade to the previous version with "sudo dnf install mesa-dri-drivers-24.2.4-1.fc41.x86_64"

[Technogeezer]

Brian, thanks for the update and we'll keep an eye out for the Mesa release.

Also note that this issue appears on Fedora 41 aarch64 (under Fusion on Apple Silicon) - use 

sudo dnf install mesa-dri-drivers-24.2.4-1.fc41.aarch64

to downgrade. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Technogeezer]

Things have gone from bad to worse. The downgrade workaround no longer works with 3D acceleration enabled and the latest batch of Fedora upgrades (which include a 6.12.9 kernel). Turning off 3D acceleration allows the VM to display the login properly.

There's also a 24.3.3 Mesa upgrade available. I installed that but the issue still remains.

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[dpasirst]

same problem, same temporary solution (downgraded, I actually downgraded all the mesa packages (not just dri-drivers)  that were part of the upgrade to just keep them all at the same version), hopefully we will see a proper fedora packaged solution soon.