Ubuntu VM Causing VMWare Workstation Pro to go unresponsive after Upgrade to 17.6

[Mark Darrigo]

Ubuntu VM Causing VMWare Workstation Pro to go unresponsive after Upgrade to 17.6, all was working prior to upgrade. 

[Mickou06]

Hi!

I've the same problem.

The whole Ubuntu session do not respond, I can see the mouse cursor displayed, but nothing respond: even Ctrl-Alt-Space F2 do not work, so I'm unable to switch to console mode.

Yesterday I enabled the ssh server, and I was able to ssh on the frozen Ubuntu guest: it appeared it is alive, but the last kernel message before freeze was related to vmwgfx driver stating "Using 64-bits DMS access"

I suspect it's related to this graphic driver dedicated to VMware, so I modified its starting parameters to limit its DMA usage in 44-bits.

I'll report here if stability is back!

[lnxres]

Same problem discussed here: https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/question/problem-with-176-update-on-ubuntu-2204

[Mickou06]

The problem discussed in the topic you mentioned concerns this scenario:

Running VMWare workstation Pro 17.6 on an Ubuntu 22.04 Host with kernel >= 6.8.0-40 triggers a total host system freeze.

I don't know what's the host OS used by Marc Darrigo, but he mentioned that Ubuntu VM is causing VM Workstation Pro to go irresponsive (on what guest OS?!)

The answer I've made is related to this scenario:

Running VMWare Worstation Pro 17.6 on Windows 10 Pro host, running an Ubuntu 22.04 guest VM, with kernel 6.8.0-40. After a couple of hours, the VM is frozen.

[Mark Darrigo]

The host is Windows 11, worked prior to the upgrade to 17.6 all non-Ubuntu hosts work fine

[Mark Darrigo]

Found that this change corrected my issue...

DarthTater posted Sep 05, 2024 08:19 AM
I had the same issue and discovered that under Edit --> Preferences --> Display I needed to uncheck the box for "Allow hardware acceleration for all virtual machines consoles".  It 17.6 it seems to be trying to force hardware acceleration on every VM instead of honoring if you have selected the "Accelerate 3D graphics" display option on each individual VM.

In other words, disable hardware acceleration at the top VMware Workstation preferences level and then just have it enabled for the individual VMs that require it.  This resolved the issue for me.

VMware Workstation 17.6 - unrecoverable error: (svga) svga Exception 0xc0000005 | VMware Workstation (broadcom.com)

[Mickou06]

Ok! Great for you :)

My global hardware acceleration setting isn't set, it's only enabled in my Ubuntu VM, so my problem is not related to yours.

But in a near future, if:

 - your Ubuntu VM get stuck, you can only see mouse pointer drawn by Ubuntu moving, nothing else in responding in the Ubuntu desktop

 - ssh connection to your VM reveal that Ubuntu kernel is alive (pretty consistent since mouse pointer is still drawn), and the last dmesg entry reports a vmwgfx trace informing the 64 bits DMA is now used,

the fix I've mentioned seems to work: I used my Ubuntu all the afternoon, and all this morning, so far no more freeze!

Details of my "fix":

create a new module parameter file, as root, in "/etc/modprobe.d/vmwgfx-fix.conf" and put the following content:

options vmwgfx restrict_dma_mask=1

[Paul Puglia]

Thanks.  This worked for me too. Although I was seeing slight different symptoms. My vm was hanging immediately after logging into the GUI which then resulted in vmware itself hanging.  I ended up needing to kill vmware and rebooting my Windows 11 box, clean up the lck before I could  reboot.   

The only upside to this was it allowed me to deselected "Accelerate 3D graphics" setting before I rebooted again. At that point was immediately I was able to switched over to console mode with Ctrl-Alt-F1 and add the /etc/modprobe.d/vmwgfx-fix.conf -- no need for the ssh.  

Once your fix was in, rebooted, and logged in fine.