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VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

  • 1.  VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 02, 2024 09:07 AM

    Everyone, an interesting problem here: using VMWare Workstation 17 I am trying to install an old version of Red Hat Linux (6.1) in a VM.

    Now, on my Win10 Intel laptop everything proceeds smoothly, I can configure the VM and everything installs just fine with fairly standard options.

    On my Win11 7950X workstation, with the exact same VMWare Workstation version, the same options, the linux kernel gets stuck at boot time.

    LILO starts, then the following:

    boot:

    Loading initrd.img........................

    Loading vmlinuz........................

    Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.

    And that's it, it never proceeds from there.

    Thoughts?



  • 2.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 02, 2024 01:15 PM

    Don't know what that is about, but why don't you try the same VM - or rather a copy of it - on the Win11 computer.

    If that doesn't work, you may need to play with the processor-virtualization setting of the VM, a bit. They are too diverse for me, to say what they need to be in any particular case.




  • 3.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 03, 2024 09:22 AM

    Thanks for the tips.

    I have indeed copied the working VM from one computer to the other, no luck.

    I will try all combinations of processor virtualization settings.

    Is there a way I can capture a detailed log of where it hangs?




  • 4.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 03, 2024 03:59 PM

    Don't know about log capture - I hope somebody else can help.

    Also, I don't have Win 11 - Ryzen combination, so that I could see what happens with Kubuntu versions with various kernels. I have only Win 10 - Ryzen combination and Kubuntu from 20.04 - 24.04 works just fine with VMware 17.5.2. But I have noticed that requirements for options in terms of CPU-VMware and BIOS options have been sometimes different. I'm using Asus ROG Strix computers. So far, Win 11 experience is rather limited and for Intel, only.




  • 5.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 04, 2024 04:53 PM

    Run msinfo32 on the host.    If VBS is enabled that may be the issue.




  • 6.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 05, 2024 10:04 AM

    Thanks for the information. Interesting, VBS is in fact enabled. How would this affect the behaviour? 

    I can install newer Linux distributions without any problems.




  • 7.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 06, 2024 09:30 AM
    Edited by Jason McClellan Dec 06, 2024 01:08 PM

    You should set the cpuid family in the vmx file (the real value 0x19 shown as a question mark in cpuinfo), otherwise the installation won't start:

    featMask.vm.cpuid.family="val:6"

    After it finished, I was able to boot only with the noapic parameter:

    LILO boot: linux noapic



  • 8.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 09, 2024 05:05 PM
      |   view attached

    Thank you Enrique, I tried your recommendation, still no luck...

    On my Intel Windows 10 machine everything boots flawlessly, so I don't know if it's the AMD CPU, Windows 11 or something else...

    I attached a screenshot of where it gets stuck.




  • 9.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 18, 2024 05:23 PM

    Try disabling Hyper-V to run VMware Workstation in native mode:
    https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/discussion/disabling-hyper-v-hypervisor-on-windows-11-pro-host-to-get-vmware-17s-cpl0-vs-ulm-monitor-mode

    There are some breaking changes in 24H2 that block older OSes.




  • 10.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 19, 2024 01:21 PM
      |   view attached

    Thanks for the suggestion. Hyper-V is already disabled on my machine, I am running both Docker and WSL, but neither of them require Hyper-V to be active. I checked again in the "Turn Windows features on or off" just now, and it's off. Here is a screenshot of the app.




  • 11.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 20, 2024 08:46 AM

    You must disable Virtual Machine Platform, but it will break WSL and Docker.




  • 12.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 21, 2024 10:23 AM

    I see, I will try that.




  • 13.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Dec 23, 2024 02:04 AM

    rez cam Request you to collect support bundle of the Rhel VM at the point where the it gets stuck on boot screen and share it here.




  • 14.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted Dec 23, 2024 10:46 AM

    Thank you Dhairya, how do I do that?




  • 15.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Dec 23, 2024 11:53 PM

    rez cam Once you recreate the issue, go to menu Help->Support->Collect Support Data, in the next window select the checkbox next to RHEL VM where you are seeing the issue, generate the Support bundle and share it here.




  • 16.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted 14 days ago

    Can I upload the support data archive somewhere private, rather than sharing it with the whole community?




  • 17.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Community Manager
    Posted 14 days ago

    Share data directly with support in their secure environment.   Our forums are open to the public and anything you upload is not secure.  Thx  Jason Platform Admin



    ------------------------------
    Thank you
    Jason
    Broadcom Community Platform Admin, IT
    ------------------------------



  • 18.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted 13 days ago

    We can't contact support to get a secure upload location. Because of Broadcom's dropping of technical support for Desktop Hypervisor products, this forum is the only support option.

    Funny that other companies have figured out how to enable users to report bugs in products without needing a support engineer gateway. Fedora, Canonical, and openSUSE come to mind.  Perhaps Broadcom leadership needs to take another look at how they provide support for Workstation. 



    ------------------------------
    - Paul (technogeezer)
    ------------------------------



  • 19.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted 12 days ago

    >  Perhaps Broadcom leadership needs to take another look at how they provide support for Workstation. 

    Given that their (Broadcoms) stated objective seems to be to only concern themselves with "Big fish", perhaps they don't really intend to...




  • 20.  RE: VMWare Workstation 17 - Win11 - Ryzen 7 - Red Hat Linux 6.1 (not RHEL) kernel crashes immediately

    Posted 13 days ago

    Thank you Jason, I have been leaving direct messages to Dhairya to ask where I can upload my data, but have had no reply from them in a month...