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#1 2012-11-19 13:04:54

hungerfish
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 254

Arch as Vmware guest broken?

Hi!

For the past couple of weeks!! (ever since systemd 'upgrade') things in vmware-land have been going from bad to worse.
I have Arch setup as a guest within vmware running on a windoes host. (Also on a mac host, same problems)
Now, I migrated the system to systemd, and basically had a functioning vm (with copy & paste, timesync etc.).
There was one problem though, shared folders would not work.
More specifically when trying to 'ls' the folder (or indeed accessing it any other way) the kernel would OOPS, basically freez up.
Others are having the same problem, there's even an official bug-report with open-vm-tools.
Same problem, and here.
Bug Report for open-vm-tools.
There's a comment there about this being fixed with the latest build (9.2.2) but that is not the case.
I've also updated vmware workstation today from 9.0.0 to 9.0.1 with no change.

But thing are getting even worse.
See this bug has been preventing me from updating xorg-server & xorg-server-common from 1.13.0-3 1.13.0-4 as I was seeing the exact same issue as mentioned in the report, and as of yesterday:

libglapi (9.0-1 -> 9.0.1-1)
libegl (9.0-1 -> 9.0.1-1)
libgl (9.0-1 -> 9.0.1-1)
mesa (9.0-1 -> 9.0.1-1)
svga-dri (9.0-1 -> 9.0.1-1)
open-vm-tools (1:9.2.0-2 -> 1:9.2.2-2)
open-vm-tools-modules (1:9.2.0-3 -> 1:9.2.2-1)

compositing doesn't seem to work, or at least gnome-session loads but instantly freezes with following segfault:

(EE) BUG: triggered 'if (inSignalContext)'
(EE) BUG: log.c:484 in LogVMessageVerb()
(EE) Warning: attempting to log data in a signal unsafe manner while in signal context.
Please update to check inSignalContext and/or use LogMessageVerbSigSafe() or ErrorFSigSafe().
The offending log format message is:
VMWARE(0): vmmouse enable absolute mode

(EE)
(EE) Backtrace:
(EE) 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x36) [0x58a006]
(EE) 1: /usr/bin/X (LogVMessageVerb+0x195) [0x595345]
(EE) 2: /usr/bin/X (xf86Msg+0x8f) [0x48262f]
(EE) 3: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/vmmouse_drv.so (0x7f1c760e2000+0x194f) [0x7f1c760e394f]
(EE) 4: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x75987) [0x475987]
(EE) 5: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x9eff8) [0x49eff8]
(EE) 6: /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x7f1c7dc49000+0xf1a0) [0x7f1c7dc581a0]
(EE) 7: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (__select+0x13) [0x7f1c7c995f13]
(EE) 8: /usr/bin/X (WaitForSomething+0x190) [0x587430]
(EE) 9: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x37b41) [0x437b41]
(EE) 10: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x2692a) [0x42692a]
(EE) 11: /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xf5) [0x7f1c7c8d7725]
(EE) 12: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x26c6d) [0x426c6d]
(EE)

I can run i3 (no compositing) without such problems though, in fact I'm posting from it right now...

EDIT:
I forgot one further problem.
On shutdown/reboot the system hangs, as mentioned here

So, has anyone else got some or all of these issues, knows of any solutions?

Last edited by hungerfish (2012-11-19 13:07:04)


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#2 2012-11-21 10:52:52

p0x8
Member
Registered: 2012-09-20
Posts: 70

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

I can confirm the shutdown issue caused by the vmtoolsd daemon and the annoying xorg-server update bug. The later seems to be on the hands of xorg/VMWare developers, the former is something I'm still looking at.

Compositing using OpenGL on kwin is working. Time is synchronized. And as a late response to your request I enabled and tested shared folders and had success listing, reading and writing files.

No real interest on enabling copy and paste or drag and drop but if it is simple enough I could try it out.

VMWare Player 5.0.1 on a Windows 7 host, up-to-date Arch, 64 bit.

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#3 2012-11-21 16:01:19

hungerfish
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 254

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

Hey p0x8, thanks for getting back to me!

No need to try out D&D or C&P, as at least C&P was working fine for me, at least for text. Copying files fails, but I'm not sure if its supposed to work, although seeing as normal shared folders also doesn't work for me who knows..

I have a few questions though, first is related to your host, are you running nvidia or ati hardware? Not that it should matter, but one never knows.
Second is to your actual vm-setup.

I take it you have open-vm-tools 1:9.2.2-3 and open-vm-tools-modules 1:9.2.2-1 installed, did you do any further configuration inside the vm?
Did you use an fstab-entry for mounting the shared folder? If so, what is it?
You say you're using KDE, I was using Gnome which failed as described above, but maybe thats just something gnome does, and maybe KDE/i3 don't and its not compositing to blame...

Anyway, would be great to hear back from you, or anyone else for that matter!

smile


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#4 2012-11-21 16:27:19

illusionmist
Member
Registered: 2012-05-14
Posts: 32

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

Mine is even worse, got stuck on boot with wallpaper and nothing else after recent system update.
Clicking around will seem to crash it and send me back to GDM but still, only wallpaper and nothing else.

Xorg log shows something including,
(EE) Failed to convert pixmap to scanout.
Fatal server error:
failed to create screen resources

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#5 2012-11-21 17:02:52

hungerfish
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 254

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

Mine is even worse, got stuck on boot with wallpaper and nothing else after recent system update.

This is precisely what I'm seeing, I just use slim, so when I get the segfault, nothing reloads automatically


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#6 2012-11-21 22:46:41

p0x8
Member
Registered: 2012-09-20
Posts: 70

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

ATI hardware, 12.06 legacy driver.

On the guest, mesa and libgl versions are the same as yours, xorg-server and xorg-server-common are stuck at 1.13.0-3, and the only other relevant packages I can think of are:

open-vm-tools 1:9.2.2-3
open-vm-tools-modules 1:9.2.2-1
xf86-input-vmmouse 12.9.0-2
xf86-video-vmware 12.0.2-2

I login to a shell and manually launch X, so can't comment on any graphical login manager behaviour.

The shared folders, as the intent was only to test, were enabled manually:

# modprobe vmhgfs
# mount -t vmhgfs .host:/docs /mnt/hgfs
Could not add entry to mtab, continuing
# ls /mnt/hgfs
desktop.ini  My Games  My Music  My Pictures  My Videos
# echo "test file" >> /mnt/hgfs/test.txt
# ls /mnt/hgfs
desktop.ini  My Games  My Music  My Pictures  My Videos  test.txt
# rm /mnt/hgfs/test.txt

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#7 2012-11-28 23:28:50

hungerfish
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 254

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

So, finally some success - problem now is I don't know what actually solved it.
I managed to get Shared folders to work!! smile
Now either this just started working after the last kernel upgrade (3.6.6-1 -> 3.6.7-1) OR It's down to this small configuration detail I took away from your config p0x8!!!
I noticed you were giving the name of your share (.host:/docs, whereas I was omitting it. Adding the correct name resulted in me being able to access my shared folder.
For completeness:

$ cat /etc/systemd/system/mnt-hgfs.automount

[Unit]
Description=Load VMware shared folders
ConditionPathExists=.host:/Shared

[Automount]
Where=/mnt/hgfs

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

$ cat /etc/systemd/system/mnt-hgfs.mount

[Unit]
Description=Load VMware shared folders
ConditionPathExists=.host:/Shared

[Mount]
What=.host:/Shared
Where=/mnt/hgfs
Type=vmhgfs
#Options=defaults,noatime
Options=uid=1000,gid=100,fmask=0113,dmask=0022,permissions,nodev,nosuid,exec,nls=utf8,noatime

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Maybe I'll downgrade the kernel just to see if it still works, but if that's not the case, this is a bug, as I can omit the Shared folder's name in an ubuntu-guest for instance.
Thanks again for trying this out p0x8!!

UPDATE:
I went ahead and downgraded the kernel, and can now confirm that the problem was down to this configuration issue, not the kernel.

The issues remaining are gnome3's shell is broken, I am forced to use fallback-mode (great that its still around imho, because things DO break), the latest update to xorg-server and xorg-server-common cause X to crash instantly(version 1.13.1-1 works), and the shut-down delay.(see a few posts down)

Last edited by hungerfish (2012-12-18 18:31:23)


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#8 2012-11-30 15:41:55

p0x8
Member
Registered: 2012-09-20
Posts: 70

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

hungerfish wrote:

Maybe I'll downgrade the kernel just to see if it still works, but if that's not the case, this is a bug, as I can omit the Shared folder's name in an ubuntu-guest for instance.

I wonder if there's any other distro running Arch's version of open-vm-tools so we could have an apples to apples comparison on all the current issues.

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#9 2012-12-10 12:48:24

Jessehk
Member
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: 2007-01-16
Posts: 152

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

Just a note that I've switched distros temporarily until these issues are resolved. I imagine I'm not the only one who has given up. I'd be happy to help with bug reports etc, but it's been more than a month, issues are known, and the installation is basically unusable.

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#10 2012-12-13 14:39:22

hungerfish
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 254

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

So, just a quick update, current version 1.13.0.902-2 of xorg-server & common now work again, no need to hold them at 1.13.0-3 any more.
From the bug-report:

Nvidia is aware of it, VMware probably not. We will say welcome again to this bug trigger when 1.14 will be released. Glyph caching is now disabled again until then.

So this will be only temporary...
BUT:  Compositing, or at least gnome-shell still wont work for me any more. I am still forced to use fallback-mode. Enabling gnome-shell just gives me a blank desktop, I can move the mouse, but nothing else happens.
Xorg.0.log still shows the error posted above:

(EE) BUG: triggered 'if (inSignalContext)'
(EE) BUG: log.c:484 in LogVMessageVerb()
(EE) Warning: attempting to log data in a signal unsafe manner while in signal context.
Please update to check inSignalContext and/or use LogMessageVerbSigSafe() or ErrorFSigSafe().
The offending log format message is:
VMWARE(0): vmmouse enable absolute mode

Anyone with a vmware install + gnome out there who can confirm this? All the while I thought this to be related to the xorg-server upgrade not working, but sadly its not sad


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#11 2012-12-13 22:21:14

illusionmist
Member
Registered: 2012-05-14
Posts: 32

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

hungerfish wrote:

So, just a quick update, current version 1.13.0.902-2 of xorg-server & common now work again, no need to hold them at 1.13.0-3 any more.
From the bug-report:

Nvidia is aware of it, VMware probably not. We will say welcome again to this bug trigger when 1.14 will be released. Glyph caching is now disabled again until then.

So this will be only temporary...
BUT:  Compositing, or at least gnome-shell still wont work for me any more. I am still forced to use fallback-mode. Enabling gnome-shell just gives me a blank desktop, I can move the mouse, but nothing else happens.
Xorg.0.log still shows the error posted above:

(EE) BUG: triggered 'if (inSignalContext)'
(EE) BUG: log.c:484 in LogVMessageVerb()
(EE) Warning: attempting to log data in a signal unsafe manner while in signal context.
Please update to check inSignalContext and/or use LogMessageVerbSigSafe() or ErrorFSigSafe().
The offending log format message is:
VMWARE(0): vmmouse enable absolute mode

Anyone with a vmware install + gnome out there who can confirm this? All the while I thought this to be related to the xorg-server upgrade not working, but sadly its not sad

Still broken. I've got two Arch VMs hanging there useless for almost a month, this is really frustrating.
I'm guessing that maybe xf86-video-vmware needs an update as well?

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#12 2012-12-14 02:41:19

hungerfish
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 254

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

@illusionmist
What do you mean with broken? Because, apart from compositing (or gnome-shell) not working, everything is more or less functional again. The hang on shutdown/reboot is annoying, but not cause for real frustration imo.
Are you getting different errors?


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#13 2012-12-14 03:10:48

illusionmist
Member
Registered: 2012-05-14
Posts: 32

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

hungerfish wrote:

@illusionmist
What do you mean with broken? Because, apart from compositing (or gnome-shell) not working, everything is more or less functional again. The hang on shutdown/reboot is annoying, but not cause for real frustration imo.
Are you getting different errors?

Nothing shows up except for the wallpaper and the cursor.

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#14 2012-12-14 13:07:58

p0x8
Member
Registered: 2012-09-20
Posts: 70

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

hungerfish wrote:

Xorg.0.log still shows the error posted above

I should point out that I also get that error and the corresponding backtrace. But if you look at the message you realise it is completely harmless - the vmmouse driver is simply creating a log entry in a way that is not recommended/supported.

Have you tried running glxinfo (and glxgears) to check if OpenGL is working properly?

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#15 2012-12-18 18:28:26

hungerfish
Member
Registered: 2009-09-13
Posts: 254

Re: Arch as Vmware guest broken?

Have you tried running glxinfo (and glxgears) to check if OpenGL is working properly?

glxinfo:

direct rendering: Yes
...
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on SVGA3D; build: RELEASE;  
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.0.1
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

glxgears:

20145 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4028.830 FPS
19896 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3979.121 FPS

I see no problems there.

Concerning the error with vmmouse, it goes away when you remove the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-vmmouse.conf file, but even then compositing with gnome-shell wont work. sad
So I guess you're right that its probably unrelated.

But I managed to finally do away with the nagging issue during reboot/shutdown, thanks to what alexoz  mentioned in another thread:

I solved this by editing /usr/lib/systemd/system/vmtoolsd.service and adding a KillSignal=SIGKILL line in the [Service] section. This way systemd sends a SIGKILL instead of a SIGTERM.Another way to overcome this issue would be to set the timeout for this service to just a few seconds instead of the default 90, by adding e.g. TimeoutStopSec=2 (2 seconds) in the [Service] section.

I went with the TimeoutStopSec variant, and after SECOND reboot the process gets killed correctly. smile


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