Arch Linux

stan

Member

Registered: 2013-08-20

Posts: 8

VMWare 3d Aceleration ArchLinux Host

HI all.
Just installed VmWare Player 5 on my fresh Arch Linux install.
Everything went smooth, except 3D acceleration, I cannot enable it.
I'm trying to run Ubuntu in VM.

glxinfo | grep render & glxgears show that host 3d side is ok, but no way to run VM with 3d accel.

Bumblebee is also installed and I even tried to run "optirun vmplayer".

Someone who's runnin' VmWare with 3d accel can help?

thank you

P.S. My setup:
- core i7 laptop + nvidia 540M (optimus).

alphaniner

Member

From: Ancapistan

Registered: 2010-07-12

Posts: 2,810

Re: VMWare 3d Aceleration ArchLinux Host

When you say you can't enable it, do you mean this doesn't work?

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But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
-Lysander Spooner

stan

Member

Registered: 2013-08-20

Posts: 8

Re: VMWare 3d Aceleration ArchLinux Host

Hi alphaniner,

Yes exactly. When I run it I get "no 3d support is available from the host" and " Hardware graphics accel. is not available".....

stan

Member

Registered: 2013-08-20

Posts: 8

Re: VMWare 3d Aceleration ArchLinux Host

UPDATE: adding this to my ~/vmware/.vmx file

 mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers = "TRUE" 

seems to solve the issue....anyway don't know if running it with bumblebee/optirun will show best performances...

reference: here

dextersl

Member

Registered: 2013-11-11

Posts: 1

Re: VMWare 3d Aceleration ArchLinux Host

In addition to what stan said I also had to install libtxc_dxtn from the extra repsitories and that seem to do the trick for me.

pacman -S libtxc_dxtn

Forge

Member

From: Bristol, VA, USA, Terra, Sol

Registered: 2014-12-16

Posts: 4

Re: VMWare 3d Aceleration ArchLinux Host

I apologize first for replying to a necrotic thread, but this is google search result number one for "Linux optimus vmware", so I felt it would be good to have a little more information listed.

Specifically, Stan's issue is that VMware checks for S3TC texture compression support and blacklists 3D accel from anything that doesn't support S3TC. This is basically a quick and dirty way to filter out all Mesa users and blacklist them. I don't know of any good reasons aside from "VMware is lazy and doesn't want to work with any FOSS groups". You can get around this issue by disabling the blacklist as Stan noted, or by installing a lib as dextersl suggested. Either way works. You may or may not need to use driconf to force enable S3TC support, and that will pass through only the Intel GPU to the VM.

If you want to use/abuse bumblebee/Optimus with Vmware, it's not as simple as "optirun vmware" or "primusrun vmware", as Stan figured out. It *is* possible, however, and I'm doing it right now. Basically, VMware uses a script to coordinate it's various pieces at launch, and using primusrun on that doesn't pass the discrete GPU down to the VM itself. You need to get into the script and the coordination and point the GPU at the right threads. I'm using the script I'll link below, and I hope it does someone some good.

https://github.com/docsmooth/vmware-bumblebee