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VMware – Workstation 14 released – with a Gotcha..

Adventures With Linux ™ Posted on by

VMware Workstation Pro 14.0.0 has been released – a bit earlier than expected – and it has a (potentially) nasty surprise for those with ‘older’ CPUs..   Release notes are here:  https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/14.0.0/rn/workstation-14-release-notes.html

I installed this on my test system without any problems, and was able to confirm that it compiles and loads/runs OK with Kernels 4.13.x, and that the vmmon patch for 12.5.x still applies, and this enables it to load/run with Kernel 4.14-rc2..   The runtime # vmware also works correctly, with Fedora 26..

However…  As soon as I tried to run a VM, I was presented with the following error message:

“This host does not support “Intel EPT” hardware assisted MMU virtualization.
This host does not support virtualizing real mode. The Intel “VMX Unrestricted Guest” feature
is necessary to run this virtual machine on an Intel processor.
Module ‘CPUIDEarly’ power on failed.
Failed to start the virtual machine.“

# cpuinfo reports the CPU in my test system as  ‘Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz’..

The Intel site reports that this CPU supports:  Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)..

According to the VMware release notes:

“Systems using Processors (CPUs) launched in 2011 or later are supported except:
Intel Atom processors based on the 2011 “Bonnell”  micro-architecture (e.g. Atom Z670/Z650; Atom N570)
Systems using Intel Atom processors based on the 2012 “Saltwell” micro-architecture (e.g. Atom S1200, Atom D2700/D2500, Atom N2800/N2600.
Systems using AMD processors based on the “Llano” and “Bobcat” micro-architectures (e.g. code-named “Hondo”, “Ontario”, “Zacate”, “Llano”)
In addition the following are supported:
Systems using Intel processors based on the 2010 “Westmere” micro-architecture (e.g. Xeon 5600, Xeon 3600, Core i7-970, Core i7-980, Core i7-990)”

The VMware documentation for W/S 14 is more vague, and states:

“For supported processors to run 64-bit guest operating systems, the host system must use one of the following processors.
          *  An AMD CPU with AMD-V support
          *  An Intel CPU with VT-x support
If you have an Intel CPU that has VT-x support, you must verify that VT-x support is enabled in the host system BIOS. The BIOS settings that must be enabled for VT-x support vary depending on the system vendor.“

I did try adding the monitor.allowLegacyCPU = “true” parameter in the VMware config file, but this still did not work, and left the “…The Intel “VMX Unrestricted Guest” feature is necessary … error..

So… more testing is necessary, and it seems – at least – as if the VMware documentation is somewhat lacking in clarity or consistency…    I have a feeling that this new ‘feature’ is going to cause quite a lot of discussion….

Robert Gadsdon.   September 27, 2017.

Comments

VMware – Workstation 14 released – with a Gotcha.. — 18 Comments

  1. RG,

    I was able to install VMware Workstation 14 on Fedora 26, kernel 4.12.14, without compiling vmmon or vmnet.

    Installed it, clicked the icon, selected 30-day trial, and Workstation opened up, and was able to power on my VMs.

    Reply ↓

    • That is the way it is supposed to work, with the vmmon/vmnet compile/install being taken care of by the VMware install/runtime executable.. The other messy workarounds were only necessary because 12.5.7 was incompatible with GCC7/F26 etc..!
      RG.

      Reply ↓

  2. Is this thing necessary to kill all support for these processors right now with the release of this version? why ???

    Reply ↓

  3. I’ve noticed after using Workstation 14 for a while on Linux 4.13 it stops working due to not being to allocate memory even though there is plenty available. So far I haven’t run into the issue on 4.11, yet.

    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: OvhdMem_PowerOn: initial admission: paged 460150 nonpaged 5756 anonymous 5155
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: VMMEM: Initial Reservation: 1840MB (MainMem=4096MB)
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: MemSched_PowerOn: balloon minGuestSize 209715 (80% of min required size 262144)
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: MemSched: reserved mem (in MB) min 128 max 28056 recommended 28056
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: MemSched: pg 460150 np 5756 anon 5155 mem 1048576
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: MemSched: numvm 1 locked pages: num 0 max 0
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: MemSched: locked Page Limit: host 0 config 7182336 dynam -1
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: MemSched: minmempct 50 minalloc 0 admitted 0
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: Msg_Post: Error
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: [msg.memsched.preNotEnoughMem] Not enough physical memory is available to power on this virtual machine with its configured settings.
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: [msg.memsched.notEnoughMemHostMemVal] To fix this problem, increase the amount of physical memory for all virtual machines to 2123 MB or adjust the additional memory settings to allow more virtual machine memory to be swapped.
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: [msg.memsched.hostUnderDuress] It is possible that native applications and/or services have locked down memory which could be preventing the virtual machine from launching. Shutting down unnecessary applications or services may free enough memory to launch this virtual machine.
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: [msg.memsched.postNotEnoughMem] If you were able to power on this virtual machine on this host computer in the past, try rebooting the host computer. Rebooting may allow you to use slightly more host memory to run virtual machines.
    2017-10-03T08:44:34.831-05:00| vmx| I125: —————————————-
    2017-10-03T08:45:09.780-05:00| vmx| I125: Module ‘MemSched’ power on failed.
    2017-10-03T08:45:09.780-05:00| vmx| I125: VMX_PowerOn: ModuleTable_PowerOn = 0

    Reply ↓

    • Seems that there is a problem with memory handling when it comes to Vmware WS 14 and kernel 4.13.
      I manage to start a VM (Windows 10 guest), but Vmware is constantly “eating” up memory until it errors out with “not enough memory”. After closing and restarting Vmware (and systemctl restart vmwared) the situation is not clean either, giving me the same message as desribed in your post.
      After a reboot I can start WS 14 but it will start “eating” up memory again….

      Reply ↓

  5. Same here, I have a Intel Core 2 Quad CPU with 8GB RAM, Windows 10 64-bit Home Edition.
    And I could not find a one fix for this “CPUIdEarly” problem on the internet.

    Reply ↓

  7. I was able to install VMware Workstation 14 on my Fedora 26 but I still have the following issues:

    1) Sometimes everything seems to work just fine I use alt + ctrl to get back to a web browser for example when I back to VMware it’s freezing and I can’t go back to control the virtual machine the only way is force to close VMware Workstation.

    2) After forcing VMware to close and open it again when I try to start any virtual machine shows this message: Unable to change virtual machine power state: Internal error
    Then I do this https://platonic.techfiz.info/2011/09/fix-vmware-workstation-unable-to-change-virtual-machine-power-state-internal-error/

    3) When power on a virtual machine shows the message “not enough physical memory is available to power on this virtual machine with its configured setting” The virtual machine is configured to use 1GB and I have 8 GB of RAM on my laptop I checked using top command to see my memory usage and it’ not even close to 3 GB. I saw this https://communities.vmware.com/thread/542847 but not helpful.

    I tried the workaround too from here I did some changes

    cp -r /usr/lib/vmware-installer/2.1.0/lib/lib/libexpat.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib
    cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libz.so.1
    mv -i libz.so.1 libz.so.1.old
    ln -s /usr/lib64/libz.so.1 .

    cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib
    cp -afv /usr/lib64/libgio-2.0.so.0.5200.3 libgio-2.0.so.0/libgio-2.0.so.0
    cp -afv /usr/lib64/libglib-2.0.so.0.5200.3 libglib-2.0.so.0/libglib-2.0.so.0
    cp -afv /usr/lib64/libgmodule-2.0.so.0.5200.3 libgmodule-2.0.so.0/libgmodule-2.0.so.0
    cp -afv /usr/lib64/libgobject-2.0.so.0.5200.3 libgobject-2.0.so.0/libgobject-2.0.so.0
    cp -afv /usr/lib64/libgthread-2.0.so.0.5200.3 libgthread-2.0.so.0/libgthread-2.0.so.0

    #VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS=force vmware

    rm -rfv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon-only
    rm -rfv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet-only
    rm -rfv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/*.o

    cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/
    tar -xvf vmmon.tar
    cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon-only
    make

    cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/
    tar -xvf vmnet.tar
    cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet-only/
    make

    mkdir -p /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc

    cp -afv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon-only/vmmon.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc
    cp -afv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet-only/vmnet.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc
    depmod -a
    modprobe vmmon
    modprobe vmnet
    vmware-networks –start
    vmware-modconfig –console –install-all
    VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS=force vmware

    I would like to have some help from you and I don’t to have to go back to VirtualBox or KVM. Thanks

    Reply ↓

    • I almost forgot sometimes shows this message below when I start a VM.

      The virtual machine is unable to reserve memory. If selecting Retry does not work, try closing programs on the host machine to free memory first.
      For more information about this error, see “http://vmware.com/info?id=19”

      The info from VMware site is about Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 2008 R2 and that’s not my case because my host is Fedora 26.

      Reply ↓

    • Probably not a good idea, to apply a ‘fix’ from six years ago.. I use 2GB memory for VMs, these days..
      VMware 14 on Fedora 26 (Kernel 4.13) works OK without any of the ‘changes’ you mention, but _is_ rather sluggish..
      Hopefully 14.0.1 will be an improvement..!
      RG.

      Reply ↓

      • What do you say about to do a downgrade to VMware 12.5.7 until 14 version have their bugs fixed and this slowness solved?

        Or It’s better do a clean install of VMware 14 in Fedora 26(Kernel 4.13) as you said and keep waiting for 14.0.1?

        If I try VMware 12.5.7 again do I need to use the old fix?

        Thanks for your help.

        Guilherme (Roke)

        Reply ↓

        • VMware 12.5.7 with Fedora 26 required runtime _and_ kernel module compile ‘workarounds’, and someone did produce a script for the ‘automatic’ vmmon/vmnet compiles.. see link in comments at http://rglinuxtech.com/?p=2002.

          Downgrade would be possible, unless you had upgraded the VMs to 14.x hardware compatibility..

          I am sticking with a clean install of 14.0.0 for the time being, and hoping 14.0.1 comes out soon, but I have no idea when that might be..

          RG

          Reply ↓

          • Thanks a lot for your information. My VMs still are 12.x compatibility that’s why I was thinking about the downgrade. I’ll try a clean install of VMware 14.x if doesn’t work I go back to 12 version. I have another question I’m using Fedora 26 Gnome should I have to use in Gnome Xorg session or Wayland is ok already?

            Thanks again.

            Guilherme (Roke)

  8. I was having some trouble with VMWare Workstation 14 I tried to get back to version 12.5.7 but still having the not enough memory issue. So I wasn’t able to start my virtual machines(all my VMs were compatibility with version 12.x.x) I tried again a clean install of version 14 and I use this procedure:

    https://communities.vmware.com/thread/572935

    sudo su
    cd /tmp
    cp /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon.tar .
    tar xf vmmon.tar
    rm vmmon.tar
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mkubecek/vmware-host-modules/fadedd9c8a4dd23f74da2b448572df95666dfe12/vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c
    mv -f hostif.c vmmon-only/linux/hostif.c
    tar cf vmmon.tar vmmon-only
    rm -fr vmmon-only
    mv -f vmmon.tar /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon.tar
    vmware-modconfig –console –install-all

    And it’s working fine for me. I came to post so this can help someone else.

    Thanks. Congratulations for your blog Robert. The information I found here helped me a lot.

    Guilherme Duarte (Roke)

    Reply ↓

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