VMware Known Issues

The sections below detail known issues with using VMware discovered by the IS&T Vmware release team during testing.   Additional known issues provided by VMware can be found in the Release Notes for each product.  For details, see the VMware Workstation 6.0.x Release Notes and Vmware Fusion Release Notes.

Changing VMware Fusion to "optimize for Mac OS application performance" via Fusion's preferences may cause your virtual machine or entire OS to hang, possibly corrupting the virtual machine disk.   To avoid this, users should use the default setting of "optimize for virtual machine disk performance."  Apple and VMware are working to resolve this issue.  For more information, see VMware's Team Fusion blog

The code that Red Hat Linux uses to discover network interfaces at boot time can produce some difficult to interpret behavior under VMware. Red Hat Linux records the ethernet interface hardware address (also called the MAC address). Every time it sees a new MAC address it moves aside the old network configuration, and creates a new one which completely ignores any network settings previously used and instead uses DHCP to set the IP address.

If you clone a VM, or if you copy it, or even if you move it to a different directory on the same host, the MAC address will change. This is because, unless you do extra hand configuration to set a MAC address explicitly, VMware will generate one that is a hash on the host ID, the location of the VM files, and a few other things.

Using the recommended NAT networking setup will hide the effects of this behavior. NAT utilizes the networking of your host system in a way that is unaffected by changes to the MAC address of the VM guests.

A setup with Bridged networking will appear to stop working. Red Hat Network will tell you that you have updates, but then not give them to you. Attempts to visit a web site will bring you to the MIT Network registration web page.

Any static IP address set, along with name servers will be ignored because the old config has been moved aside. A setup using DHCP will also stop working because the MAC address previously registered is no longer the one you are using.

Deleting the HWADDR entry from the network configuration files causes the network interface discovery to behave erratically. At first it seems that network configuration stays the same even if the MAC address changes. In fact events like kernel updates force the network device discovery code to run, and then the network configuration changes even though the MAC address has been the same.

Therefore: After you move or clone a Linux VM guest using Bridged networking, you will need to deal with a changed MAC address:

If you have a static IP address configured, go to System->Administration->Network and move all the configuration you will see for eth0.bak into eth0.

If you registered the VM guest for DHCP, you need to re-register.

During installation VMware gives a warning about CPU speed : " VMware Workstation has measured your CPU speed to be 2394 MHZ, but Windows reports that it is 2401. This may mean that your computer has a power saving feature that varied the processor speed. As a result, the clock in your virtual machine may run too fast or too slow."  See the attached screenshots. That explains why the time is off betwee host system and running virtual OS. This can be corrected by enabling the time synchronization option in VMware Tools.

Installing a 64-bit Guest OS on a 32-bit machine:

You cannot install a 64-bit Guest Operating System on a 32-bit machine.  Details on this issue can be found in the VMware knowledgebase article:http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1901
Example: You cannot install Vista or Windows XP 64-bit on a 32-bit machine running 32-bit versions of Vista or Windows XP SP2.

Windows XP SP2 32-bit Host machine installing Vista 64-bit as a Guest OS:
When attempting to do so, the Windows boot manager window opens
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, and then click "Next".
3. Click "Repair your computer".

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

File: \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe

Status: 0xc00035a

Info: Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode.

Hitting escape ends up in an endless loop of reloading files and getting the windows boot manager window. You must close the VM window and power it off.

Windows Vista 32-bit Host machine installing Vista 64-bit as a Guest OS:
When selecting 64-bit Vista from the pull down menu when creating a new virtual machine, a caution sign with the text 64-bit guest operating systems are not supported by this host and will not run is displayed, however, it is easy to miss and can continue on to create the vm (until the virtual machine is started and it reads the DVD). It attempts to load the files but again, the Windows boot manager window appears and provides the same message as indicated above.

If you have over-allocated your disk (told VM ware to make images that, if they all grew to their full size would take up more disk space than you have free) VMware may pop up an alert warning you when you're about to use up more space than you have.  That would give you a chance to free up disk space or exit cleanly.  We don't recommend you over-allocate your disk space. There's no guarantee of a warning before bad things happen.  It could end poorly in data loss or corruption.

Activation of Vista in a virtual guest on a Windows or Linux host with NAT networking fails when the "primary DNS suffix" is not set. (Mac OS sets this automatically.) For detailed instructions see Setting Vista DNS suffix.

The Linux version's check the web for updates feature is broken and does not find updates. It appears to be pointing to the wrong url. Here are the manual instructions to download v 6.03:

1. Go to vmware.com
2. Click on downloads (top right)
3. Click on desktop virtualization products (in menu on right)
4. Click on vmware workstation.
5. You will need to login (email address and create a password)
6. Once you login, or create a new account then login, you will be able to download v6.0.3.
   

VMware Fusion will crash without giving an error message on a MacBook Air when a CD/DVD drive is "Connected" and set to "Automatically detect physical CD/DVD drive." To resolve this, select the virtual machine from the Virtual Machine Library and press Settings. Then, select CD/DVD under Removable Devices, make sure Connected is un-checked and click OK.

[alexp, Athena VM] If a .vmss (VMware suspended state) file is around when you launch a VM, networking can be irreparably broken even if the VM had previously been halted. The only fix seems to be to remove the .vmss file from the VM directory.

[alexp, Athena VM] I've seen Kerberos tickets and tokens disappear on a running VM, long before they're due to expire, for no obvious reason.

[alexp, Athena VM] I've had problems running the VPN in the host OS. Running it in the guest seems to work for me.

[alexp, Athena VM] Leaving a VM suspended for about 5 days and subsequently resuming results in broken network and AFS. Restarting these as root did not fix them. It was necessary to reboot the VM. Athena 9.4.43 VMs can't be updated to latest release due to rpm conflict between WMware Tools in the VM and VMware Player in the Athena release (introduced after 9.4.43).

[alexp, Athena VM] adding a line:
VMwarePlayer
to /etc/athena/rpmupdate.exceptions lets an Athena VM update correctly. However the user must then run vmware-config-tools.pl manually as root after the update to restore VMware Tools functionality.

[alexp, Athena VM] DHCP will work in an Athena VM if you first get a fixed IP address from Network, then register the machine for DHCP. If the VM is moved or cloned later you need to make sure that the MAC address it has is the same as it had when it was registered for DHCP. After the registration takes effect, you need to have the following entry in /etc/athena/rc.conf:

ADDR=dhcp; export ADDR

vpnc works well as vpn within an Athena VM. To restore zephyr functionality on VM restart, you will likely need to run:

zctl load

[alexp, Athena VM] PXE install issues on Windows (XP, Vista) host machines for Athena VMs:

Both on my laptop and on another machine running
Vista, I kept running into a situation where the PXE installer would
attempt to connect but spin forever, or sometimes connect and begin
the install, but then hang shortly after. There were no obvious clues,
error messages or useful logs. Finally I took my machine up to the
demo center and tried there, and everything ran fine, so it must have
been some network problem. What made this really nasty was that:

1. I've had no other obvious network problems on the machine (host) on
the same subnet and

2. I only ran into this on Windows machines, not on Linux or Mac hosts
on the same subnet.

The other odd thing I noticed is that when I tried copying working,
powered off VMs from other machines to the laptop (telling VMware it
was "moved" or "copied"- I tried both), changing the IP address to
something appropriate, the networking in the guest was broken no
matter what I tried- this was on the same subnet where I had the
problem. Yet after I was able to do the PXE install upstairs, the
PXE-installed VM worked fine on the "problem" subnet.

If you copy a Virtual image while VMware Workstation is running, even if the Virtual Machine is not running, there may be a lock file directory present in the folder containing the
Virtual Machine files (that folder ends with .lck). If you copy that folder along with all the other files you will see the alert box:

Choosing Take Ownership does nothing but pop up the alert again.
You must choose Cancel and hand-delete the lock file directory from your copy.

This issue has been reported to VMware and a remedy is expected in the next major release.

One way to work-around the above issue of the Lock Directory being present even when the VM guest is powered off is to close the tab containing reference to the virtual machine. There is an option, "Remember opened virtual machines between sessions." which disables creation of these tabs. Unfortunately due to another defect, un-checking this option disables the Quit command and the close window function (controlled by the "X" in the window manager decorations.)

This defect is also known to VMware and will be fixed in an upcoming release.

To get Quit working again, use the File->Close command and re-run vmware-config.pl

• Time Machine, Mac OS X 10.5's built-in backup solution, will duplicate any virtual machine that has been run since the last backup.  As virtual machines tend to be large, they might take up a considerable amount of space on your backup drive.  For more information see the release announcement from the Fusion Blog.
• Full screen mode interfers with opening the spotlight search dialog and Spaces.  These bugs have been reported to Apple.
• For additional known issues, see the VMware Fusion Release Notes.