OVA on VMWare Workstation 17 Pro

In 99% of "stuck on boot screen" reports the OS/system is running and can be accessed via SSH. In the case of a VM that won't be simple as the SSH daemon is not enabled by default and you'd need to mount the VM disk from another Linux VM to access the boot partition and edit syslinux.cfg to force it on by adding "ssh" to kernel boot params. However the Samba server should be running so if you find/access the "Logfiles" share the OS will generate a zip file with logs. If you share that file here we can see the boot log and that might give some clues on what's not working. It's most likely an issue with graphics drivers, as no GPU = no GBM surface for Kodi to render a GUI onto, but we'd need to see error messages to understand the problem.

NB: The OVA exists solely to support internal development/testing and sometimes gets broken and isn't updated/fixed until the next time someone on staff needs it to work again. In short, it's not something we formally support or spend much time on.

So I have been picking away at this very issue and have some information. I recently upgraded VM Workstation from 15.5.0 to 17.5 and I had a LibreElex 9.2.6 OVA that was running and stopped after the VM Workstation upgrade. It starts and goes to a black screen. I moved the OVA over to another machine still running VM Workstation 15.5 and it started working again. I also tried installing the LibreELec 11.0.6 OVA on the VM Workstation 17.5 machine and it hung after starting. I moved that OVA over to the VM Workstation 15.5 machine and it worked fine.

So the issue is definitely related to Workstation 17.5 but there is also one other difference between the systems, which I believe may be the real issue. The Workstation 17.5 machine has an nVidia GeForce 710 card and the Workstation 15.5 machine has an ATI Radeon 5400 video card.

I need to do some testing with either upgrading the 15.5 to 17.5 with the ATI card, swap out the nVidia card to an ATI card or if you want me to move a working OVA back to Workstation 17.5 and grab some Kodi logs, just tell me what you need. With 2 systems and working OVAs I can easily do testing. I'd like to get this working on Workstation 17.5

Thanks,

Jeff

The "Generic" image switched from Xorg to GBM graphics but IIRC the vmware GPU in the OVA should support that. However if the host GPU has been mapped through to the VM this will 100% fail on nVidia cards as there is no support for them without Xorg.

NB: I've been told the virtual hardware version of the OVA needs bumping for Workstation 17.5 (and likely other recent versions) but that something which can be tweaked locally.

Quote from chewitt

The "Generic" image switched from Xorg to GBM graphics but IIRC the vmware GPU in the OVA should support that. However if the host GPU has been mapped through to the VM this will 100% fail on nVidia cards as there is no support for them without Xorg.

NB: I've been told the virtual hardware version of the OVA needs bumping for Workstation 17.5 (and likely other recent versions) but that something which can be tweaked locally.

I've tried every setting I can think of in the host OS and VM workstation Guest VM and can't get the Kodi OVA to work with Workstation 17.5. They work fine with 15.5. Worst case I do have a spare ATI Radeon card I can try swapping in the 17.5 system or I can upgrade the working 15.5 system to 17.5 and risk having 2 broken systems for Kodi

Jeff

Use snapshots or clone the disk for experiments. Are you mapping the GPU in the VM or using the vmare GPU?

Quote from chewitt

Use snapshots or clone the disk for experiments. Are you mapping the GPU in the VM or using the vmare GPU?

Yeah, moving VMs across hosts and making copies is easy. I have VM workstation set for auto, which uses the VMware GPU. I cannot find a way to change the video card / GPU setting in VM Workstation. I did however take 2 debug logs in Kodi.

The first is the Kodi 11.0.6 VM running on the 15.5 system with the ATI Radeon card.
The second is the Kodi 11.0.6 VM running on the 17.5 system with the nVidia 710 card.

It's the same VM just copied between systems to do the testing.

Thanks,

Jeff

For kicks, can you update the 17.5 system to a currently LE12 nightly and see what happens?

Quote from chewitt

For kicks, can you update the 17.5 system to a currently LE12 nightly and see what happens?

Sure. Just so I am clear here. I will move the 11.0.6 OVA to the 15.5 system, upgrade it the latest LE12 nightly, then move the upgraded Kodi OVA back to the 17.5 system and see if the VM runs ?

Thanks,

Jeff

First update the vmware hardware version on the 17.5 version, and if that makes no difference, then do that.

Quote from chewitt

First update the vmware hardware version on the 17.5 version, and if that makes no difference, then do that.

No difference with either, it still hangs at the LibreElec screen.

Jeff

So the mystery deepens. I replaced the nVidia card with an ATI Radeon 5450 card, the same that is in the 1`5.5 machine The problem persists with Workstation 17.5. So right now it appears to be something with Workstation 17.5 or something else with this particular machine.

To isolate this once and for all, I have a third Sandbox test machine which has the same nVidia GeForce 710 card in it and the same hardware. I will install 15.5 on it, see if both the 9.2.6 and 11.0.6 OVAs work. If so, then I will do the in place Workstation upgrade to 17.5 and see what happens.

I'll keep folks posted.

Jeff

So the issue is definitely related to workstation 17.5. I loaded VM Workstation 15.5 on my Sandbox machine with the Nvidia GeForce 710 card. Both the 9.2.6 and 11.0.6 OVA loaded right up and came up with no issues. I then upgraded to VM Workstation 17.5 and both working VMs stopped working. I tried uninstalling 17.5 and installing it from scratch and still it doesn't work. I also tried pulling down the most recent version of 17, version 17.5.1 and that didn't work.

Lastly, I loaded Workstation 16.2.5 and that works. So there is something with Workstation 17 which is causing the issue.

Thanks,

Jeff

Here vmware workstation 17.5.1 works with LE 11 and LE12 - using vmware gpu (no passthrough).

Quote from vpeter

Here vmware workstation 17.5.1 works with LE 11 and LE12 - using vmware gpu (no passthrough).

Did you install the OVAs or create an ISO image and do a native VM Workstation installation ? Also, what host OS are you using, not that it should matter ?

Jeff

Installed from LE11 OVA, running on Windows 11.

I found an answer here. I had to add these 3 lines to the virtual machine VMX configuration file.

mks.enableDX12Renderer = "FALSE"
mks.enableDX11Renderer = "FALSE"
mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE"

With them both the 9.2.6 and 11.0.6 OVA run properly under VM Workstation 17.5. There are a number of reports on the Internet about the graphics changes which VM Ware introduced with 17.5.

Jeff