[SOLVED] Black Screen with debian-testing on VMWare Player

[gedakc]

After installing the latest weekly build (2014-07-07) of debian testing (jessie) on VMWare Player 6.0.2 I see a black screen on subsequent reboots.

This happens with the debian-testing-i386-xfce-CD-1.iso, and also with the debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso using the following guide:

Guide – How to install Debian 8 “jessie” Xfce using netinst/minimal iso
http://linuxpanda.wordpress.com/2014/03 ... -pictures/

The debian images were downloaded from the following location:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekl ... 86/iso-cd/

The black screen problem seems to occur when X is started. While the Virtual Machine is sitting at the black screen, I can see the following lines repeated in the vmware.log:

---- begin vmware.log snippet -----
2014-07-11T12:51:05.063-07:00| vcpu-0| I120: SVGA enabling SVGA
2014-07-11T12:51:05.192-07:00| vcpu-0| I120: Guest display topology changed: numDisplays 0
2014-07-11T12:51:05.193-07:00| vcpu-0| I120: Guest display topology changed: numDisplays 0
2014-07-11T12:51:05.294-07:00| mks| I120: SVGA disabling SVGA
----- end vmware.log snippet -----

This stanza of lines repeats several times, though the number of "Guest display topology..." lines varies.

For background information, I am trying to determine why the GParted Live 0.19.1-beta1-1-i486.iso image, which is based on Debian testing as of 2014-07-10 also boots to a black screen on VMWare Player and VMWare Workstation. The strange thing is that this same image boots and runs properly on VirtualBox, and also on the physical computers I tested.

See also:
Re: [GParted-Devel] GParted Live 0.19.1-beta1-1 image X-Window Problems with VMWare
http://sourceforge.net/p/gparted/mailma ... /32591230/

Suggestions on further troubleshooting would be appreciated.

Curtis Gedak
(Maintainer of GParted)

[rm5248]

I've noticed the same problem as well. I have a Debian 8 VM running on VMWare 9.0.3, and two days ago(Friday) I upgraded all of the packages that had to be upgraded( apt-get update && apt-get upgrade ). Today, when I booted up the system I go to a black screen. I can't get to a terminal or anything.

I would agree that it appears to be an X issue, since I can see the start messages come up but then the screen goes black and I can't see anything. Moreover, I can't switch to a terminal at all, it just doesn't respond. I'm running on an Ubuntu host right now; I can try Windows 7 with Workstation 10 tonight and see if the same issue comes up.

QUICK FIX THAT WORKS FOR ME:

Check the settings for your virtual machine. Under 'display', make sure that 'Accelerate 3D graphics' is ENABLED. Once I enabled it, I was able to boot into the graphical mode.

[gedakc]

Thank you rm5248 for the suggestion.

Unfortunately enabling the 'Accelerate 3D graphics' option does not work for me. When I do this I get a prompt that indicates "No 3D support is available from the host.", and another with "Hardware graphics acceleration is not available."

My physical computer has an Intel Sandybridge i7-2600K processor with built-in Intel HD 3000 graphics. I suspect that the graphics drivers for this display do not work with VMWare 3D support.

I also tried downloading and installing the debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso image dated 2014-07-14, but this image exhibits the same problem. I can see the boot screen, but when X is about to start the screen goes black and then stays that way.

On the plus side, our GParted Live maintainer built a new image and it works correctly. I don't know what the possible difference is but the key thing is that we will now be able to release the latest GParted Live, which is based on Debian Live and know that it will work on all the systems we tested.

[rm5248]

My physical computer has an Intel Sandybridge i7-2600K processor with built-in Intel HD 3000 graphics. I suspect that the graphics drivers for this display do not work with VMWare 3D support.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that VMware only likes dedicated graphics cards. It is possible to force it to use blacklisted drivers, but that may not work.

On the plus side, our GParted Live maintainer built a new image and it works correctly. I don't know what the possible difference is but the key thing is that we will now be able to release the latest GParted Live, which is based on Debian Live and know that it will work on all the systems we tested.

Is there a different version of X that you're using? Some posts over at the Arch forums indicate that this is a problem with Xorg 1.14.

Also: this problem happens with VMware Workstation 10 as well(Windows host).

[gedakc]

Mucho thank you rm5248 for the "use blacklisted drivers" suggestion.

To work around the black screen problem on my kubuntu 12.04 host with Intel HD 3000 graphics and a VMWare Player 6.0.2 guest with Debiain Testing I had to perform all of the following steps:

• Enable 'Accelerate 3D graphics' settings for the Virtual Machine
  -- Under 'display', make sure that 'Accelerate 3D graphics' is ENABLED.
• Add the following to the .vmx file of the VM:

  Code: Select all

  mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers = "TRUE"

• Install the texture compression library for Mesa:

  Code: Select all

  sudo apt-get install libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0

After doing all steps, I was able to boot into graphical mode in Debian Testing running in my VMWare Player guest.

In resolving this problem I found the following post very helpful:
How to fix 3D Acceleration for Vmware Workstation 9?