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Debian Linux 8.11 VM won't boot into graphical target

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jg007
Posts: 4
Joined: 2022-09-27 01:56

Debian Linux 8.11 VM won't boot into graphical target

#1 Post by jg007 »

Hi,

Not sure if this is the correct forum to post my question. Just looking for some guidance to troubleshoot the problem I'm having.

I have a Debian Linux 8.11 (kernel 3.16.0-6-686-pae) VM running on an ESXi host (ESXi v7.0.2) in full graphics mode. The host machine is a DELL XPS 8920 (4 CPUs x Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz).

After I copy/migrate the VM to another host with the same ESXi version (7.0.2), the machine won't boot into full graphics mode with the message "Oh no ! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please contact a system administrator". The target host machine is a DELL PowerEdge 7515 (16 CPUs x AMD EPYC 7282 16-Core Processor)

I can at least boot into a non graphical environment if I boot into the recovery mode kernel and set the default boot target to "multi-user.target"

I've checked all hardware settings between the source VM and target VM and they are identical.

I can't see any difference other than the new host machine may have backwards compatibility issues in supporting an older Linux operating system.

arochester
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Re: Debian Linux 8.11 VM won't boot into graphical target

#2 Post by arochester »

Debian 8 has been superseded by Debian 9 (stretch). Regular security support updates have been discontinued as of June 17th, 2018.

Jessie also benefits from Long Term Support (LTS) until the end of June 2020. The LTS is limited to i386, amd64, armel and armhf. For more information, please refer to the LTS section of the Debian Wiki.
Source - https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/

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Re: Debian Linux 8.11 VM won't boot into graphical target

#3 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

jg007 wrote: 2022-09-27 02:11 the machine won't boot into full graphics mode with the message "Oh no ! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please contact a system administrator".
Check the systemd journal for the actual error message. I suspect it's because GNOME wants hardware acceleration, which your VM can't supply.
deadbang

jg007
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Re: Debian Linux 8.11 VM won't boot into graphical target

#4 Post by jg007 »

arochester wrote: 2022-09-27 08:32
Debian 8 has been superseded by Debian 9 (stretch). Regular security support updates have been discontinued as of June 17th, 2018.

Jessie also benefits from Long Term Support (LTS) until the end of June 2020. The LTS is limited to i386, amd64, armel and armhf. For more information, please refer to the LTS section of the Debian Wiki.
Source - https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/
Hi there,

You make a very good point about the end of support. This is a legacy system I need to move to a new host for an interim period. At this point I can't tell what architecture the DELL PowerEdge 7515 supports other than the description on the ESXi host is "16 CPUs x AMD EPYC 7282 16-Core Processor"

jg007
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Joined: 2022-09-27 01:56

Re: Debian Linux 8.11 VM won't boot into graphical target

#5 Post by jg007 »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote: 2022-09-27 14:06
jg007 wrote: 2022-09-27 02:11 the machine won't boot into full graphics mode with the message "Oh no ! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please contact a system administrator".
Check the systemd journal for the actual error message. I suspect it's because GNOME wants hardware acceleration, which your VM can't supply.
Thanks for the suggestion. Pardon my ignorance if I'm not overly familiar on how to check for the logs you suggest.

I tried the following but didn't get much output:

Code: Select all

root@carlton3b:/var/log# journalctl -u systemd
-- Logs begin at Wed 2022-09-28 12:57:36 AEST, end at Wed 2022-09-28 13:02:07 AEST. --
However, when I attempt to run the command

Code: Select all

startx
, while following the logs on another session, I get the following output

Code: Select all

Sep 28 12:58:51 carlton3b dbus[558]: [system] Successfully activated service 'fi.w1.wpa_supplicant1'
Sep 28 12:58:51 carlton3b NetworkManager[544]: <info> wpa_supplicant started
Sep 28 12:58:51 carlton3b wpa_supplicant[1116]: Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
Sep 28 12:58:51 carlton3b systemd[1]: Started WPA supplicant.
Sep 28 12:58:51 carlton3b dbus[558]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.GeoClue2'
Sep 28 12:58:51 carlton3b systemd[1]: Started Location Lookup Service.
Sep 28 12:58:51 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-shell:1060): mutter-WARNING **: STACK_OP_RAISE_ABOVE: window 0x6501200016 not in stack
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-settings-daemon:971): color-plugin-WARNING **: failed to get edid: unable to get EDID for output
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b colord[1063]: Device added: xrandr-Virtual1
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-settings-daemon:971): color-plugin-WARNING **: unable to get EDID for xrandr-Virtual1: unable to get EDID for output
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-shell:1060): mutter-WARNING **: STACK_OP_RAISE_ABOVE: window 0x6501200016 not in stack
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b minissdpd[578]: 6 new devices added
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (uint32 1,)
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: LLVM ERROR: Do not know how to split the result of this operator!
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b polkitd(authority=local)[844]: Unregistered Authentication Agent for unix-session:2 (system bus name :1.21, object path /org/freedesktop/PolicyKit1/AuthenticationAgent, locale en_AU.UTF-8) (disconnected from bus)
Sep 28 12:58:52 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-settings-daemon:971): media-keys-plugin-WARNING **: 4: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)
Sep 28 12:58:53 carlton3b x-session-manager[921]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 28 12:58:53 carlton3b x-session-manager[921]: Entering running state
Sep 28 12:58:53 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: x-session-manager[921]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 28 12:58:53 carlton3b x-session-manager[921]: GnomeDesktop-WARNING: Failed to acquire idle monitor object manager: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name :1.24 was not provided by any .service files
Sep 28 12:58:53 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: x-session-manager[921]: GnomeDesktop-WARNING: Failed to acquire idle monitor object manager: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name :1.24 was not provided by any .service files
Sep 28 12:58:53 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: Gjs-Message: JS LOG: Failed to launch ibus-daemon: Failed to execute child process "ibus-daemon" (No such file or directory)
Sep 28 12:58:53 carlton3b polkitd(authority=local)[844]: Registered Authentication Agent for unix-session:2 (system bus name :1.32 [/usr/bin/gnome-shell], object path /org/freedesktop/PolicyKit1/AuthenticationAgent, locale en_AU.UTF-8)
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-shell:1166): mutter-WARNING **: STACK_OP_RAISE_ABOVE: window 0x6501200016 not in stack
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-settings-daemon:971): color-plugin-WARNING **: unable to get EDID for xrandr-Virtual1: unable to get EDID for output
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-shell:1166): mutter-WARNING **: STACK_OP_RAISE_ABOVE: window 0x6501200016 not in stack
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: LLVM ERROR: Do not know how to split the result of this operator!
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b polkitd(authority=local)[844]: Unregistered Authentication Agent for unix-session:2 (system bus name :1.32, object path /org/freedesktop/PolicyKit1/AuthenticationAgent, locale en_AU.UTF-8) (disconnected from bus)
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b x-session-manager[921]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b x-session-manager[921]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: x-session-manager[921]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: x-session-manager[921]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b x-session-manager[921]: Unrecoverable failure in required component gnome-shell.desktop
Sep 28 12:58:54 carlton3b gnome-session[921]: (gnome-settings-daemon:971): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_proxy_call_internal: assertion 'G_IS_DBUS_PROXY (proxy)' failed
I suspect you're correct, however looks like I don't have the option to provide hardware acceleration on the VM itself. Oddly enough this option is not enabled on the source VM that is currently running on an older ESXi host (as I described in the original post)

Cheers,

jg007
Posts: 4
Joined: 2022-09-27 01:56

Re: Debian Linux 8.11 VM won't boot into graphical target

#6 Post by jg007 »

I managed to find a solution. The tip provided about looking at hardware acceleration was useful.

In the end I had to manually enable "3D Graphics" support on Video card settings for the target migrated VM. This had to be done manually by doing the following:
  • editing the corresponding vmx file of the VM to include the entry "mks.enable3d = TRUE"
  • determining the VMid of the target VM with the command "vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms"
  • reloading the VM's configuration file: "vim-cmd vmsvc/reload VMid" (where VMid is an integer)
  • starting up the VM
Thanks,

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