drm-kmod vmwgfx.ko Crashes system

Sun Oct 20 00:02:57 UTC 2019

Thank you for the information.  I tried starting up a 13-CURRENT 20191011-r353427 VM with only one CPU and installed drm-devel-kmod from ports.  The whole VM crashed when I loaded the module!  Considering the 20191018 ISO wouldn’t even load in the VM, and based on what you said, I’ll just keep an eye on it, and try every now and then with the devel-kmod to see if anything works.  I am not doing anything with a VM right now that needs the 3d acceleration, but figured if I could get it to work, that would be a neat thing to play with.  I’d help with the development, but I have never done any serious programming, so I wouldn’t even know where to start.  Keep up the good work!

From: Johannes Lundberg <johalun0 at gmail.com> 
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2019 3:49 PM
To: jardows at sbcglobal.net
Cc: Kevin Oberman <rkoberman at gmail.com>; freebsd-x11 at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: drm-kmod vmwgfx.ko Crashes system

Hi

Don’t expect anything from 4.16 based kmods. It works better with 5.0 branches but still there are bugs that need to be fixed for vmwgfx. for example race condition on multi-cpu vms.  I meant to write up a blog post about the driver ones it was in workable state. Work has gotten in between so the whole thing has been delayed. 

On Sat, Oct 19, 2019 at 11:46 <jardows at sbcglobal.net <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net> > wrote:

I appreciate the insight, but I do not believe that is what I am experiencing.  I just installed a 12.0-RELEASE VM, installed src, updated with freebsd-update, downloaded the ports tree, then installed drm-kmod via ports.  I am experiencing the same issue.

If this driver works at all, I figure there should be somebody who has used it successfully, and would know what conditions are necessary to make it work.

Even though I cannot find any documentation as to its use, I am beginning to suspect that this driver only works with ESXi, and not VMWare Workstation.

From: Kevin Oberman <rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com> > 
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2019 11:35 PM
To: Jacob Meadows <jardows at sbcglobal.net <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net> >
Cc: freebsd-x11 at freebsd.org <mailto:freebsd-x11 at freebsd.org> 
Subject: Re: drm-kmod vmwgfx.ko Crashes system

On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 12:54 PM Jacob Meadows <jardows at sbcglobal.net <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net>  <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net> > > wrote:

I have installed with pkg on latest and on release_1 (currently running on 12.1-RC1, but have used other versions with the same results).
I have also freshly installed from ports with the latest updates.
I have not rebuilt my kernel after system installation.
I am not sure what version of kmod I would need to be in sync with my currently installed vmware version. I am currently using VMWare Workstation Player 15.5.0 build-14665864 installed on Windows 10 1809 Enterprise.

This is a problem. ATM, packages for 12 are being compiled against 12.0-RELEASE. KBI stability between minor releases is not guaranteed. At least once in the 11-STABLE tree, a change broke the virtualbox-ose-kmod resulting in a system panic. Until the first build of packages after 11.1 went EOL, the only fix was to download port and kernel sources and build the port against those sources. This may be another case. It's why it is recommended that all kernel modules in ports be rebuilt whenever the kernel is updated, but that does not work with packages and, in the last case, it did not work until 11.2 reached EOL and the packages were built against 11.2.

This could well be totally wrong. It's really speculation.

--

Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com>  <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com> > 

PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683

On Friday, October 18, 2019, 1:57:32 PM EDT, Kevin Oberman <rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com>  <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com> > > wrote: 

On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 8:45 AM Jacob Meadows <jardows at sbcglobal.net <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net>  <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net <mailto:jardows at sbcglobal.net> > > wrote:

I saw that drm-kmod installs vmwgfx.ko.  I thought this would be nice to enable 3d acceleration in my VMWare player VM, but every time I load it, the virtual machine freezes.

I have tried putting a line in the rc.conf like for the amdgpu.ko, and directly loading via kldload.  I have tried with the VM setting 3d acceleration on and off.  I have tried with 12.0-RELEASE, 13-CURRENT, and now 12.1-RC1.  The crazy thing is I cannot find any errors recorded /var/log/messages, simply some information about the driver loading, then nothing and the system locks up.

I am having a hard time finding any documentation regarding this driver.  Is it designed to work with VMWare player, or perhaps it is for ESXi only?

Check the mtime on /boot/kernel/kernel and /boot/modules/vmwgfx.ko. Since this module is installed by a port, not the base system, it is critical that it be in sync with the kernel. Have you rebuilt your drm kmod port port since your kernel was last built? It's really critical that kernel modules be in sync with the kernel. It is also possible that it needs to be in sync with the currently installed vmware.

--

Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com>  <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com <mailto:rkoberman at gmail.com> > 

PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683

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