LornaJane

VMWare Virtual Machines on NTFS

Thursday, April 17. 2008

I keep having a problem with my virtual machines. I'm running kubuntu but the virtual machines are on an NTFS partition (because I use them from windows occasionally). The error message appears at startup and goes like this:


VMware Player unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)
Failed to allocate page for guest RAM!
A log file is available in "/path/to/VM/vmware.log". A core file is available in "/path/to/VM/core". Please request support and include the contents of the log file and core file.
To collect data to submit to VMware support, run "vm-support".
We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.


I looked in the log file and saw that immediately before the "Failed to allocate page" bit it said:


Could not mmap paging file : No such device


Apparently this is a known problem with VMs on an NTFS parition, but luckily the solution is very simple. I found a post which recommended editing the .vmx file and adding the following line:


mainMem.useNamedFile=FALSE


This worked perfectly for me, I hope it helps someone else too. See also my post about installing vmware tools
Posted by LornaJane in tech at 15:12 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)
Defined tags for this entry: ,
Related entries by tags:
Acer Aspire One (and cosy)
Getting Started with irssi
Curl Cheat Sheet
Professional Development for Girl Geeks
Announcing the Leeds Girl Geek Dinner

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Linux user from Canada here. I ran into the same problem, and your post came up in a Google search. In my case, the problem was my VMs are in an HPFS partition so I can share them with VMWare Player for Windows. It looks like Linux doesn’t like mmap’ping from HPFS partitions, because VMware player for Linux works just fine without mainMem.useNamedFile=FALSE if the VMs are on an ext2 partition.

#1 Linux User on 2008-05-17 22:46 (Reply)

Thanks for the tip!

#2 Random Surfer on 2008-06-05 19:16 (Reply)

THANK YOU!!!

had similar issue – Linux with external USB drive formatted for NTFS.

works with your note!

#3 mark on 2008-06-12 19:47 (Reply)

Linux User, Random Surfer, mark: Thanks to all of your for dropping by and letting me know it worked for you and the additional information – glad it helped :)

#4 LornaJane (Homepage) on 2008-06-13 14:50 (Reply)

Your instructions worked like a charm! Thanks so much for the tip.

-Scott

#5 Ubuntu User on 2008-08-12 00:45 (Reply)

Add Comment

You can use [geshi lang=lang_name [,ln={y|n}]][/lang] tags to embed source code snippets
Textile-formatting allowed
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications
 
 

Quicksearch

Comments

Simon about Acer Aspire One (and cosy)
Wed, 27.08.2008 10:19
If it’s anything like the Asus that I have, then it should b e relatively easy to put Ubuntu on it, like I’ve done with m ine. Put installer on to a bootable USB stick…


Derick about Acer Aspire One (and cosy)
Wed, 27.08.2008 08:50
It should be possible to automatically close down the wifi c onnection and unload the kernel module on hibernate. Look a t the scripts in /etc/apm/suspend.d for example. /etc/de fault/acpi-support might also have some options to get you s omewhere. I put my normal ethernet driver module (e100 [...]


LornaJane about Curl Cheat Sheet
Tue, 26.08.2008 14:56
Vid: Thanks for dropping by, I’m very pleased to hear you fo und this useful.


LornaJane about Six Months of Telecommuting
Tue, 26.08.2008 14:54
dotjay: Shared offices are OK, but I do like the peace and quiet of not sharing I must say. I get a bit loopy though i f I stay home for too long! The offline time trick is a goo d one – I like to at least turn off the monitor and use a pe n sometimes.


dotjay about Six Months of Telecommuting
Mon, 25.08.2008 20:00
I’m so glad that you settled into telecommuting so well. As you know, I’ve been working for myself and/or telecommuting for the last five years. I’ve never really had the experienc e of a shared office, but I do use Skype a lot, sometimes ta lking with work mates for hours at a time. The trick i [...]


Vid Luther about Curl Cheat Sheet
Sun, 24.08.2008 23:25
Lorna, Great post, found this via Chris’s blog, more tool s in my toolset now :). Thanks


LornaJane about Accessing Incoming PUT Data from PHP
Sat, 23.08.2008 20:46
shaun: I didn’t anticipate problems, I just didn’t think it worked in that way – but I’m completely happy to be told oth erwise :) Don’t be surprised that curl lets you do weird an d wonderful things, lots of tools are like that and it allow s you to use them in ways that the original author had [...]


shaun about Accessing Incoming PUT Data from PHP
Sat, 23.08.2008 10:21
ok, I’ve been experimenting with this, ‘switch’ing on the RE QUEST_METHOD to implement post, get, put, delete for a db r esource; so far I’ve not had problems using $SERVER[‘QUERY STRING’] and parse_str()... what problems do you anticipate? (I’m not sending files, everything fits in the string [...]


LornaJane about PHPNW 2008 - 22nd November
Fri, 22.08.2008 09:20
The main conference site is now live, and the call for paper s is open – see http://conference.phpnw.org.uk/phpnw08/