[CentOS] display problem running under vmware

[Ted Miller]

On 08/06/2012 02:57 PM, Steve wrote:
> I'm running an up-to-date CentOS 6 virtual machine in a VMWare player on a Windows box and
 > I cannot set the display resolution to anything higher than 1280x720. 
Windows shows the
 > screen resolution on this monitor to be 1920x1080.
> I do have VMWareTools installed although I'm not certain it is installed correctly. How can I tell?

I'm no expert, but I do have a running version of Centos6 under VMWare.

At first I thought that your logged error was due to problem with your 
VMWareTools install, but then I checked my install, and the control console 
says I don't have VMWareTools installed on that machine at all.

 > It is version 8.8.4-743747.
>
> I'm not sure if this is a CentOS issue or a VMWare issue but I thought I'd start here.
>
> My Xorg.0.log shows this:
> [    43.093] (II) LoadModule: "vmware"
> [    43.095] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vmware_drv.so
> [    43.102] (II) Module vmware: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
> [    43.102]    compiled for 1.10.4, module version = 11.0.3
> [    43.102]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
> [    43.102]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 10.0
> [    43.102] (II) LoadModule: "vmwgfx"
> [    43.132] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module vmwgfx
> [    43.132] (II) UnloadModule: "vmwgfx"
> [    43.132] (II) Unloading vmwgfx
> [    43.132] (EE) Failed to load module "vmwgfx" (module does not exist, 0)
> [    43.133] (EE) vmware: Please ignore the above warnings about not being able to to load module/driver vmwgfx
> [    43.133] (II) vmware: Using vmwlegacy driver everything is fine.
> [    43.133] (II) LoadModule: "vmwlegacy"

My log looks similar to yours up to this point, but at this point my 
vmwlegacy driver loads and takes over.

I have to assume that the reason you are not getting high resolution video 
modes is because Xwindows is falling back to some default driver.

> [    43.136] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module vmwlegacy
> [    43.136] (II) UnloadModule: "vmwlegacy"
> [    43.136] (II) Unloading vmwlegacy
> [    43.136] (EE) Failed to load module "vmwlegacy" (module does not exist, 0)
> [    43.137] (EE) vmware: Unexpected failure while loading the "vmwlegacy" driver. Giving up.
> [    43.137] (II) UnloadModule: "vmware"
> [    43.137] (II) Unloading vmware
> [    43.137] (EE) Failed to load module "vmware" (a required submodule could not be loaded, 136118924)
>
> Is this problem just a mismatch between CentOS and vmwware?
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
>
> more info:
>
> $ uname -r
> 2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.i686
>
> but
> $ ls -d /usr/lib/vmware-tools/modules/binary/*2.6.32-279*
> ls: cannot access /usr/lib/vmware-tools/modules/binary/*2.6.32-279*: No such file or directory
>
> There are bld-2.6.32-24.whatever and bld-2.6.32-28.55-whatever files in /usr/lib/vmware-tools/modules/binary/
>
> There is a legacy directory under /usr/lib/vmware-tools/modules/source/ and the source directory has a vmwgfx.tar file in it.
>
> # cat /proc/modules | grep vmware
> vmware_balloon 5811 0 - Live 0x<...>
>
> VMWare Player version 4.04 build 744019
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>

Looks like you may need to rebuild or download VMWareTools for your latest 
kernel upgrade, but that may not deal with your basic problem.

The vmwlegacy video driver is located in the xorg-x11-drv-vmware package 
that Centos provides in the "base" repository.  You probably need to 
install, update, or re-install that package.

Ted Miller