Vmware 5.5 runs sluggish

[M0lf]

Hi,

I have been running vmware 5.0 on my gentoo box for a while and it worked just fine.
Everything worked quite smoothly.

But after upgrading to 5.5 everything on the virtual machine runns very sluggish, this
is the same vm machine (but with the new vmware tools of course) that ran fine on 5.0.

The biggest problem is the clock which runs very slow and because of that ping does not work so well.

I understand that this problem may or may not be easy to diagnose or solve, so
if you have a working 5.5 please let me know which, if any kernel modules
you have enabled for vmware or if you have added any row's to the .vmx
file.

Kernel: 2.6.14-gentoo-r5
Gcc: 3.4.5
Vmware 5.5.1 build-19175

/M0lf

[RoundsToZero]

If this was working before and you have CPU frequency scaling enabled, it might be that the update overwrote changes you made earlier. Try adding this to your /etc/vmware/config:

[M0lf]

Hi thanks for your post
sorry for my late reply!

I added the rows you mentioned and I can see some improvment... but Im not sure
if the problem is totally gone.

If you or someone else could post a "working" conf and will we are at it a .vmx file as well,
it would help me look for missing entries or similar.

/M0lf

[spitzwegerich]

I have the same problem. 5.0 ran just fine, 5.5 is very slow.
CPU frequency scaling is not enabled.

Does anyone have another hint?
_________________
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
-Oskar Wilde

[chrismortimore]

Try updating the VMware Tools in the guest machine.

[spitzwegerich]

I re-installed the vmware tools within the virtual machine. It did not change anything.

In the meanwhile I got the impression that the file transfer via shared folders from/to the host os is slower than before. Since I use shared folders quite regularily, this made me think that the whole virtual machine is slower.
_________________
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
-Oskar Wilde

[roguetoad]

Some corroboration here.
My new shiny vmare 5.5 runs like molasses compared to before.
Bad vmware. bad.
I am tempted to downgrade.

[dirtbag]

after my upgrade to 5.5.1, the performance sucks and it drains the performance out of the rest of my apps as well..

-DB

[rickvernam]

I was having a vmware 5.5 problem some time ago.
I ended up keeping Drivers->Network->Dummy loaded to keep vmware running fast.

[trumee]

[Dun]

Maybe this link will fix your problem

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=26512&tstart=30

[dirtbag]

thanks for the try.. I did what they suggested with the
/sys/module/processor/parameters/max_cstate
and set it to 1 before running vmware
but it still runs dog slow. @$#%@%


top - 21:24:20 up 1:38, 6 users, load average: 2.65, 2.72, 2.21
Tasks: 91 total, 2 running, 89 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.3% us, 1.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 0.0% id, 97.8% wa, 0.6% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 254212k total, 251016k used, 3196k free, 304k buffers
Swap: 506036k total, 65460k used, 440576k free, 104448k cached

with just winblows 2k running as guest... just sitting idle.. but as soon as i "suspend" that win2k session, things go back to normal.

-db

[celestialwizard]

When running ESX 2.5.2 we had a similar problem on Dual-Core machines, where Linux guests - specifically RHEL4 and Fedora Core 5 would loose 30 VM seconds every "Real" minute.

We resolved this by setting the following kernel options in grub

[dirtbag]

ok, this is getting ridiculous.. Ive upgraded to 5.5.1.19175-r4
rereun the vmware-config.pl
ran the dispatch.conf to update vmware init script
loaded the dummy driver
and running winblows2k through vmware on my Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz workstation brings it to its knees!
even booting win2k into safemode takes like 10 minutes.

and the only thing wrong I see is when I run top, I get > 95% wa

Im thinking maybe I have some winblows virus/trojan/spyware.. I disabled the network card, but still no relief in site!

-DB

[dirtbag]

and I also have
kernel /kernel-2.6.16 root=/dev/hda3 nosmp clock=pit
in my grub.conf

-DB

[dirtbag]

so that little "you should upgrade your vitrual machine" message at the bottom finally got the best of me.. I did it, rebooted.
reinstalled vmware tools..
and im back to half-way decent performance.. things are MUCH better.. the system is somewhat useable..
but it still appears to be swapping way to much.. ill try tweaking the vmware memory settings and maybe hdparm and see what I get.

-DB

[dirtbag]

So, it appears tha by itself, vmware runs ok... but when run with any other decent sized browser like opera, mozilla, firefox, performance goes to crap.. I can run dillo and vmware at the same time and they seem to coexist fine.. really weird

[Bruce]

Just out of curiosity, if you emerge ethtool and do an ethtool -k eth0, is tcp segmentation offload turned off or on? If it's on, you want to turn it off.

[dirtbag]

dellbox ~ # ethtool -k eth0
Offload parameters for eth0:
Cannot get device rx csum settings: Operation not supported
Cannot get device tx csum settings: Operation not supported
Cannot get device scatter-gather settings: Operation not supported
Cannot get device tcp segmentation offload settings: Operation not supported
Cannot get device udp large send offload settings: Operation not supported
no offload info available
dellbox ~ #
(how embarassing)

btw, eth0
01:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82562EZ 10/100 Ethernet Controller (rev 02)

-DB

[morbus]

I experience the same problems, i use an wlan (ipw3945) card for networking. ethtool -K wlan0 returns nonsense like for you

[dirtbag]

i feel so stupid.. I FINALLY realized.
I had /etc/init.d/hdparm disabled..

I started it, and now poof! blazing performance again from vmware workstation.

oh well, at least I hope this helps someone else.

-DB