Prevent Vmware messing up color palette.

Message

tecknojunky · Post by **tecknojunky** » Sun Jan 09, 2005 5:47 pm

Remember in the (archaics) old days of Windows 98, when it booted, the Windows logo would become all funny looking? This is now happening when I run Vmware. I can't fix it unless I restart Xorg.

I'd like to know if I can do something about it. I can'y find nothing about it, probably because I don't know how to search with proper terms to describe this.

Thanks.

J0rus · Post by **J0rus** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 3:03 am

I have the same problem. The only way I've found to fix it is to Ctrl-Alt-F1 out to console, then Alt-F7 back.
Odd part is I tried to take a screenshot of my own to show the corruption and the weirdness doesn't show up with either Gimp or scrot!

I'm running the fglrx 3.14.6 drivers on my ATI 9800 Pro, and am currently in BigHead (3200x1200) mode.
I also have both a vesa-tng framebuffer AND fbsplash bootsplash going on behind my KDE session.

Haven't tried turning anything off yet...anyone get rid of this annoying problem?

~J0rus

tecknojunky · Post by **tecknojunky** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 3:30 am

J0rus wrote:Odd part is I tried to take a screenshot of my own to show the corruption and the weirdness doesn't show up with either Gimp or scrot!

Gee, I just took a look at my screenshot I had link in my first post. It showed quite right and ok. I removed the link. It seem you can't screenshot it.

finr · Post by **finr** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 7:47 am

This is not really a solution to your problem, but I found that starting gmplayer obviously restores whatever went wrong, this used to work for me with vmware and console switching.
Since I'm using the radeon drivers instread of fglrx everythings fine, though. Apart from no accelerartion being available, that is...

tredman2 · Post by **tredman2** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 4:05 pm

I haven't done any kind of investigation on what causes this, but I have discovered after uninstalling the gensplash features, that this palette problem no longer occurs. My first impression is that it has something to do with the way the splash works with the video memory in the framebuffer.

I also don't know if this is related, but every once in a while, when the kernel would switch to the higher resolution frame buffer settings, the system would freeze up tight, not even getting to init. Since I removed splash= from grub, I haven't had that issue. Whenever the splash= was active, the screen would start up with horrible looking fonts, then get to this one particular point in the boot, reset the video mode and display the fonts properly. This is the point where it would occasionally lock up on me. Without splash, it never does that video mode change and thus never locks up on me. However, the side effect was that VMWare no longer messes with the color palette.

Sorry if I seem like I'm rambling, but it's Friday, and I SO need the weekend to get here.

Tim

TwoSlick · Post by **TwoSlick** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 8:30 pm

I've also experienced this problem. I've been using vmware for a while, then needed to rebuild the system from scratch. When I did so, I noticed that vmware started corrupting the screen. I tried the two latest gentoo-dev-sources, nvidia-kernel drivers, and combinations of them. However none of them solved the problem. From seeing one of the previous solutions, I decided to switch from vesa-tng to vesafb in my kernel. This seems to solve the problem for me too. It is my opinion that there may be a problem in the vesa-tng driver.

- TwoSlick

tredman2 · Post by **tredman2** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 12:37 am

That would make sense. That's the VESA driver I was using.

I think I've completely cast aside framebuffer consoles right now, though. My workstations use X almost exclusively, and my servers are headless.

tecknojunky · Post by **tecknojunky** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:18 am

tredman2 wrote:That would make sense. That's the VESA driver I was using.

Not an absolute thrut. I'm using the tdfx framebuffer driver and I occasionnaly have the issue. But, finaly, switching to a text console and back to X fix it. Not that of a big deal.

tredman2 · Post by **tredman2** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 8:33 pm

That seems to be the universal fix, no matter which driver you're using. I think all it needs is for the video mode to be reinitialized, and it's fine. Any program that you run in X that changes the video mode, like full screen media applications or games, should do the same thing.

And while doing an CTL-ALT-F1 followed by an ALT-F7 is a workaround, I'm in and out of VMWare so much that I just got weary of it.

tecknojunky · Post by **tecknojunky** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:25 am

Well, I usualy do it once. while I don't know your definition of "frequent", I too go back and forth between the guest and the host, but I don't use (or very occasionaly) the full screen feature. But if the color palette does get screwed up constantly, I have no problem imagining it would get anyone agravated.

cbueche · Post by **cbueche** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:11 pm

Hi,

not sure, just a guess, but for me, it screw only the anti-aliased fonts. A Konsole text is OK, but texts in evolution and firefox are screwed.
ctrl-alt-F1 and back to ctrl-alt-F7 fixes it until the next vmware start.

Charles

tecknojunky · Post by **tecknojunky** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:05 am

I guess just for you. For me, even my desktop's wallpaper gets all messed up.

cbueche · Post by **cbueche** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:45 am

Correct, now that I try, some pixels of the wallpaper are the wrong color. So it seem the palette is gone.

s4kk3 · Post by **s4kk3** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:18 pm

One solution is to start gmplayer(mplayer) and leave it open while you're running vmware.

chukaman · Post by **chukaman** » Fri May 13, 2005 9:02 pm

i'm experiencing the palette problem as well, with vmware workstation 5, the latest xorg and the latest ati-drivers, and I seem to have fixed the problem by simply setting the windows that runs inside the vmware to use 16 bit colour instead of 32 bit colour. the problem only stopped happening after one restart of xorg. not sure if that's a solution for anybody but it's worked for me.

spiryt · Post by **spiryt** » Sat May 14, 2005 10:51 am

you are using vesa framebuffer I suppose. To get rid of those permamently kernel has to be compiled without framebuffer suport, you will loose penguin/bootsplash etc but vmware will be working properly with no trash on the screen left and fully functional full screen mode. (at least it helped in my case)

EtherealSoul · Post by **EtherealSoul** » Wed May 18, 2005 11:37 am

Well I don't know if anything has to do with it but I was reading a article regarding how to speed up the system ...
One of the thing to we could do was sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10
well not only speed up a little bit my system as the vmware wks 5 stop messing with my color pallete.

by the way ... I'm using 2.6.11-gentoo-r7, ati-drivers 8.12.10, xorg-x11 latest version.

asiobob · Post by **asiobob** » Wed May 18, 2005 1:16 pm

This is interesting, I'm not suffering from this problem. I'll contribute my system details

kernel: 2.6.11.7 (vanilla)
vesa driver: vesafg (not vesa-tng)
gensplash: patched and worked
nvidia drivers: for geforce ti 4200
vmware: 5
vmware windows bit depth: 32

opentaka · Post by **opentaka** » Sat May 28, 2005 11:27 am

i got the exact same problem.
I havnt find the solution yet, but starting gmplayer fix the problem anyway

sbbeebe · Post by **sbbeebe** » Sat May 28, 2005 12:36 pm

As a couple other posters have noted, I removed fb support from the kernel and that fixed it.

AlterEgo · Post by **AlterEgo** » Sun May 29, 2005 10:10 am

sbbeebe wrote:As a couple other posters have noted, I removed fb support from the kernel and that fixed it.

You need to increase color depth for your frame buffer device to 16 bits or higher (on the host machine). Then the vmware screen corruption goes away.

spiryt · Post by **spiryt** » Sun May 29, 2005 10:24 am

You need to increase color depth for your frame buffer device to 16 bits or higher (on the host machine). Then the vmware screen corruption goes away

Will VMWare work full screen with increased color depth of will it just stop messing the colour palette ?

AlterEgo · Post by **AlterEgo** » Sun May 29, 2005 1:42 pm

spiryt wrote:
You need to increase color depth for your frame buffer device to 16 bits or higher (on the host machine). Then the vmware screen corruption goes away
Will VMWare work full screen with increased color depth of will it just stop messing the colour palette ?

It did for me. Found the info somewhere on the Vmware forums. Can't remember details, sorry.

Marctraider · Post by **Marctraider** » Sun May 29, 2005 3:42 pm

I switched from vesa-tng to normal vesafb and my problems were away :)

opentaka · Post by **opentaka** » Mon May 30, 2005 9:47 am

Marctraider wrote:I switched from vesa-tng to normal vesafb and my problems were away

cool. is there any advantage or disadvantage changing from vesa-tng to vesafb? like I have to reconfig my grub setting etc?

Prevent Vmware messing up color palette.

Prevent Vmware messing up color palette.

VMWare Color Palette Problem

VESAtng

Re: VESAtng

change windows settings