Workstation 8 incompatible with XUbuntu 11.10 x64 guest?

[jwatte]

I'm trying to install an XUbuntu 11.10 x64 guest, but when booting, it just goes into a VGA framebuffer switch cycle and dies.

The host is Windows 7 SP1 x64. It doesn't matter whether I use the Ubuntu "easy install" or do it from scratch from an ISO image.

Specifically, the way I install it is:

1) boot to Ubuntu Server 11.10 x64 ISO image

2) run through text-mode installer

3) boot system to text prompt and log in

4) sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

5) sudo reboot

At that point, after it reboots, it fails going into graphics mode, going into a VGA reset loop.

I have posted a video of the failure here:

http://youtu.be/xTHior3-6Nw

Any ideas about how to work around this behavior?

[admin]

From the video it appears that X is crashing repeatedly when trying to startup.  Have you looked at any of the XOrg log files in /var/log?  Also perhaps lightdm (or whatever xfce uses for a display manager) will have some log info in there.

[jwatte]

I was looking at that, but didn't find a whole lot of seemingly helpful information.

I'm not very good at Xorg and display manager debugging, though. I've attached a number of log files to this post, which perhaps may help.

From what I can tell, it ends up using the vmlegacy driver with a 1024x768 resolution. However, the console display in Workstation ends up being totally black, even when giving it focus, typing at it, etc.

Then lightdm complains that /dev/fb0 cannot be opened (doesn't exist).

[kdshapiro]

You are trying to install server? I have the same config as you and installed 64 and 32 bit isos without any problem, except I used Ubuntu desktop. Did you try to install desktop version anbd see what happens?

[jwatte]

Yes, as I said in my post, I start out with a text-mode server install.

The reason I want to add xubuntu desktop is that this is intended as a development sandbox for a production system.

The production system is based on Ubuntu Server x64, and the sandbox should be the same, to minimize differences and package problems.

However, to actually do development locally, we need a GUI system, and we want it to be as small as possible (hence, xubuntu).

So, any help I can get with why X.org and VMWare Workstation 8 don't seem to get along would be great!