This website recently got a major rebuild; if you're missing something, let Lorna know.

VMWare Virtual Machines on NTFS



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


In: tech
Tags: #tech #vmware