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31

Failed to allocate page for guest RAM error in Linux VMware Workstation

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I've been spending increasingly more time running Ubuntu on one of my desktops. It has replaced the Windows Vista I had and so far I quite like the experiment. Out of the box, all of the hardware was properly supported and even the NTFS partitions left from Vsita install are easily available.One of the first things I've decided to install was the trial version of the latest VMware Workstation: 6.0.3 build-80004. And although it installed without a problem, when I tried to run one of the previously created virtual machines, I got the following error:

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)
Failed to allocate page for guest RAM!

As it turned out after a quick investigation, that was a result of running a VM from a NTFS partition, because its default mounting settings don't have the exec option.

Since you shouldn't be running anything critical through an NTFS driver anyway, I simply moved the VM onto one of the ext3 partitions and, sure enough, it fixed the guest RAM allocation error.

Update: if your scenario prevents you from moving a VM to a native partition, use the following option:

mainmem.UseNamedFile = "FALSE"

You should add it to the vmx file of your VM. Thanks for the tip, benito!

Comments

17 Responses to “Failed to allocate page for guest RAM error in Linux VMware Workstation”

  1. benito on April 1st, 2008 12:20 pm

    One posible solution is to include mainmem.UseNamedFile = "false" in the vmx file from the machine.

  2. Kory Miller on April 25th, 2008 10:19 am

    [quote]One posible solution is to include mainmem.UseNamedFile = “false” in the vmx file from the machine.[/quote]

    worked for me (though it gave an error, so I think it wants "FALSE" in all caps….

  3. Mat Seymour on April 27th, 2008 8:30 pm

    yeh does work

    utter genious

    :)

  4. miki on May 3rd, 2008 7:20 am

    I added the line
    mainmem.UseNamedFile = “FALSE”

    worked pretty good!
    thanks!

  5. Dave on May 14th, 2008 9:32 am

    Just make sure the quotes are correct.

    mainmem.UseNamedFile = “FALSE”

    shuld actually be

    mainmem.UseNamedFile = "FALSE"

    see the quote mark difference otherwise an error occurs.

  6. Gleb Reys on May 14th, 2008 9:51 am

    Thanks so much for the comment, Dave!

    I have finally realized what happened - WordPress escaped the quotes with curvy ones, and all the readers who followed my advice got syntax error when they copied and pasted the line.

    It's fixed now! Thanks again!

  7. PiggituX.net WebloG » VMWare-Server unter Linux und NTFS - Partitionen on June 2nd, 2008 5:04 pm

    [...] Quelle: desktop-virtualization [...]

  8. Edward Burns on June 5th, 2008 12:16 pm

    mainmem.UseNamedFile = "FALSE"

    Does this have any adverse affect on performance? What does this setting actually do?

  9. Mike on June 26th, 2008 3:58 pm

    Hey tyring to get this working, i'm VERY new to Linux. i'm trying to do the UseNamedFile = "FALSE" what is the command, or how exactly do i add that to the vmx file? Thanks, Mike

  10. Truong on July 9th, 2008 4:44 am

    If you are in linux, just open file .vmx in your VM's directory by vim or geditl; then append that line into the file.

  11. Running VMWare machines from NTFS filesystems on KUbuntu « Primal Cortex’s Weblog on July 9th, 2008 3:54 pm

    [...] After a quick Google search, I hit this: http://www.desktop-virtualization.com/2008/03/31/failed-to-allocate-page-for-guest-ram/ [...]

  12. Jon on August 15th, 2008 10:25 am

    Well, this error message had just ruined my day, but your little article helped end it on a positive note. My .vmx file had stopped working and I had forgotten that I just recently moved it from my Ubuntu partition over to my Windows-dual-boot data partition. So, moving that file's folder back to /usr solved the problem. Thanks!

  13. Gleb Reys on August 15th, 2008 11:24 am

    Glad to hear you had it fixed after all, Jon!

    It was a rather frustrating experience for myself, took a while to reconnect the events and figure it out.

  14. Jhon F. Ortiz O. on August 28th, 2008 1:23 pm

    Hi! I repaired the VMware virtual machine following these steps. I just moved the vmware vm from a ntfs partition to ext3 partition. Thanks for this information. Bye!

  15. Gleb Reys on August 28th, 2008 3:05 pm

    Hi, glad to have helped you! :)

  16. nor on September 26th, 2008 5:22 pm

    works. thanks.

  17. 老所工作室 » Blog Archive » 在Ubuntu下安装VMware 6 on September 29th, 2008 8:49 pm

    [...] 继续搜索，找到这个帖子，原来问题出在我的虚拟机是在NTFS文件系统下，这个文件系统无法支持命名管道。解决的办法很简单，打开我虚拟机的vmx文件，添加一行配置： [...]

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