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!

11 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/ [...]

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