VMWare SCSI driver error
Using VMWare server 1.0.4 (check it out, its free!) I recently tried to install Fedora Core 7. I ran into a problem with the SCSI driver. First, while installing I received a message saying that the device sda, sdaa, sdab, etc… could not be found. After clicking through the 52 or so error dialogs I was finally able to proceed. When I finished the installation and restarted the server I received a message:
Asking for cache data failed
Assuming drive cache: write through
rejecting I/O to offline device
for each possible sda device. After all the messages the server proceeded to boot. Needless to say, this took a very, very long time.
Apparently there’s an error with the SCSI driver that hasn’t been addressed yet. You can see more in this thread. My quick solution was to rebuild the VM using the LSI Logic instead of the Bus Logic.
Hope this helps someone.
October 27th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Thank you very much Dan, it took me a while to fix this pb.
November 17th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Same here - got pretty frustrated w/ this one.
November 17th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Oh - fyi - it applies to gOS as well (and whatever ubuntu version it was based on)
December 10th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Had basically the same problem, even with IDE virtual hard disk. Had to set
scsi0:0.present = “FALSE”
This fixed my problem, now boots fast, not exactly sure why VMWare makes such a big deal about scsi emulated devices over IDE? limitations of the driver?
December 17th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Thanks for posting this fix. I\’ve had the same problem with Fedora 7 on my home Dell Precision PC running Windows 32 (haven\’t tried the X64 or Vista) and then tried Fedora 8 - thinking the problem might have been fixed… it\’s not.
For people less familiar with VMWare (like me), you probably could add that the parameter to fix is located in the .vmx file in their Virtual Machines folder, under the same \’Tab\’ name used in the Server Console - assuming you may have server versions running. That still sounds confusing to me and I know where to look. Basically look for the .vmx file in the \’appropriate\’ Virtual Machines sub-folder. Thanks again.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I meant to say: - assuming you may have *several* versions running.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Thanks chaps - this was invaluable - I\’d NEVER have figured this out for myself (being a noob to VMWare).
One thing I\’d add is that I had two occurances of
scsi0:0.present = \