Upgrade from Fedora 42 to 43 results in black screen on VMWare machine

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1

I had VMWare workstation 16 on Windows 11 installed running Fedora 42 and wanted to upgrade to Fedora 43.

I ran “Software” then click the updates tab, refresh icon in upper left, download, then reboot and install, comes back there is still one item there for system updates that won’t go away, for “gnome-online-accounts” 3.5.4.1-1.fc42 → 3.54.10-1.fc42 and “gnome-online-accounts-libs” 3.54.10-1.fc42. So from there I go ahead with the upgrade to 43.

It installed rebooted, and boots the 43 kernel version from grub menu, the fedora logo shows, spinning circle, then a flash of the init items and then just a black screen with cursor in upper left corner. Ctl-Alt-F3, F1, F2, doesn’t do anything.

I booted to emergency mode via adding systemd.unit=emergency.target to the grub boot item via “e” on the grub menu.

I then used ChatGPT to try and fix it.

To start with: mount -o remount,rw /

ChatGPT had me try different things. One was to:

nano /etc/gdm/custom.conf
and then edit it so that the following was active:
WaylandEnable=false

With that, same thing happens but the init items remain on the screen and Ctl-Alt-F3 works, I can log in in the console terminal.

I tried twice (restored the virtual hard drive and tried again).

I then upgraded VMWare workstation to 25H2 but does the exact same thing. I have also tried to disabled 3D acceleration in VMWare.

Here is some of the other things ChatGPT had me do:

systemctl set-default multi-user.target

With that I get the console log in screen

dnf group install “gnome-desktop”

dnf reinstall xorg-x11-drv-vmware open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop
dnf install xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-xinit

dracut --force

systemctl set-default graphical.target

dnf reinstall gdm mutter gnome-shell xorg-x11-drv-vmware open-vm-tools-desktop

systemctl start gdm
When I tried this it crashed - gdm says no session desktop files installed aborting then systemd-coredump gdm signal 5/trap.

ChatGPT just keeps saying to do the same types of things over and over.

I’ve reverted back to 42 and applied updates (except for the two mentioned which won’t go away). I’m not going to try the 43 update until I have some new things to try…

Nothing is working, does anyone know the solution?

Thanks!!

2

I would guess it is something to do with the graphics driver? Maybe you could try updating to Fedora Linux 43, but continue using the kernel that the working Fedora Linux 42 was using (the graphics driver is typically bundled with the kernel).

Alternatively, since you are running Fedora Linux under VMWare, maybe you could change the type of graphics hardware that is being emulated?

3

I think you are asking here a question that has nothing to do directly with Fedora and everything to do with Windows and VMWare, both of which are proprietary and both of which do not keep up with the pace of advancements of fedora and linux kernels.

I suspect if you were to move your fedora system to a VirtualBox environment on the windows host that the problem would be solved.

We can assist in configuring fedora but we cannot do anything about VMWare nor windows.

It is critical that any lingering issues with a fedora update be fully resolved before attempting a version upgrade.

I always suggest doing version upgrades following the doc here and never using a gui to perform system version upgrade

4

Often you need to get an update to the VMware software to support newer linux kernels. Check that your VMware version has the necessary suport for the kernel you are trying to use.

I no longer use VMware, I’m commenting from memory of when I did use it.

5

it’s probably this here, available in #common issue
GDM crashes after upgrade to Fedora 43 due to authselect migration

1 Like
6

That was it. I applied it before upgrading, the reboot after upgrade worked perfectly.

Thanks.