VMWare esxi 8 and Ubuntu 24.04 web console Black screen.

[roblange]

Describe the bug

Installed a new Ubuntu 24.04 desktop enabled vm on VMWare ESXi 8.0.2 and if I leave them and go in to the Web Console after a while there is just a black screen.

16 procs
16gb memory
200GB disk

I installed the vmtools version 12.3.5.46049 build-22544099 as the vmware tools did the same thing.

The vm is fully accessible via SSH during this time.

To see the desktop again, I would need to reset the vm on vmware while the web console is open.

I created 8 Ubuntu 24 VMs and all of them do the same thing.

If someone has any ideas please let me know.

Reproduction steps

1. install VMWare esxi 8
   2.Install Ubuntu 24.04 (ubuntu-24.04-desktop-amd64.iso)
   3.Patch OS fully and install SSH and disable firewall, restarted, .
   4.Install vmtools version 12.3.5.46049 build-22544099
2. Logged out and left the vm.
3. 1 hour later, black screen that wont show desktop.

Expected behavior

If I leave them and go in to the Web Console after a while there is just a black screen on all of them. I have tried waiting for up to 10 minutes and still nothing appears.

Additional context

There are other servers and desktops running on the VMWare from windows 2019, Centos 7, ubuntu 20 and Debian 8. None of them have this issue but they are running the vmtools from the vmware esxi 8 standard issue which is version 10.

[rprabhud]

Hi,
Thanks for reporting the issue. I have filed an internal bug with the relevant team for this issue.
I have tested on my setup that this issue is seen only in Wayland session but not in X11.
As a workaround you can try modifying the session to "Ubuntu on Xorg" before installing open-vm-tools.
Thanks.

[roblange]

Thanks for the advice, I will try that today on one of the servers and see if it makes a difference.

[roblange]

So update on the issue. I changed the settings in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf to WaylandEnable=false
on the Ubuntu 24.04 servers it has fixed the issue. I have monitored for the last 3 hours and all looks well.
Thanks for the advice.

[amundead]

any update for this issue ?

[roblange]

As far as I have seen, no patch has been released for it. However the workaround is working fine. I just make sure the config change is done as soon as I create a new Ubuntu 24 server. The problem does not happen with VMWare version 6.7 or 7 as far as I can see when testing.