An error message like vmwgfx *ERROR* is displayed on some RHEL virtual machines

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• The following error messages are logged in messages file while the server is running in Linux Guest OS on ESXi.
  
  RHEL 9:
  MM DD HH:MM:SS hostname kernel: vmwgfx 0000:00:0f.0: [drm] *ERROR* flip_done timed out
MM DD HH:MM:SS hostname kernel: vmwgfx 0000:00:0f.0: [drm] *ERROR* [CRTC:40:crtc-0] commit wait timed out
MM DD HH:MM:SS hostname kernel: vmwgfx 0000:00:0f.0: [drm] *ERROR* flip_done timed out
MM DD HH:MM:SS hostname kernel: vmwgfx 0000:00:0f.0: [drm] *ERROR* [PLANE:34:plane-0] commit wait timed out

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
Linux Guest OS

Cause

The kernel code that prints this message prints a warning that a page flip in the GPU hardware has not completed before the timeout period. In the case of VMware the GPU is virtualized.

Resolution

This is a harmless message.