Piix4_SMBus: 000:00:07.3: Host SMBus controller bus not enabled

I have been using Ubuntu on VMware Player; today when I logged into VMware, it showed updates available for Ubuntu 15.xx. I allowed the updates and after downloading all the packages it restarted automatically, but never booted back. It is throwing messages like

Piix4_SMBus: 000:00:07.3: Host SMBus controller bus not enabled
failed to start /etc/rc.local compatibility

Please describe a way to fix it!

3

5 Answers

First, add this line in your vmx file to increase the boot time to 50s

bios.bootDelay = "50000"

Start the VM, hold the left shift key down, then hit Enter.

In the grub menu, choose Advanced options for Ubuntu -> Recovery mode. Once the system boots, choose 'Root' to drop into a root shell.

In the root shell, enter the following commands

mount -o remount,rw /
nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

go down a few lines (almost anywhere) and enter the line

blacklist i2c-piix4

Then press ctrl+o to save the file, and ctrl+x

Finally, enter the command

reboot

20

The method above didn't work for me on Ubuntu 16.10 and VMWare Workstation 12.5.1..

Boot into Ubuntu Recovery Mode --> drop into the root shell and open the kernel blacklist config file.

nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Then add this line into the file and save.

blacklist intel_powerclamp

I found this solution from this post:

0

At first, open *.vmx file from your VMware folder via notepad. Then add this line to the file and save it.

cpuid.1.eax = "0000:0000:0000:0001:0000:0110:1010:0101"

The problem will be fixed.

2

Although I'm late to the party, the solution to your other problem (failed to start /etc/rc.local compatibility etc., as described in the later comments to Charles Green's answer) is most probably (at least was for me), to wipe old, incompatible vmhgfs (shared VM disk) settings/module, since they break a couple of things.

First, the module doesn't load if there are version mismatch etc. Remove vmhgfs from /etc/modules, and now the init should run properly.

Secondly, if you added a fstab entry for your vmhgfs, systemd-fstab-generator generates a systemd startup task for it, also resulting in failed systemctl unit. Comment out or remove your vmhgfs line in fstab, and remove the relevant mnt-*.mount (e.g. mnt-vmhgfs.mount) files from your /run/systemd/generator. That should fix the 2nd part of the problem.

I was able to solve the problem by dropping into safe mode and running clean.

EDIT:

This was done holding shift when rebooting the VM. when in the grub go to "advanced options". Then in that menu run "clean"

1