Installed VmWare Fusion 11 Pro needs a recovery or a repair. It is installed on Catalina 10.15.7, running on iMac 14.2. The system got migrated to new internal blade SSD (from internal blade SSD) recent days - Catalina installation to new blade from scratch. Migration was completed by accomplishing data import from Time Machine backup using Migration Assistant. At the end Catalina found and applied some updates. It looked like overall there have been two rounds of updates conducted by Catalina. First one had 1.52GB to install, subsequent one 1.71GB.
It turns out that Migration Assistant handled Fusion badly. The two virtual machines existing do not boot
. I consider to apply fix as proposed by user JT Fields in comments to blog VMware Fusion and the vmmon broken pipe error. The solution has following form
I wonder however if the application of above solution can have impacts on apps which run without problems - the directory which gets removed doesn't seem to be Fusion-specific. JT Fields applied it on Mojave. In my case it is Catalina which eventually plays a role. Any opinions regarding side-effects of proposed solution to all apps working fine as of time being?
I hesitate to follow instructions found in body of the same blog as not all procedure steps got understood well.
EDIT
In the meantime small research could be accomplished - based on hints found in web. It results in following findings for the particular case of iMac here. It is not possible to load vmmon kext manually using kextload tool. Loading fails due to blocking by some system policy. kextutil confirms this status, system policy OSKext 0x7fcea7c33240 [0x7fff90c67ce0]. Same status indicated by kextutil for two further kernel extensions found in Fusion 11.5.7 app bundle.
On another hand Fusion 11.5 is known to be compatible with Catalina. How can it then be that its kernel extensions get blocked? According to output of 'kextstat' command with no arguments only VirtualBox kexts are found if it concerns 3rd-party kernel extensions.
Interestingly Fusion 11.5.7 worked fine since upgrade to Catalina (from Sierra 10.12) which took place June 2023. It is the migration of this Catalina setup approximately 14 months later (last week) which messed up the installation of Fusion 11.5.7. Eventually any idea where these discrepancies can come from?
EDIT
Migration Assistant handled installed Fusion Pro 11 badly. Interestingly it managed to migrate kexts of VirtualBox 6.1.50 very well.
kextutil outputs same error message for two further kexts of VmWare Fusion: vmnet, vmioplug.
It turns out that Migration Assistant handled Fusion badly. The two virtual machines existing do not boot
Code:
Error: Could not open /dev/vmmon: Broken pipe
Code:
BUT here's what did work:
Reboot -> Recovery Mode -> Terminal -> csrutil disable
Reboot -> normal mode -> sudo rm -fr /private/var/db/KernelExtensionManagement
Reboot -> Recovery Mode -> Terminal -> csrutil endisable
Reboot -> normal mode -> run fusionI wonder however if the application of above solution can have impacts on apps which run without problems - the directory which gets removed doesn't seem to be Fusion-specific. JT Fields applied it on Mojave. In my case it is Catalina which eventually plays a role. Any opinions regarding side-effects of proposed solution to all apps working fine as of time being?
I hesitate to follow instructions found in body of the same blog as not all procedure steps got understood well.
EDIT
In the meantime small research could be accomplished - based on hints found in web. It results in following findings for the particular case of iMac here. It is not possible to load vmmon kext manually using kextload tool. Loading fails due to blocking by some system policy. kextutil confirms this status, system policy OSKext 0x7fcea7c33240 [0x7fff90c67ce0]. Same status indicated by kextutil for two further kernel extensions found in Fusion 11.5.7 app bundle.
On another hand Fusion 11.5 is known to be compatible with Catalina. How can it then be that its kernel extensions get blocked? According to output of 'kextstat' command with no arguments only VirtualBox kexts are found if it concerns 3rd-party kernel extensions.
Interestingly Fusion 11.5.7 worked fine since upgrade to Catalina (from Sierra 10.12) which took place June 2023. It is the migration of this Catalina setup approximately 14 months later (last week) which messed up the installation of Fusion 11.5.7. Eventually any idea where these discrepancies can come from?
EDIT
Migration Assistant handled installed Fusion Pro 11 badly. Interestingly it managed to migrate kexts of VirtualBox 6.1.50 very well.
Code:
bash-3.2$ kextstat | awk '$6 !~ /^com.apple/ { print $6 " \t " $7 }'
Name (Version)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv (6.1.50)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB (6.1.50)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt (6.1.50)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp (6.1.50)
bash-3.2$
bash-3.2$ sudo kextutil /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/
Password:
Kext rejected due to system policy: <OSKext 0x7fcea7c33240 [0x7fff90c67ce0]>
{ URL = "file:///Applications/VMware%20Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/",
ID = "com.vmware.kext.vmx86" }
Diagnostics for /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext:
bash-3.2$kextutil outputs same error message for two further kexts of VmWare Fusion: vmnet, vmioplug.
Last edited: