Random crashes and many more problems using MacPro, VmWare 11 and Mojave

[wvdheiden]

Hi

I have a Mac Pro 2009, 12-Core, 96GB RAM. A great machine (although the power consumption is gross)
I was using VmWare Fusion to have some VM's running, with Windows 10, Linux and one with MacOS to virtualize a "private" computer.

That worked OK until I got the idea to update that to Mojave. Before everybody says: go back to your old image... that is no longer working. Not sure what happened but I sc...d it up. Yes I'm stupid. Sometimes.

OK. After many tries I got a fresh new image running with Mojave but... it regularly crashes. After a crash it will not start again "Cannot find a valid peer process".

I usually edit the VM and throw away all the .lck files, but that does not help.

There is probably something with the permissions on my system that i cannot really understand.
So i have to move the VmWare.app from the Applications folder and move it back in. Then it will start again.
The funny thing is that I never have the Button in my System Preferences "Security & Privacy" to allow kernel access. (I have seen pictures in the internet, never happened to me)

Of course i did all other things,  rebooted, deleted VmWare completely, reinstalled but nothing helps. it crashes every day.

The user I normally work on is NOT administrator, I have an admin account to install stuff.

i checked the log files, i see nothing weird in there.

[wila]

Hi,

Not sure what version of VMware Fusion you are running?

But either way, you managed to get yourself wedged between a rock and a hard place.

Your MacPro is not supported on Fusion 10 or Fusion 11.

The only VMware Fusion that is guaranteed to work on Mojave is Fusion 11.

See:

System Requirements for Fusion

Basically the newer VMware Fusion versions do not work with your processor.

If you're trying to use an earlier VMware Fusion on macOS Mojave then problems are expected and some type of instability might indeed include that.

The last VMware Fusion that should work well on your host is Fusion 8.5.

That then might work, but it possibly has problems, including the issue you are seeing.

Also note that Fusion 8.x has a bunch of security issues that have been resolved in later versions.

--

Wil

[wvdheiden]

Fusion 11 of course....

I was not aware of that. Until now it worked fine. It also installs fine (at least I did not see a "not compatible" Warning.

Walter

[wila]

Hi Walter,

Interesting. I would indeed have expected other issues. At least the extremely slow boot times that have been reported before with people trying to run Fusion 11 on older hardware.

I can't test it here myself as I don't have any mac hardware from that time anymore.

Could you attach a vmware.log file from one of the problem VMs? Perhaps it helps clearing things up a bit (you never know).

The attach button is in the bottom right of the reply window.

--

Wil

[ColoradoMarmot]

As far as I can find, Mojave isn't supported on the 2009 machines either.  Or are you running a Mojave guest on an older host OS?

FWIW, OSX doesn't really intend people to use software from a 'standard' account, and many applications don't function properly.  Those accounts are primarily for things like unattended kiosks, and provide little security benefit (there are compensating controls).