VM Ware Fusion potentially causes macOS 10.15.6 to crash

[Alex_Ma]

I recently upgraded to macOS 10.15.6. Now if I leave VM Ware Fusion running while leaving my mac for some time, e.g. - for a night, the system crashes. This did not happen with the older macOS 10.15.5 version.

VM Ware Fusion version: Professional Version 11.5.5 (16269456)

macOS Catalina version: 10.15.6 (19G73)

[mandruff]

Damn, that’s annoying. Personally I would uninstall / reinstall Fusion in such circumstance.

[NOMOS]

I did that, uninstalling Fusion, even finding and deleting all of the /Library and ~/Library files.  But when that was done and rebooted and then running the installer, the installer crashes the exact same way and error as running VMware Fusion itself!

What finally did work was:

TM restore back to 10.15.6 build 19G73

MacOS reinstall to 10.15.6 build 19G2006 (just released 2020-08-06)

Then VMware Fusion ran as normal

Then I thought, ok, let's go ahead and update VMware Fusion to 11.6 (with the "Do you want to update prompts?" when 11.5 starts).

BIG MISTAKE!

After the install for 11.6 completed and Fusion tried to restart itself as 11.6, it crashed with the same Termination code Namespace ...

So overnight I TM restored back to 10.15.6 build 19G73 and am not MacOS reinstalling to 10.15.6 build 19G2006 (i.e., repeating above that worked) to see if I get Fusion 11.5 back and working again....

[droark42]

Hi. I had an overnight panic with 11.5.5. I'm guessing the kernel report won't help much at this point but I'm attaching it just in case. I'm going to see if I can get my BR drive to cause a panic. That has always been a reliable cause of panics.

[kigoi]

MacOS reinstall to 10.15.6 build 19G2006 (just released 2020-08-06)

i didn't even notice it in that more recent mds screenshot. it might be a special version for the new imac. i'm going to reinstall macos thru recovery to see what build i get.

[amjbecker]

I was going to say the same thing. I wonder if it’s patched in the new build?

[droark42]

Interesting. For better or worse, I installed Fusion 11.5.6 before using the BR drive. I had been able to consistently get a kernel panic on 11.5.5 whenever I started copying off the disc, even right at startup. Now, it didn't panic. Could just be a coincidence, and it's not like I controlled for 11.5.5 vs. 11.5.6. Still, I guess we'll see what comes down the pipe.

[kigoi]

recovery mode has reinstalled 19G73, probly based on me not having a 2020 imac 27, boohoo

[ColoradoMarmot]

All of the builds of 10.15.5 on the servers are for specific hardware - if you have an older machine, we're basically out of luck unless you have access to the generic installer somewhere.

[NOMOS]

I was able to install it (19G2006) on my 2011 MBP 17" using dosdude1.com's catalina patcher.

However, I am unable to install it on my 2018 MBP 15", I'm sure due to the platform targeting you mentioned.

But I do not see evidence on MBP17 that 19G2006 has patched the memory leak.  Memory usage seems to be increasing without bound.

[NOMOS]

I did the same thing this morning, upgraded my 2018 MBP15 to Big Sur public beta and installed the Fusion Tech preview just as you said. 

No issues seen yet.  Memory leak seems to be fixed as evidenced by "sudo zprint -d".  VMware Fusion is working fine. 

The real test will be tomorrow when I run VMware Fusion alongside MS Teams for conference calls.

[bmcmillan]

Well while this has been annoying but I have been able to deal with it by suspending my VM’s at the end of the day and restarting my machines. Not tonight. Had a hard crash that wiped out my keychain.  Now this is unpleasant. I did not try any of the fixes mentioned. Beware.  Restart more frequently until a fix comes from Apple.  

[Alex_Ma]

A few times I was able to manually restart the system while it started showing symptoms. As soon as you see some applications making strange things, this is it. You need to shutdown the VM quickly and then restart from terminal because finder will most likely be unresponsive. It makes sense to keep a terminal window always open, because you might not be able to open it while the things start going south.

[netroworx]

Has anyone come up with an alert that can trigger a restart when low memory hits a dangerous level?

[mctavish]

kigio's idea about using iStat Menus to monitor memory pressure (posts 73 and 112) works well for me. As the pressure rises above 50% I know trouble in on the way. You can set alerts for multiple pressure readings to show up on the screen. I'm not very familiar with iStat, but as far as I know there is no way to set sound, text, or email alerts.

[NOMOS]

Just had my first crash with Big Sur while running VMware Fusion Tech Preview and MS Teams simultaneously.

Ugh...

[whftx]

Installing iStat has also helped me avoid any further crashes.  Thanks kigoi! I find the pressure reading goes above 50% almost as soon as I open VMWare, however, and pretty quickly gets into the 70-75% range.  That doesn't trigger a crash, though, so I have an alert set at 80% and shut down as soon as I get a few alerts.  So far, this has allowed me to work 3-4 hours at a stretch without restarting.  I tried reducing the memory allocation in the VM, but that didn't seem to make a difference.

If Apple doesn't release a Catalina patch to fix this soon, I'm thinking I will backup my .vmwarevm file and any files recently saved on my Mac, then restore my Mac from my last 10.15.5 Time Machine backup, and then copy the .vmwarevm file and any recent files back in using Finder.

If this works, I'll sit back until others confirm that Big Sur and a new version of VMware Fusion (12?) are working reliably.

Any thoughts?

PS:  This thread is a lifesaver and I am grateful to all of you who are far more knowledgeable than I am.  Thank you!

[NOMOS]

Thinking back on this, my crash with Big Sur didn't come while I was having a video conference in Teams; it came when I got up and away from my workstation for a few minutes for a cup of tea.  So maybe this is the previous problem where the MBP goes to sleep and then crashes.  I've been watching Memory with one of the old Memory Clean apps and free memory has remained above about 6GB even with everything running.  So I'm turning Power Nap back off and will be watching tomorrow for the next crash.

[amjbecker]

Been doing some digging on this today and I’m starting to think what has been suggested by a few others: this might actually be a core kernel regression.

Hopefully a supplemental update comes soon. Otherwise I’m going to be seriously disappointed if we have to upgrade to Big Sur to work through it.

[kigoi]

i don't understand which processes make the leak worse, but i have some indications that time machine (and/or spotlight) have light negative impact.

obviously this is a pretty dumb time to turn off backups. still not sure whether to post this.

in any case a couple nights ago, to reduce risk of a memory usage spike crashing system overnight, i unmounted local backup drive. in the morning the session's memory situation was better than usual. i repeated this for a couple workday sessions & saw the same result. maybe it's a fluke. anyway it doesn't seem big enough to be worth the risk of not backing up an unstable system, but it's interesting.

[mctavish]

In regard to workarounds, if you have access to a Windows machine, accessing Windows via a remote desktop app enables integrating Windows into a Mac workflow similar to the way Fusion works. You can leave Fusion shut down. Not as good as a functioning Fusion, but maybe the best bet until this mess is fixed by Apple (and the cows should be home by then, too).