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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

Fusion Will Not Launch

Running Fusion 11.1.1 under Mac OS 10.13.6 on a late 2014 model iMac 27"

When trying to launch Fusion I get the following two messages (see attached).

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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

Any suggestions or ideas?

Thanks

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

You may need to allow VMware Fusion in the security settings.

see e.g.  Re: Could not open /dev/vmmon: Broken pipe.

André

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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for trying to assist.

Checked in System Preferences->Privacy and Security and there are no issues there. Under the Privacy tab VMFusion does not appear in either list, left or right.

Tried the Terminal thing in Recovery mode. Entered: csrutil disable and Terminal responded:

-bash: csrutil: command not found

-bash-3.2#

Any other ideas?

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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Moderator: Thread moved to the Fusion forum area.


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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for moving sorry I started this in the wrong location.

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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

I have just updated Fusion to 11.1 to see if that might fix my issues, sad to say still a no go.

The error message about the Broken pipe. It also says"Please make sure that the kernel module 'vmmon' is loaded."

I have no idea what this is or where to look for it.

Fusion is not being blocked in my Security and Privacy settings and Fusion is included in the Accessibility options of the Privacy tab.

I have tried some of the other various Terminal command recommendations and so far none of those have worked.

Can anyone provide any other suggestions or help?

Thanks you!

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Try this:

Could you try the following commands to load vmmon kext manually?

> sudo kextload /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/

> kextstat | grep vm

What is the output?

more details in the following thread:

New to VMWare on Mac. 'Could not open /dev/vmmon: Broken pipe.' ... 'Please make sure that the kerne...

Note also that there's a limited number of character device major numbers that macOS allows.

So it is entirely possible that other software (virtualbox, some VPN's etc..) are already making your host run out of available character devices causing the vmmon kernel extension not be able to load.

More technical details about that here: Fusion 5 - Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

First, thank you so much for trying to help!

Here is what I get from those two commands:

sudo kextload /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/

Password:

/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) authentication failure (file ownership/permissions); check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8).

iMac:~ markromine$ kextstat | grep vm

iMac:~ markromine$

I hope I entered the commands correctly. If I need to do them differently let me know.  I did them as two separate commands. Does the response give you any helpful info or leads?

After doing a search and to my knowledge I do not have Virturalbox on my machine. I do not know about VPN's.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

I would probably have a look at the logs to find more info about that error.

What you can also try is this:

sudo kextutil -t /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/

and see if that gives you back a more verbose error.

One other thing you can probably try is to download again. (1)

Then drag VMware Fusion to the bin.

Reboot macOS, install, reboot macOS

Does it work now?

(all the reboots are to make sure that no lingering kernel extensions are being a PITA)

If that doesn't help then strip the quarantine flags from your download

  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/VMware-Fusion-11.1-<digits of the actual version>.dmg

adjust the filename to what you have downloaded.

Then do the uninstall/install dance from (1) again.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

"I would probably have a look at the logs to find more info about that error."

Not sure what log you would need but this came from: Library->Logs->VMware 5/14/20 and I have attached.

"What you can also try is this: sudo kextutil -t /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/"

This is what I got from that command: Kext rejected due to insecure location: <OSKext 0x7fa1a3d25200 [0x7fff97b1bc20]> { URL = "file:///Library/StagedExtensions/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:

"One other thing you can probably try is to download again. (1)

Then drag VMware Fusion to the bin."

Looks like this might be my next step. Trying to remember, if I delete VMWare then I will also have to reinstall Windows too, correct?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

... if I delete VMWare then I will also have to reinstall Windows too, correct?

Fusion treats VMs  like e.g. Word treats documents. Reinstalling the application will not affect documents/VMs.

André

MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

I removed Fusion and rebooted, downloaded a fresh copy of 11.0. Installed rebooted and I still have the same problem, broken pipe.

I don't know if that command that you gave me to try revealed anything or not.

Anything else that I can try?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

The above output certainly looks like macOS gatekeeper trying to interfere.

The command:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/VMware-Fusion-11.1-<digits of the actual version>.dmg

does not give you any output.

What it does is that it strips the "this file is downloaded from the internet" tag that apple automatically adds to the dmg file you downloaded.

Once that is done, I would expect that you can install without gatekeeper interfering.

Here's an example of what it looks like before running xattr -dr command:

$ xattr -l VMware-Fusion-11.5.0-14634996.dmg

com.apple.diskimages.fsck:

00000000  85 69 45 96 68 12 6A 23 79 1F E9 41 98 61 B6 43  |.iE.h.j#y..A.a.C|

00000010  01 E6 EB 5B                                      |...[|

00000014

com.apple.diskimages.recentcksum: i:4889488 on B3FBBC07-CC56-48D6-9790-4EE2B5CF08E5 @ 1569759549 - CRC32:$98D3F230

com.apple.lastuseddate#PS:

00000000  3D A1 90 5D 00 00 00 00 58 95 F7 22 00 00 00 00  |=..]....X.."....|

00000010

com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDownloadedDate:

00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 A1 01 33 41 C1 A0 6C 5E  |bplist00..3A..l^|

00000010  C8 Several more lines of numbers and ASCII 00 00  |................|

000000c4

com.apple.quarantine: 0183;5d90a13d;Safari;02FF134B-1F61-419F-83D1-B48AC9BFFBA4

It's the line in bold that matters.

Once you run the xattr -dr command that line will be removed. No more "com.apple.quarantine" tag.

If the tag is removed then installing Fusion again should no longer trigger a gatekeeper problem.

-

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for your immense patience in trying to help me out.

Here is what I did.

I deleted Fusion and rebooted.

Then I ran the following command in Terminal, I hope that I have all the appropriate dashes etc: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/VMware-Fusion-11.0.0-10120384.dmg

This is how Terminal responded, so I thought this was good:

Last login: Tue May 19 19:42:47 on ttys000

iMac:~ markromine$ xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/VMware-Fusion-11.0.0-10120384.dmg

iMac:~ markromine$

I then ran the 11.0.0 installer. When it finished running I tried to launch Windows but I got the same broken pipe error message.

Should I have done another restart after running the Terminal command before trying to install?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

OK.. that should be fine.

One question though. I see you are using VMware Fusion 11.0 and not the latest version.

Any reason for that?

You should be able to install VMware Fusion 11.5.3 as well (going from 11.0 to 11.5 was a free upgrade)

Can you try with the latest version?

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

I am running OS 10.13.6 (High Sierra) if I update to the latest version of Fusion will have to update my OS? I thought I had to be running at least Mojave. I don't want to update my OS if possible. I have lots of Adobe software that will break if I update to Mojave.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

According to the doc:

System Requirements for Fusion

macOS 10.13 is fine.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
MRomine
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for all your help and patience.

I went ahead and updated my OS to Mojave yesterday and it seems to have fixed my Fusion issues. I am no longer getting the broken pipe message.So for the time being I am happy.

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