macOS Ventura guest has no network connection.

[jerryfrit]

My host is an iMac Pro, running Monterey 12.4.  Up-to-date Fusion 12.

The VM in question was previously running the Monterey 12.5 beta with no issues.

After installing Ventura,  the guest no longer has an network connection.  Toggling between "Autodetect" and "Share with my Mac" makes no difference.  I do notice, in the Network pane of the new System Settings, that ethernet is shown as not connected.

Am I a one-off, or are others seeing this with Ventura?

[palter]

You are not alone.

Using the "ifconfig" command, I can see that there's no Ethernet interface on the system.

[gilby101 · Accepted solution]

Did you change your ethernet device to vmxnet3? Like this:

Change:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000e

to

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

[jerryfrit]

Thanks for the tip.  I was just starting to sniff around in the .vmx.  At this point it will have to wait for morning but I'll give that a go. 🙂

[gilby101]

My reference work is https://blog.eucse.com/how-to-run-macos-monterey-12-beta-in-vmware-fusion which was written a year ago following the author's experiments and comments in this forum. Seems to work for Ventura beta. I found (as with Monterey beta) that I had to add the SVGA settings after getting macOS running,  but before attempting VM Tools. Do take lots of snapshots.

[palter]

Changing the Ethernet device to vmxnet3 does, in fact, restore network access.

(I should mention that my VM is running on an ESXi server so your mileage may vary.)

[albatros99]

i had no problem by updating from osx 12.5 beta 2 to osx 13 developer version with fusion 12.2.3

all virtual machines runs without problems (win7 32 bit, win10 64 bit, win11 64 bit)

cg

[jerryfrit]

Thank you.  Changing the ethernet line did the trick.

I had actually had none of the issues you describe when creating the Monterey VM, so this was a bit of a surprise.  As an experiment, since I had rolled the VM back to 12.5, I edited the line before upgrading again, and Monterey was fine with it as you suggest.

Best of all, speaking as a developer, now that I'm in Ventura my own stuff seems to work. 🙂

[jerryfrit]

Oh yes, I have a large VM "farm".  I have the systems you list and others, including a bunch on Linux flavors.  On that last point, I'm particularly proud of having gotten Arch and Gentoo going. 🙂  This, as I said, just popped up with Ventura.

[JorgeH1]

Hi.

I'm trying to install macOS Ventura on an ESXi VM but it resets all the time when powering on the VM. Apple logo shows for a bit then it resets and gets into an endless loop. Do you mind sharing your configuration? Thanks in advance.

[gilby101]

I have almost zero skills with ESXi, and my skills with tricky VMWare Fusion things is to follow (with understanding) other peoples recipes. Having said that:

1) I don't know your knowledge and skills, but have you already got previous versions of macOS running on ESX?

2) What Intel processor are you using? Skylake and older there are question marks.  Ivy Bridge or older, give up (lack of AVX2). 

3) macOS 13 Ventura installs on Fusion in exactly the same as macOS 12 Monterey on Fusion. So I expect that you can use Monterey on ESX recipes (e.g. https://vmscrub.com/installing-macos-12-monterey-on-vmware-esxi-7-update-3/) to get Ventura running on ESX.

4) With Ventura (or Monetary) on Fusion, the key changes are to ethernet (use vmxnet3) and graphics (svga.present="FALSE"
appleGPU0.present="TRUE"). This is all from this recipe: https://blog.eucse.com/how-to-run-macos-monterey-12-beta-in-vmware-fusion/

My Fusion configuration is just out of the box (as if macOS 11 client) with those two changes. I am not sure if it can be use to you, but here it is:

[palter]

I am hesitant to answer as my ESXi server is not a Mac and VMware frowns on discussions of unsupported configurations. But, if your ESXi server is not a Mac, there's a patch you need to apply to allow it to run macOS VMs. (The symptom you described is exactly what happens without that patch.) You'll have to search for it.

[JorgeH1]

Hi, thanks for quick reply. My ESXi server is actually a Mac so no patches needed (I know what you're talking about). Previous versions including Monterey work without a problem. I read that fusion has no problem running Ventura so I assume ESXi should be able to run it too.

[JorgeH1]

Thank you. I have tried those changes but still not working... 😞 Previous versions work with no problem.

[scott28tt]

@palter 

The issue isn’t configurations that aren’t supported, it is those discussions where there is a violation of the EULA of the software in use, such as running MacOS on any non-Apple hardware.

[dempson]

---

@JorgeH1 wrote:

Thank you. I have tried those changes but still not working... 😞 Previous versions work with no problem.

---

You didn't answer a key question from @gilby101: which processor does your host Mac have, or alternatively, exactly which model is it?

Ventura raised the minimum Mac model requirement by about two years compared to Monterey. For Intel Macs the cutoff point is that all supported models (2017 or later excluding the 2017 MacBook Air) have a Kaby Lake (7th gen) or newer processor, all excluded models have a Skylake (6th gen) or older processor.

For comparison, Monterey ran on selected models with Ivy Bridge (3rd gen) or newer processors, as did several preceding macOS versions.

Because of the higher minimum processor implied by the list of supported Mac models, macOS Ventura expects it can use instructions and hardware features which were introduced in Haswell (4th gen), Broadwell (5th gen), Skylake (6th gen) or Kaby Lake (7th gen). This would apply whether booting natively or running macOS in a VM (Fusion hosted on an older macOS version, or ESXi).

It is known that some parts of Ventura are using AVX2 instructions which were introduced in Haswell, therefore any Mac with an Ivy Bridge (3rd gen) or older processor is not going to be able to run Ventura in a VM. The most recent model this affects is the Late 2013 Mac Pro, which has an Ivy Bridge Xeon; it also affects all Early 2013 or older Macs.

There may be parts of Ventura using other features introduced after Haswell: depending on exactly which feature is needed, this may cause problems or prevent running Ventura in a VM on Macs with a Haswell (4th gen), Broadwell (5th gen) or Skylake (6th gen) processor. That range includes Mid/Late 2013 Macs (apart from the Mac Pro mentioned above), all 2014-2016 Macs, and the 2017 MacBook Air.

Any early successful results running a beta version of Ventura in a VM on an unsupported Mac should be considered provisional - Apple could make code changes in later beta or public releases which add more dependencies on newer processors, therefore your VM is at risk of breaking with every software update from Apple.

[JorgeH1]

Sorry, I missed that question. I'm running ESXi on a MacPro 6.1 (trashcan) 6 CPUs x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1650 v2 @ 3.50GHz. Hope this helps figuring out why not running on my ESXi (7.0U3). Thanks.

[ColoradoMarmot]

6,1 is 2013, which is too old to run Ventura.  That's why it won't run.

https://www.macworld.com/article/782634/macos-ventura-compatibility.html

[dempson]

---

@JorgeH1 wrote:

Sorry, I missed that question. I'm running ESXi on a MacPro 6.1 (trashcan) 6 CPUs x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1650 v2 @ 3.50GHz. Hope this helps figuring out why not running on my ESXi (7.0U3). Thanks.

---

That is the Late 2013 Mac Pro. As I said in my previous message, it will not be possible to run Ventura in a VM on that model because its processor is too old, and Ventura is known to require the use of features introduced in newer processors.

It doesn't make any difference whether you are using ESXi, VMware Fusion or a competing virtualisation product. Virtualisation means the instructions are executed by the real processor, so if the guest OS in the VM needs a newer processor, there is no workaround. Your crashing boot loop is happening because Ventura is trying to execute missing instructions, which don't work on your Mac, so the kernel panics and reboots (every time).

To run Ventura in a VM you will need a newer Intel Mac. For safety (as I noted) you should use a Mac model which has an Intel processor and is officially supported by Ventura, as listed in the article linked by @ColoradoMarmot, or in brief any 2017 or later Intel Mac model apart from the 2017 MacBook Air.

[JorgeH1]

Thank you for your reply and detailed explanation. Most appreciated.