"Failed to power on"

[klinquist]

I've got two Macs. On one of them, VMWare Fusion works great - I had v10, 11, 11.5, and now 12.  

On my other Mac, I haven't been able to power on a VM since... Fusion 11?  I just get "Failed to power on (path)" on ANY VM when I hit the start/play button.

I upgraded to Big Sur and installed VMWare Player 12 (I own VMWare 11.x, trying Player before I pay for the upgrade to the full version of 12) and am experiencing the same issues.

I've tried the following:

Uninstalled, including removing all Library files & even kexts, reinstalling.

"Allowed" the kernel extension

Disabling SIP in combination with the above.

Making sure VMWare has all permissions in the Privacy tab of System Preferences. Removing and re-adding it to all permissions.

Trying new VMs.

Making sure all other hypervisors are completely removed (namely Docker).

Must be some conflict with something that was installed on this mac at one time!   I've been unable to find any relevant log files to give me more information.    I think I've tried everything found in other search results here in this forum!

Any ideas?

[BOBC10]

I also got a problem on install Windows 10 disk file, It can't run and always stuck after changed the setting.

[zhaokaiy]

Does vmrun work please? vmrun is a command-line to to operate the virtual machines.

to power on a vm:

open the Terminal and input

vmrun start /path/to/xxx.vmx

[klinquist]

Found vmrun in /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library, it wasn't in my path.

Ran vmrun, it brought up fusion and then gave me the same error as before. :(.

[klinquist]

@zhaokaiy

What's the best way to get support on this? Pay for pro?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Long shot - where is the VM stored?  Is it possible that the file permissions aren't set properly?

[klinquist]

In my homedir, all files owned by me, full r/w/x permissions.

I even tried "sudo vmrun.." (same result)

[zhaokaiy]

hi, klinquist

I think both the Pay and  Pro supports this.

[zhaokaiy]

Is there any vmware.log inside the vm folder please?

[wila]

klinquist,

You have one of VMware's finest (zhaokaiy) currently trying to help out... Not sure if support is going to be better than that...

As you mentioned earlier on that you are not getting a vmware.log file and as the support bundle you supplied earlier doesn't really give much hints...

For a Linux host this is where I would get out strace.

But this is macOS.. so dtruss is the alternative, but ... nowadays we have SIP.

So you would have do to a bit extra:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60908765/mac-osx-using-dtruss

--
Wil

[zhaokaiy]

Sorry, I mean both Free and Pro will get supported.

[klinquist]

I've already got SIP disabled, how should I proceed with dtruss? Not familiar with the tool.

[zhaokaiy]

Not quite if this is related with this issue, but why your group id is a big number instead of the regular staff/admin please?

would you please paste the result of

$ id

$ id -g

$ dscl . -list /Users PrimaryGroupID | grep [gid]

Or would you try to create a new admin user on the same mac and try to power the VM please?

[MacDragon]

I've been having this Failed to power on for last month or so and gave up back then, it briefly booted after I deleted and remade VM, ran once, then resumed back to not powering on. Attached log.

[zhaokaiy]

Hi, MacDragon

For your case, would you please change the side-channel-mitigation to be enabled and have a try please?

Steps to do:

1. Open VM Settings

2. Press Advanced

3. Uncheck the "Disable Side Channel Mitigations" checkbox

[MacDragon]

Thanks for reply, that did indeed seem to get it going!

is it a known bug? I previously disabled it wanting as much performance as possible, not being too worried about security, hadn't even occurred it could be a cause ( or saw anything obvious pointing to it in logs )

[tuliow]

I'm with same problem here... Any solution?

[zhaokaiy]

Hi, tuliow

Would you help upload the log files to help identify the potential issues please?

1. Open Fusion

2. Try to power on the VM

3. The most important logs are located at

1) ~/Library/Logs/VMware\ Fusion/*.log

2) $(xxx.vmware.vm)/vmware*.log

[klinquist]

@zhaokaiy Holy crap that worked!

My group ID was a big number... this machine was previously on an AD domain.

I logged in as another admin user and was able to launch a VM no problem!!

Any fix for launching this as my primary user?

[klinquist]

Just an update.. I successfully changed my uid to a low number... and my default group to staff... and chown'd all of my files.... and believe it or not my computer still boots and works fine... as does Fusion!   Yay!

[SimonAZM]

Hi zhaokaiy I have the same problem running Fusion 12 on MacBook Air M1 Processor, I am trying to run a VM of Windows 10 64 brand new fresh created, please take a look at my log file. I recently installed Fusion 12 player but I haven't find the way to run any single VM

vmware-usbarb-4564.log

021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: Log for VMware USB Arbitration Service pid=4564 version=16.0.0 build=build-16975537 option=Release
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: The host is 64-bit.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: Host codepage=UTF-8 encoding=UTF-8
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: Host is Mac OS X 10.16 (20B29) Darwin 20.1.0
2021-01-08T14:57:10.748-07:00| host-67124| I005: DictionaryLoad: Cannot open file "/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/usb-virt-api-switch": No such file or directory.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.748-07:00| host-67124| I005: UsbVirtApiSwitch: product=VMware Fusion state=on
2021-01-08T14:57:10.748-07:00| usbArb| I005: VTHREAD 8661577216 "usbArb" tid 67124
2021-01-08T14:57:10.748-07:00| usbArb| I005: DictionaryLoad: Cannot open file "/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config": No such file or directory.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: [msg.dictionary.load.openFailed] Cannot open file "/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config": No such file or directory.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: PREF Optional preferences file not found at /Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config. Using default values.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: DICT --- GLOBAL SETTINGS (null)
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: DICT --- NON PERSISTENT (null)
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: DICT --- HOST DEFAULTS /Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config
2021-01-08T14:57:10.749-07:00| usbArb| I005: DICT --- SITE DEFAULTS (null)
2021-01-08T14:57:10.750-07:00| usbArb| I005: USBArbRuleStore: Loading device rules from rules file.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.750-07:00| usbArb| I005: VMware USB Arbitration Service Version 19.9.0
2021-01-08T14:57:10.750-07:00| usbArb| I005: USBArb: Attempting to connect to existing arbitrator on /var/run/vmware/usbarb-socket.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.750-07:00| usbArb| I005: SOCKET creating new socket, connecting to /var/run/vmware/usbarb-socket
2021-01-08T14:57:10.750-07:00| usbArb| I005: USBArb: Connected to the existing arbitrator.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.751-07:00| usbArb| I005: SOCKET 1 (10) recv detected client closed connection
2021-01-08T14:57:10.751-07:00| usbArb| I005: USBArb: Arbitrator closed the connection.
2021-01-08T14:57:10.751-07:00| usbArb| I004: USBArb: usb-arbitrator exit normally