"cannot find a valid peer process to connect to"

[kjah]

After moving to a new iMac / High Sierra from iMac Mavericks I tried to migrate VMWare Fusion 8.5.6 to it - no luck.  Upgrading to 8.5.9 did not help either.

I downloaded and installed Fusion 10.0.1 and tried to have it open my Win 10 Virtual Machine and I get "Cannot find a valid peer to connect to"

Very frustrating, I appear to run into incompatibility problem with VM Fusion wherever I go!

[wila]

Hello,

Please have a look at the following thread:

Cannot start VM: "Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to"

--

Wil

[kjah]

I went through the solutions proposed in the link -

Cannot start VM: "Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to",

- uninstalled VMWare 10 manually

- ran the "xattr -dl " command on the .dmg file

- rebooted my iMac (2017 - High Sierra)

- reinstalled VMWare 10

VMWare was added this time to the "Security & Privacy" apps to control my computer.  This must have happened automatically during the install

However, I get the same result:  "Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to"

What can I try next?

[wila]

Hi,

When you say "VMWare was added this time to the "Security & Privacy" apps to control my computer." it is not clear to me that you allowed the system extension.

Did you click the allow button down there and after that you're still seeing that error?

--

Wil

[kjah]

I was mightyly confused by what was mentioned in the other referenced forum stream:

"Did you authorise the VMware kernel extensions in the "Security & Privacy" System Preferences pane...? IIRC, I forgot to do it, and had the same error, until I authorised them..."

I never saw a question about VMware kernel extensions during the installation process. 

Eventually I came across the "Allow the apps below to control your computer" in the Security & Privacy prefs under the Privacy tab, where I added VMware Fusion; but this works of course only AFTER the installation, not before or during. 

During what must have been my third or fourth cycle through the frustrating uninstall - reboot - reinstall loop I saw VMware show up in the General tab under "Allow apps downloaded from:" ..., which I allowed.  Not sure what else I can do part from allowing everything that is being asked.  There must be a better way to install a commercial product on an established platform!

I repeat, I never saw a specific question about VMware kernel extensions during the installation process. 

[wila]

Hi,

Not sure when reading your answer if that eventually fixed it for you?

Agree on the "it's unclear in the install" part. I guess VMware tried to rush out a version of Fusion that supported High Sierra while apple just changed the logic on having to now allow kernel extensions.

If you still have the issue please contact VMware support directly.

--

Wil

[kjah]

The VMware 10 installation problem is not fixed, but life is too short to keep persevering with this.

Instead I have gone back to V.8.5.9.  which I had abandoned some days ago because of an error I received when starting it up.

I prematurely assumed that 8.5.9. is not compatible with High Sierra and went down the upgrade path to VM 10.

After the numerous hassles I encountered (see my previous posts) I decided to look back at 8.5.9 and found that my error message had turned up somewhere else and there was an easy fix:

"Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory." Error

So far so good (or so frustrating ...), I will be waiting until the VMware people come up with a solid upgrade process.

Thanks for your assistance through this process.

[wila]

Hi,

That's pretty much how the Fusion 10 install process should have looked like.

Good to hear you got Fusion 8.5 working on High Sierra.

For Fusion 8.5.8. so far I only read about people not being able to install it on HS.

Seems that might have been corrected in 8.5.9, although I'm not seeing that in the release notes of 8.5.9.

--

Wil