GNS3 vmrun error on OSX Mojave

[jaqsoo]

I used to be in High Sierra using VMWare Fusion 8 and GNS3(https://gns3.com​) would work just fine.

I upgraded OSX to Mojave (10.14.1) and Fusion 11 Pro (11.0.2) and now get a permission error with GNS3 whenever I try to run or edit some element on a VM named 'GNS3 VM'.  After reading forums up and down and deleting and reintalling software left and right, found out the following:

1) The error I get when using GNS3 is:  "Error while saving settings: GNS3VM: Error while executing VMware command: vmrun has returned an error: Error: A file access error occurred on the host or guest operating system"

2)  The underlying command that GNS3 is trying to run is:

'/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun' -T fusion start '/Users/jquesada/Virtual Machines.localized/GNS3 VM.vmwarevm/GNS3 VM.vmx' nogui

3)  If I run it from the command line I get this error:  (I have run the command both with my user, which is an admin, and using root)

2018-11-27T11:35:48.922| ServiceImpl_Opener: PID 5165

Error: The operation was canceled

4) I have added both VMWare and GNS3 to have full access to disk and full permisions to execute programs on my mac.

Any ideas?

Best of regards.

[Mikero]

Hm, sorry to hear you're experiencing this, looks like a bug with vmrun on Mojave

Looping in the dev team Zongmin​

I can reproduce the issue 100%:

➜ vmrun -t fusion start /Users/mike/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Ubuntu\ Server\ 18.04.1.vmwarevm/Ubuntu\ Server\ 18.04.1.vmx

Error: Unknown error

In that case the VM window opens up and starts resuming, but the error 'Unknown Error' persists.

It looks like the 'nogui' flag is misbehaving:

➜  ~ vmrun -t fusion start /Users/mike/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Ubuntu\ Server\ 18.04.1.vmwarevm/Ubuntu\ Server\ 18.04.1.vmx nogui

Error: A file access error occurred on the host or guest operating system

➜  ~ sudo vmrun -t fusion start /Users/mike/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Ubuntu\ Server\ 18.04.1.vmwarevm/Ubuntu\ Server\ 18.04.1.vmx nogui

Password:

Error: A file access error occurred on the host or guest operating system

To be sure:

➜  ~ vmrun -T fusion downloadPhotonVM ~/.

Download Photon OS VM to /Users/mike/photon.ova

Opening OVA source: /Users/mike/photon.ova====] 106.4 MB of 106.4 MB

The manifest validates

Source is signed and the certificate validates

Warning:

- Line -1: Unsupported value 'firmware' for attribute 'key' on element 'ExtraConfig'.

- Line -1: Unsupported value 'uefi.secureBoot.enabled' for attribute 'key' on element 'ExtraConfig'.

Opening VMX target: /Users/mike/

Writing VMX file: /Users/mike/photon-ova.vmwarevm/photon-ova.vmx

Transfer Completed

Completed successfully

Download template VM into /Users/mike successfully

Refer to https://github.com/vmware/photon/wiki/Running-Project-Photon-on-Fusion for usage

➜  ~ vmrun -T fusion start /Users/mike/photon-ova.vmwarevm/photon-ova.vmx. [works fine...]

➜  ~ vmrun -T fusion start /Users/mike/photon-ova.vmwarevm/photon-ova.vmx nogui

Error: A file access error occurred on the host or guest operating system

[JessieZhang]

jaqsoo​,

This is a behavior change after upgrading Fusion from version 10 to version 11. Sorry it makes thing that originally worked in your work environment no longer work.

When Fusion 11 is launched, if you select a VM in VM Library or open Settings/Snapshot for a VM, there will be a vmx.lck file created inside the VM bundle. When the vmx.lck file exists, 'vmrun start vmx' without 'nogui' argument can run successfully, but 'vmrun start vmx' with 'nogui' argument fails to run with below message:

A file access error occurred on the host or guest operating system

To work around this issue, please make sure there is no .vmx.lck inside vm bundle when you run 'vmrun start' with nogui argument. That is:

either Fusion is not launched

or Fusion is launched, but the VM is not selected and does not have any window (settings, snapshot) open.

[Zongmin]

Hi jaqsoo, Michael,

We already internally reproduced this issue and an internal bug has been filed to track this. Thanks jaqsoo for reporting it.

Pls try the workaround provided by Jessie -- either close Fusion UI, or in case Fusion UI is on, pls make sure VM is NOT selected in the VM Library, nor should this VM(that vmrun will be running against) window be displayed.

We will make sure this issue to be fixed in a future update release asap.

Thanks,

VMware Fusion Team