Certificate error trying to update v10.1.2 to 10.1.6

[Simon Banton]

Fusion 10.1.6 runs fine on my ancient MacBook Pro OS X 10.13.6.

I'm trying to migrate my VMWare VMs to a different Mac (also ancient, running 10.13.6) and the package installer I have is for Fusion 10.1.2 (with a valid licence key) from 2018.

Installation went fine on the other Mac, but when I Check for Updates to try and bring it up to 10.1.6 I get the error:

"A certificate error occurred while connecting to the update server"

I'm not able to get into the Broadcomm Support system to raise a ticket ("Open a New Case") because once registered and logged in I get multiple redirects that end up at a page saying "Authenticating the User" with the URL:

https://broadcomcms-software.wolkenservicedesk.com/auth-sso?error=INVALID_REQUEST&error_description=No%20applicable%20AuthN%20policies%20configured&state=LkVqYzRqZ2lmSExvZDJZVW1kWllVRW1-UE8tcWhuelVSbWM1bzRiRG9DNHJI&error_code=0000069&X-CLIENT-TRANSACTION-ID=aaded8db-6ee7-47fd-bace-ce11029761e3

... and then nothing happens after that.

I'd appreciate any pointers that might help me resolve this issue - whether that's a route to be able to download the relevant updated package, or a means to contact Broadcomm Support for assistance.

Cheers

Simon

[Technogeezer]

My guess is that the in-product updater of any older Fusion version isn't aware of changes made to the software update infrastructure as a result of the Broadcom acquisition. You probably won't get any help from Broadcom because Fusion 10 has been out of support for a long time now. They're not going to go back and change unsupported Fusion versions. And they don't make a .dmg file for Fusion 10 available any more from their software download web site.

Your best bet is to directly download the Fusion 10.1.6 update directly from Broadcom's software update servers. 

https://softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds/vmw-desktop/fusion/10.1.6/12989998/core/com.vmware.fusion.zip.tar

Once you have the zip.tar file:

• Unzip that file. You'll get a folder com.vmware.fusion.zip
• Open that folder. You'll find another file named com.vmware.fusion.zip. Unzip that.
• You'll now find a com.vmware.fusion folder. Open that.
• In that folder, you'll find a "Payload" folder. Open that.
• You should then see a VMware Fusion application. 

Note: The following steps were "reverse engineered" from scripts found in the zip file which appear to be used by the software updater process.

• Before doing anything else, save away the existing VMware Tools ISO images. Drop into a Terminal session and issue the following:

mkdir isotemp

sudo mv -f "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages/"*.{iso,sig,plist} isotemp

• Go back to the Finder, and move the unzipped VMware Fusion.app into the /Applications folder, overwriting the existing VMware Fusion.app
• Go back to the Terminal, and move the saved VMware Tools ISO files back into the new VMware Fusion.app:

sudo mv -f isotemp/*.{iso,sig,plist} "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages"

rm -rf isotemp # clean up after move

• While still in the Terminal, run the tool to initialize VMware Fusion:

sudo "/Applications/VMware Fusion/Contents/Library/vmware-id" "/Applications/VMware Fusion/Contents/Library/Initialize VMware Fusion.tool" set

(Edited to add 'sudo' to the command to initialize the Fusion installation.

[Simon Banton]

Technogeezer - that's great, very many thanks for spelling that out. I'll give it a try.

S.

[Simon Banton]

Success - now at v10.1.6.

One wrinkle, the final command needed to be run as root, because without it I got:

"The effective user ID is not root."

sudo (the command) resulted in what I assume is the correct output:

$ sudo /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-id /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/Initialize\ VMware\ Fusion.tool set

*** Setting file permissions...

*** Creating directory /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public/Templates...

*** Setting permissions on /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public/Templates...

The one remaining issue is that attempting to install VMWare tools results in:

"VMWare Fusion needs to download the following component:

VMWare Tools for legacy linux"

...the client OSes I'm running are RedHat 7.3 and CentOS 4.9.

I guess I could live without the tools, but if there's a way to nail this last item down I'd be grateful for pointers.

Many thanks for the help!

[Technogeezer]

Looks like the sudo is going to be required - I'll edit my post to reflect that.

Glad you were able to get it installed.

You might want to take a look at https://softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds/vmw-desktop/fusion/10.1.6/12989998/packages/

These seem to contain the same type of zip.tar files for the VMware Tools. It looks like the "double unzip" is necessary, with the payload folder containing the .iso file plus a couple of ancillary files (.sig,.plist) for the particular ISO. They look like they should be moved into the /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages folder.

[Simon Banton]

Right, thanks - will give that a look.

Much appreciated!

S.

[Technogeezer]

You can also go to Broadcom's software download web site. Users of the personal use version of Fusion/Workstation can download VMware Tools without a support contract. You should be able to find a download of VMware Tools there for older Linux distros that don't support open-vm-tools.

If you do get to the Broadcom download site and want the traditional Tools for Linux, look for the 10.3.26 version. It's the latest VMware Tools that contains some security fixes.

You might wish to consider open-vm-tools on that RHEL 7 VM. From what I've been able to research, they're distributing it out of their standard repos for RHEL 7. 

[Simon Banton]

So noted, ta.

Incidentally, that's 2002-era RedHat 7.3 I'm hosting, not RHEL7 :-)

[Technogeezer]

   Incidentally, that's 2002-era RedHat 7.3 I'm hosting, not RHEL7 :-)

Ahhh, yes. You will need Tools for that oldie-but-goodie.

[Simon Banton]

Doh! Found an easier way.

Since what I'm doing is migrating my VMWare Fusion installation to another Mac, and my initial problem was how to update Fusion there from an installation using the original 10.1.2 .dmg to 10.1.6 (now achieved), the second problem of how to install the relevant VMWare Tools was most easily solved by simply doing it on the original Mac (running 10.1.6 having been updated long ago in the usual way, which meant it had all the relevant ISOs in it already).

So I just shut down and moved my VMs back to the original host, installed the tools there, shut them down again and moved them over to the new host.

In the process, I've learned a lot about the way this is all organised, so thanks again for the help Technogeezer, I'd never have made sense of it without your guidance.

Cheers

S.

[Technogeezer]

Larry Wall (the creator of Perl) has a saying: TMTOWTDI (pronounced tim toady). Short for "there's more than one way to do it").

In that spirit, the good thing is that you found one of the ways that worked best for you.