Recover Fusion Pro 11.5.7

[VimaUser]

Our Fusion Pro 11 seems to need recover after hosting Catalina 10.15.7 had been moved to new SSD. Following macOS migration to new system SSD all two virtual machines existing do not boot: dev vmmon pipe broken error.

The only Fusion 11 installer found in local archives has the version 11.5.1. Will this version, as soon as installed to Catalina, be able to find the update to 11.5.7 then apply it?

Alternatively, how can our Fusion 11 be recovered from Time Machine backup, or from system drive clone created using Copy Carbon Cloner? Is effective Fusion 11 recovery from backup possible?

Fusion 11 Pro license was purchased 2018 from VmWare company. No license upgrades followed.

Update: Fusion Pro 13 for Personal Use won't run on the iMac here, lack of compatibility. For the iMac here the Fusion 12 license was never purchased. Fusion 11 Pro is the latest license purchased once from VmWare company. Any ways exists to get a download of Fusion Pro 11?  User profile in Broadcom Support Portal indicates no entitlements - no wonder our support for purchased Fusion Pro 11 expired multiple years ago.

All what can be found in local archives is the installer for Fusion Pro 11.5.1.  If I will use it to reinstall Fusion 11 will it find the update 11.5.7?

[Technogeezer]

The broken pipe message has many causes. Can you post the vmware.log files found in the VM’s bundle?

[VimaUser]

Thank you for your quick coming to this case. In the meantime myself could conduct small investigation, I did it based on hints found in threat New to VMWare on Mac. 'Could not open /dev/vmmon: Broken pipe.' ... 'Please make sure that the kernel module `vmmon' is loaded.' ERROR

bash-3.2$ 
bash-3.2$ sudo sudo kextload /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/
Password:
/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext)
 system policy prevents loading; check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8).
bash-3.2$ 

bash-3.2$ kextstat | awk '$6 !~ /^com.apple/ { print $6 " \t " $7 }'
Name 	 (Version)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv 	 (6.1.50)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB 	 (6.1.50)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt 	 (6.1.50)
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp 	 (6.1.50)
bash-3.2$

bash-3.2$ sudo kextutil /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/
Password:
Kext rejected due to system policy: <OSKext 0x7fcea7c33240 [0x7fff90c67ce0]>
{ URL = "file:///Applications/VMware%20Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext/", ID = "com.vmware.kext.vmx86" }
Diagnostics for /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/kexts/vmmon.kext:
bash-3.2$

Sounds like kernel extension housing vmmon was blocked. Can it help further?

Interestingly the previous upgrade to Catalina from lower version than 10.15 conducted mid of 2023 didn't result in problems as this time (Catalina to new system SSD). Subsequently to previous upgrade Fusion 11 worked fine till latest migration to new system SSD.

Regarding logs: those found in boundle of virtual machine all are dated to the week before migration to new SSD. I had however the look at the app Console where vmware logs are present. File system paths of associated log files could be indicated, this way I have right now a collection of vmware logs in an archive. Can I provide you with those through private channel? This is a number of different log file kinds: vmware-vmx-dddd.log, vmware-vmrest-dddd.log, "VMware Fusion Applications Menu/log.log", "WMware Fusion Services.log", vmware-fusionStartMenu.log, vmware-vmfusion.log.

Fair amount of reporting and knowledge sharing can be found for this issue in web. Majority of hints however addresses Mojave, I am not sure if found resolution proposals apply well to Catalina. Therefore not further invasive measures were applied here so far.

[Technogeezer]

If you used the Migration Assistant to recover your VM, the OS permissions that allow the kernel extensions to be loaded probably were not brought over. The kernel extensions will need to be re-registered - that's usually done with an installation.

Unless you have an active contract, Broadcom won't let you download old versions of Fusion from their public download site even if you have a license key for it. But there's a "back-door" location that the VMware products use to download their updates - that's still active. Here's how I would proceed (and I just checked this out on a Catalina installation).

Before doing anything, make sure you have a copy of your VMware Fusion 11 license key. This process wipes the licensing information.

Completely delete any Fusion implementation using the information found in KB article https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/307074/how-to-uninstall-vmware-fusion-manually.html

(this will not touch your existing virtual machines, but will remove the licensing information - which is why you need a copy of it)

Download 11.5.7 directly from VMware's content distribution server https://softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds/vmw-desktop/fusion/11.5.7/17130923/core/com.vmware.fusion.zip.tar

(I tried installing 11.5.1, and updating to 11.5.7 but the in-product updater failed with a certificate error).

Extract the com.vmware.fusion.zip.tar file, you'll find a com.vmware.fusion.zip folder.

Open the com.vmware.fusion.zip folder, and extract the com.vmware.fusion.zip file found there. That will give you a com.vmware.fusion folder.

Open the com.vmware.fusion folder, then open the "payload" folder found there. That should contain the VMware Fusion application.

Move/copy the VMware Fusion application to the Applications folder. 

Open VMware Fusion. It should go through the same steps as an installation from the download.

[VimaUser]

Thank you for again quick response. My appreciation for your great support in disastrous situation.

Downloading the zip.tar works fine on my side. Also diving deep into archive to grab for app bundle.

I forgot to mention one detail - my 11.5 license is actually a chain of licenses with its root at full license for Fusion 7, then a sequence of two upgrade licenses, first Pro 8.5, finally Pro 11. Is it right to believe this one installer will ask for whole chain of licenses? Every license key in ownership is well archived since the date of its purchase.

As next I need to get familiarized with removal procedure of existing installation to apply it in subsequent step. Finally the try will take place to conduct installation of downloaded binary.

Removal procedure is in this case straightforward and manual, rather unsophisticated. I plan before the removal to copy all items to dedicated archive stored at location only known to myself, macOS shouldn't see it during subsequent installation. Just for the case something should go wrong.

[Technogeezer]

You don’t need to input all the licenses. Only the Fusion 11 license. 

[VimaUser]

Regarding necessary removal of existing Fusion installation - the list of items for removal has been processed. Subsequent search for file system items with word "vmware" in file name discloses few items not found on the list in removal KB article. Parent directories:

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support

/private/etc/paths.d

Library folder in administrator user profile (there exist only two accounts), in this case just blank directory free of files.

[VimaUser]

I am still in the phase of preparing system and myself to the start of new installation. Current stage is to build manually an archive of file items which are to be removed before installation gets started (cit. "Completely delete any Fusion implementation using the information found in KB article https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/307074/how-to-uninstall-vmware-fusion-manually.html"). Should something run wrong during whole procedure afront, I hope to be able to restore current status from this archive; even if current status means Fusion to be unusable.

The list from KB 307074 is processed but few items were found on drive which are not listed in KB 307074, among others /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support. I still don't know I it is possible to purge the file system item named vmware at this location. What I can see for sure the administrator account won't be able to do manual restore from archive being built these minutes, "Operation not permitted" when administrator account writes to this location. A set of kernel extensions are stored this location identical to set of kexts found in Fusion app bundle.

 

$ ls -AlhR /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application\ Support/VMware/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 VMware Fusion

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 Services

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 Contents

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 Library

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel   160B Sep  5 18:12 kexts

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 vmioplug.kext
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 vmmon.kext
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 vmnet.kext

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmioplug.kext:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel   160B Sep  5 18:12 Contents

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmioplug.kext/Contents:
total 8
-rw-------  1 root  wheel   2.9K Sep  5 18:12 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 MacOS
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 _CodeSignature

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmioplug.kext/Contents/MacOS:
total 168
-rw-------  1 root  wheel    82K Sep  5 18:12 vmioplug

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmioplug.kext/Contents/_CodeSignature:
total 8
-rw-------  1 root  wheel   2.1K Sep  5 18:12 CodeResources

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmmon.kext:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel   160B Sep  5 18:12 Contents

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmmon.kext/Contents:
total 8
-rw-------  1 root  wheel   1.2K Sep  5 18:12 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 MacOS
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 _CodeSignature

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmmon.kext/Contents/MacOS:
total 184
-rw-------  1 root  wheel    91K Sep  5 18:12 vmmon

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmmon.kext/Contents/_CodeSignature:
total 8
-rw-------  1 root  wheel   2.1K Sep  5 18:12 CodeResources

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmnet.kext:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel   160B Sep  5 18:12 Contents

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmnet.kext/Contents:
total 8
-rw-------  1 root  wheel   1.1K Sep  5 18:12 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 MacOS
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96B Sep  5 18:12 _CodeSignature

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmnet.kext/Contents/MacOS:
total 144
-rw-------  1 root  wheel    68K Sep  5 18:12 vmnet

/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/
vmnet.kext/Contents/_CodeSignature:
total 8
-rw-------  1 root  wheel   2.1K Sep  5 18:12 CodeResources
$ 

EDIT

Removal of item named vmware at file system location "/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support" is not possible by usual means. Finder doesn't react on removal request, in shell it looks like following

$ sudo rm -rdf /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application\ Support/VMware/
Password:
rm: /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware
 Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/vmnet.kext/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources: Operation not permitted
rm: /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware
 Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/vmnet.kext/Contents/_CodeSignature: Operation not permitted
rm: /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware
 Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/vmnet.kext/Contents/MacOS/vmnet: Operation not permitted
rm: /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application Support/VMware//VMware
 Fusion/Services/Contents/Library/kexts/vmnet.kext/Contents/MacOS: Operation not permitted
...
etc

Folder VMware has one attribute set:

$ xattr -l   /Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Application\ Support/VMware/
com.apple.macl:
00000000  06 00 43 DA A7 16 40 4B 47 1A 99 19 85 DC 63 1E  |..C...@KG.....c.|
00000010  CD 98 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000040  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00                          |........|
00000048

There remains the hope that this leftover won't interfere installation process.

[VimaUser]

Well, reinstallation of Fusion 11 Pro is now conducted and completed, a flawless and quite uncomplicated process. Procedure presented above by @Technogeezer was applied. Unfortunately the original problem still present.

Could not open /dev/vmmon: Broken pipe. Please make sure that the kernel module 'vmmon' is loaded.

Failed to initialize monitor device.

No blocked-app notification in Gatekeeper (System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General).

Interestingly the Migration Assistant used last week to set up current Catalina setup performed very well regarding installed VirtualBox 6.1.50 which apparently uses kexts as well. Migration Assistant failed only in case of VmWare Fusion Pro 11.

[Technogeezer]

Could you collect a support bundle (Help > Collect Support Information)

[VimaUser]

Collected. How to deliver?

[VimaUser]

Problem got resolved few minutes ago.

A logon to Catalina graphical user session and to administrator account is what was needed. Only within session this type was it possible to encounter blocked-app notification in Gatekeeper UI raised by vmware software, System Preferences panel > Security & Privacy > General.

For Mac in mind all existing virtual machines always run on standard user account. Same applies to management of those. Administrator starts Fusion only if any troubleshooting needs it.

Right now Fusion 11 Pro is asking on start of v.m. if those have been copied or moved from other machine. Hence my next job is to find out what will be the best this question answer in this particular case. 

It has been the migration of Catalina to new internal system SSD blade which caused problem addressed in this threat. Virtual machines were backed up then restored in following way: In Finder manually copy the tree of folders with all v. m. stored to external USB drive before start of migration. Ongoing backups of virtual machines and virtual disks are always performed in the same way. As soon as migration completed same files were restored by copying from external drive back to desired location on working drive using Finder.

Thank you for all support provided so far.

[Technogeezer]

In your case I would answer "Moved" since you moved the VM from another system. "Moved" preserves VM configurations such as BIOS UUID and (most importantly) networking MAC addresses.