windows vm crashes on startup

[Soren-the-BoSS]

Hey.

Upon starting my windows vm, vm ware crashes with the following aerror beeng shown in terminal.

com.vmware.vmware-vmx is running setugid(), which is not allowed. Exiting.

This happens always, no matter if it's a new machine or an already existing one.

The used vm ware mac os version is 14.0 Beta (23A5301g).

The only other application running on my mac when the problem comes up is voice over, so other apps can not be at fault here.

[Technogeezer]

You wouldn't happen to be running your VM on a file system other than HFS+ or APFS would you?

[Soren-the-BoSS]

Nope. Just a normal apfs volume with file vault on. It's the internal volume which also contains my mac os system and all other data.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Did you install and run as an administrator account (that's required), on a case-insensitive file system (also required), and with no root password set on the machine?

If all that's ok, then how did you create the vm?  Recommend using the instructions in the unofficial guide and building a new one for the TP. Upgrading seems to have issues.

[lmerrill]

Having this same problem (actually just reported in another thread). It's encountered on my 2021 Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro running the latest Sonoma Beta 4 build on an APFS filesystem that has not been touched/modified manually since I purchased the Mac. Like the original poster, I too use VoiceOver and it's the only thing running when trying to run VMware Fusion TP.

For what it's worth, I was able to work around the problem somewhat by using Terminal.app to start the tech preview with the sudo command. This allowed the virtual machine to start, though I had to re-grant all of the required permissions. Starting TP normally via the icon in the Applications folder still yields the error though, and I suspect starting with sudo is not the most secure approach.

[Technogeezer]

I'm reading some other articles about general flakiness in Sonoma Dev beta 4. If it works in Beta 3, it's a regression in beta 4 and Apple needs to know about it.

[Soren-the-BoSS]

Yes. My file system is correctly configured, the vm is created with the tech preview and the mac has a disabled root user so My account has full admin access.

[Soren-the-BoSS]

Kind of interesting that it seems to only happen to us both who use voice over. Probably a coincidence but still. 

[lmerrill]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with the problem because at first I thought I would be, seeing as how the tech preview worked jus fine for a few days after I installed beta 4. It was only the middle of last week when the issue popped up and yet I made no major changes to my Mac between when things worked and when they didn't. So it's nice to know this is not an isolated issue. I can submit feedback to Apple via Feedback Assistant if that would be helpful.

[Soren-the-BoSS]

I just discovered something very weird.

If I turn voice over off, and then start the machine, it boots up. But If I then reenable voice over, it actually crashes.

[lmerrill]

That's interesting - how did you manage to start the virtual machine without VoiceOver running? I want to try and replicate this on my end. Also, do you see the same "setugid" error in the system log after the virtual machine crashes? I used the Terminal command "sudo log show --last 1m" to get the last 60 seconds worth of system logs after I noticed the crash, and then piped that output through grep to search specifically for VMware related messages.

[Soren-the-BoSS]

Yep. Same system log.

The way to start the vm with out voice over is as follows.

Enable the toolbar in the vm window.

Then focus the voice over cursor on the start button.

Turn off voice over

Then hit space once. The vm will start. and work fine until you enable voice over again.

[lmerrill]

Thanks for these instructions; I was able to use them to replicate your situation exactly. However, I did notice the setugid error message showed up in the logs twice, three minutes apart, and the first instance happened while the virtual machine was still running (but it did not crash). The second instance happened after I turned on VoiceOver and the virtual machine subsequently crashed. So I don't think the two events (the crashes and the setugid error) are necessarily related, but without further testing this statement is inconclusive.