Every Mac VM I upgrade to Ventura crashes upon first bootup

[ooshnoo]

So I've got Fusion 13 running on an Intel Mac Pro.  I have numerous Monterey based VMs for clients that I'm testing the Ventura upgrade on.

Whether I upgrade via GUI or via commandline (startosinstall), one the installation is done and the Mac VM boots up for the first time, the startup hangs for hours and if I force reboot the VM, I get a kernel panic and the VM is rendered useless.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Technogeezer · Accepted solution]

Ventura removed support for many devices, and you may be encountering one of them. 

First, make sure your guest OS type is set to "macOS 13" 

Then, with the VM shut down and the settings panel for the VM dismissed, check the .vmx file and see if the ethernet0.virtualDev setting is e1000e. The cause of what you're seeing may very well be that that Apple removed the e1000e NIC driver from Ventura. A new macOS 13 VM will set the virtual NIC type to vmxnet3. but an upgrade or change to the guest OS type may not.

To fix this, edit the .vmx file and change the value of that setting to read:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

[ColoradoMarmot]

How old of a mac pro?  Does that machine itself support Ventura?  If not, you may be running into CPU incompatibilities.

[ooshnoo]

Boom!  That was it...the Ethernet "driver."  Switched it from e1000e to vmxnet3 and all is well.

Thank you sir!

[Technogeezer]

Glad that you got it working, and I had a suspicion that was the issue by the symptoms you noted.

This issue was first uncovered in Fusion 13.0 where a new VM for macOS 13 did not set the virtual NIC type properly.  13.0.1 fixed that for new VMs, but users running 13.0 could work around this by the manual edit of the .vmx file.

I don't think VMware thought of what would happen with upgraders of macOS 12 to 13. So, the edit is still applicable for upgraders.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Chicken and the egg - changing/upgrading the virtual hardware should do that automatically, but can't do that until the guest is updated.

[PNTA]

Unfortunately this did not help in my case. I also tried a new upgrade with the edited .vmx file but the result is still the same.

The VM does not crash though, it starts up, the cursor is blinking in the Enter Password field and the mouse pointer is stuck in the top left corner. But nothing "works" as I can't get the cursor moving, type anything and so on.

Any other idea I could try?

Thanks

[Technogeezer]

Can you provide details on your situation? Is it a macOS VM or some other OS? 
Could you post the vmware.log file found in the virtual machine bundle? 

[PNTA]

sure, Intel Mac running Ventura 13.4 (22F66) with VMware Fusion Pro version 13.0.2 (21581413). The VM is running correctly with macOS 12.6.6 but stops once upgraded to 13.4.

Attached the log, I see a bunch of "missing file" errors but do not know if that is related.

Thanks again

[Technogeezer]

Don't worry about the missing file error messages. They are normal and benign.

If this is a Monterey (macOS 12 VM) I see a couple of things different than my working VM:

• You may not have the guest OS type set properly. There's a line in the .vmx file that indicates that the guest type is darwin22-x64. That tells me that you have guest OS type set for macOS 13 in the VM's settings. Change it to macOS 12 - which will set the kernel to its proper darwin21-x64.
• You have changed the ethernet0.virtualDev setting to vmxnet3. That's not necessary since Monterey still has the e1000e NIC driver. Change it back to e1000e by editing the .vmx file manually after you have shut down the VM and exited Fusion.

Give both of those a try and see if symptoms change. 

I think I misunderstood at first. You upgraded the VM from 12.6.6 to Ventura 13.4, so you're not currently running Monterey in the VM. Is that correct...

[PNTA]

Correct. While running Monterey, the VM works, only once I upgrade to Ventura it will break.

I had already tried with setting the OS to 12 and then do the upgrade steps, or start with 13 and do the upgrade, both failed. Well, the upgrade went through but the VM somehow freezes after the start, as described before.

[Technogeezer]

Hmmm.

In your original VM, is ethernet0.virtualDev set to e1000e or vmxnet3 before you start the Ventura upgrade? Setting it to vmxnet3 before upgrade, but leaving the OS type to macOS 12 might help.

I know it's tough to boot into Recovery, but have you tried to boot there and then run Disk First Aid from DIsk Utility before upgrade?

Is this VM either a linked clone or full clone of another VM? (not simply a copy of another VM).

I have a macOS 12 VM handy. I'm going to make a copy of it and upgrade it (I've done 12-> 13 upgrades before, but not to 13.4). Let me see if I get anything different. 

[PNTA]

I tried both variants, initially it was set to e1000e, I then changed it after finding this conversation. I might have tried the combination vmxnet3 and OS type 12 already but will do again, as I mixed and matched different things yesterday.

I'll restore the snapshot and will give the disk utility a try, I did not do that before. Also, it is an "original" VM I have set up some versions ago, then moved it to an external disk.

[Technogeezer]

---

@PNTA wrote:

Also, it is an "original" VM I have set up some versions ago, then moved it to an external disk.

---

It did appear to me to be a VM that may have undergone a few version upgrades (I noticed vestiges of Mojave in the vmx file that's echoed in the logs).

Have you thought of manually cloning that existing VM to clean it up after all those intermediate upgrades? Creating a fresh custom macOS 12 VM and when asked about virtual disks, opting to use the existing virtual disk from your old macOS 12 VM and making a copy of it?

[PNTA]

no, haven't thought about it but was prepared to just start with a fresh install. Creating a clone might be a good idea anyway, so I'll do that to start with

[ColoradoMarmot]

Another option is to use the MacOS migration wizard:

Make a backup copy of the old VM.

Create a new Ventura VM, and choose customize.  Attack the virtual disk from the old VM as a secondary drive.

Boot the new VM.  During the install, when prompted choose 'migrate from another mac' and pick the old virtual drive.

Let the migration wizard run.

When done, shut down the VM, and detach the old virtual disk.

That should clean up both any fusion and legacy macOS stuff.

[PNTA]

unfortunately, no change. I created a new clone, upgraded to macOS Monterey 12.6.7 before running the upgrade to Ventura. The only difference was the download file for Ventura was over 11GB as opposed to a smaller size I noticed before using the clone. Still, the result stays the same so I think at this point, starting from scratch is the best solution to follow.

Thanks a lot for all your help!

[Technogeezer]

Did you clone from within Fusion, or create a new virtual machine and use the existing virtual disk? Cloning from within Fusion copies the old .vmx file, which is what I was trying to avoid. 

I just successfully performed the upgrade of a Monterey 12.6.7 VM to Ventura. What I recommend is to set the NIC to vmxnet3 before starting the upgrade, then after the upgrade completes switch the guest OS type to macOS 13. 

[PNTA]

yeah, I cloned from within Fusion. All right, will give it another try.

[PNTA]

🎉it's alive!!

Creating a new virtual machine while using the existing virtual disk worked. I upgraded to Ventura and the VM is still accessible and working. Thanks @Technogeezer