VMware Fusion 11.1.0 Release Notes

VMware Fusion 11.1.0 | 14 May 2019 | Build 13668589

What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

• About VMware Fusion
• What's New
• Important Fixes
• Prior Releases
• Resolved Issues

About VMware Fusion

VMware Fusion® 11 is the easiest, fastest, and most reliable way to run Windows and other x86 based operating systems on a Mac without rebooting.

For more information, see the broader VMware Fusion documentation.

What's New

This release of VMware Fusion is a free upgrade for all VMware Fusion 11 users. This release provides the following:

• Support for the following operating systems as guest.
  • Windows 10 19H1
  • Ubuntu 19.04
  • RHEL 8.0
  • Fedora 30
  • ESXi 6.7 U2
• Bug fixes and security updates.

Important Fixes

This release of VMware Fusion addresses the following issue:

• VMware Fusion 11.1.0 supports Hypervisor-Specific Mitigations and Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Mitigations for Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) vulnerabilities identified by CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, CVE-2018-12130 and CVE-2019-11091. For more information, see VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2019-0008.

Prior Releases

Features and Known Issues from prior releases of VMware Fusion 11 are described in the release notes for each release. To view the release notes for a prior release, click the appropriate link:

• VMware Fusion 11.0.3
• VMware Fusion 11.0.2
• VMware Fusion 11.0.1
• VMware Fusion 11

Resolved Issues

• The serial number generated by Fusion for macOS virtual machine contains special characters.

  The serial number generated by Fusion for macOS guest operating system contains special characters. Due to this invalid serial number, Apple push notifications for certain third-party applications installed in the macOS virtual machine do not work.

  This issue is fixed in this release.

  In Fusion 11.1.0, for freshly created macOS virtual machine, the serial number in the new guest operating system contains alphanumeric characters only. For any existing macOS virtual machine, the serial number remains unchanged.

  If user wants to make the existing macOS virtual machine use serial number that contains alphanumeric characters only, below option needs to be added manually into the virtual machine's configuration file (.vmx file):
  smbios.restrictSerialCharset = "TRUE"

• Unable to use macOS FileVault disk encryption inside the virtual machine when using virtual hardware version 15 or later.

  A macOS virtual machine fails to boot, when the guest OS uses FileVault disk encryption and the virtual machine uses virtual hardware version 15 or later. When an affected virtual machine is powered on, a circle with a slash appears and the guest OS does not boot.

  This issue is fixed in this release.

• On Mac hosts with AMD GPUs, when certain 3D applications run in a virtual machine, the virtual machine crashes.

  On Mac hosts with AMD GPUs, when certain 3D applications run in a virtual machine, the virtual machine crashes due to an AMD Metal host driver issue.

  This issue is fixed in this release.

• Virtual Disk Manager utility (vmware-vdiskmanager) to convert disk fails.

  When you use the Virtual Disk Manager utility (vmware-vdiskmanager) to perform a virtual disk conversion, the command fails and returns the following message: Received signal 11.

  This issue is fixed in this release.

  Note: Fusion needs to be launched in order for vmware-vdiskmanager to work. You can learn more details in the VMware Knowledge Base article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/65163.

• The 'vmrun start' command with 'nogui' parameter fails to start a virtual machine, if the vmx file inside the virtual machine bundle is locked.

  The vmx file is locked and a vmx.lck file is created inside the bundle of a virtual machine, when the virtual machine:

  • is running, or
  • is selected in Virtual Machine Library window, or
  • has virtual machine window, Settings window or Snapshots window open

  When vmx.lck file exists, running 'vmrun start' command with 'nogui' parameter on the virtual machine fails and returns the following error:
  Error: A file access error occurred on the host or guest operating system

  This issue is fixed in this release.

  Now, when vmx.lck file exists, running 'vmrun start' command with 'nogui' parameter starts the virtual machine successfully

• The "Open in Low Resolution" attribute of VMware Fusion.app is not editable.

  On the "Get Info" panel of VMware Fusion.app, the "Open in Low Resolution" checkbox is grayed out and not editable.
  "Open in Low Resolution" attribute used to be editable on Fusion 10, but it becomes not editable on Fusion 11.

  This issue is fixed in this release.

• Fusion cannot power on any virtual machine on macOS Mojave 10.14.4 or greater host operating system with Hyper-Threading disabled.

  If Hyper-Threading is disabled either by using the smtctl utility provided in VMware Knowledge Base article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/57138 or by other methods on macOS Mojave 10.14.4 or greater host operating system, Fusion fails to power on any virtual machine and returns below error: "Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to".

  This issue is observed only on macOS Mojave 10.14.4 or greater versions. This error does not occur on macOS lower than 10.14.4.

  This issue is fixed in this release.

Known Issues

• Unable to paste the file copied from host operating system to some Linux guest operating systems.

  After copying a file or folder from host operating system, the subsequent attempt to paste the copied file or folder to some Linux guest operating systems fails. This issue is observed on Fedora 30, RHEL 8.0, and Ubuntu 19.04 virtual machines.

  Workaround: Use Shared Folders feature to share the file or folder between host and guest operating system.

• A virtual machine installed or upgraded with Windows 10 19H1 version fails to start, if IOMMU setting is enabled.

  For a Windows 10 virtual machine, that is installed or upgraded with the recently released Windows 10 19H1 version, if the virtual machine has IOMMU settings enabled, then its bootup process fails.

  However, this issue does not happen for a Windows 10 virtual machine which is installed with Windows 10 1809 or older versions.

  Workaround:

  Option 1: Follow the steps:

  1. Power off the virtual machine.
  2. Open Processors & Memory settings.
  3. Uncheck the "Enable IOMMU in this virtual machine" checkbox.

  Option 2: Follow the instructions given in the VMware Knowledge Base Article, https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/68043.

• Poor display performance is experienced on virtual machines with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 manually installed.

  The mesa-libxatracker and xorg-x11-drv-vmware packages are not installed by default on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0, causing poor display performance on X Window System (X11) desktop environments. In addition, the resolutionSet function does not work even when VMware Tools is installed.

  Workaround:

  Choose either of the following workarounds:

  • Use Easy Install to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 as a guest operating system.
    OR
  • Manually install the mesa-libxatracker and xorg-x11-drv-vmware packages.
• Virtual machine fails to start, if Fusion is deployed to macOS 10.14.5 or above host that does not have Internet access.

  After using Fusion mass deploy package "Deploy VMware Fusion.mpkg" to deploy Fusion to a macOS 10.14.5 or above operating system which has no Internet access, Fusion kernel extensions cannot be loaded when the deployed Fusion is launched, due to which virtual machine fails to start.

  Workaround:

  Choose either of the following ways to work around this issue:

  • Ensure that the macOS 10.14.5 or above host to which Fusion is deployed has Internet access, or
  • When preparing the "Deploy VMware Fusion.mpkg" for mass deployment, perform the following steps to staple notary ticket to the "VMware Fusion.app" inside the "Deploy VMware Fusion.mpkg":
    1. In Terminal, change directory to where the "Deploy VMware Fusion.mpkg" is located.
    2. In Terminal, run below command:
       /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/stapler staple "Deploy VMware Fusion.mpkg/Contents/00Fusion_Deployment_Items/VMware Fusion.app"
       The command returns "The staple and validate action worked!"
       
       Note: The version of the Xcode application must be 10.1 or above
  • Use the "Deploy VMware Fusion.mpkg" to deploy Fusion to the macOS 10.14.5 or above host. The deployed Fusion can launch kernel extensions and power on virtual machine even when the host has no Internet access.