VMWare Fusion freezes system after update (SOLVED)

[rsilves]

Hi. Today I updated to 10.5.7 and after that I couldn't run any virtual machine without having a kernel panic.

After some research, I found that there is a "known bug" in VMware, that the current kernel should be named mach_kernel and not mach_kernel.orig or .voodoo or whatever.

First, be sure of what kernel you are using (/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist sets the kernel when system boots, so open that file and the name is there as something like "<string>mach_kernel.voodoo</string>").

If that kernel is named mach_kernel, then your solution is not in this post.

If it is named mach_kernel.something, the solution is NOT to rename kernel, but to create a symbolink:

1. Check you don't have any file in the root named mach_kernel. If you have one, decide what to do with it (if you know you don't need it, trash it, but I'd suggest renaming it to mach_kernel.backup or something).

2. Open Terminal. Go to root. Type:

ln -s [source file] [target file]

Example: ln -s mach_kernel.voodoo mach_kernel

 

A symbolink will be created in your root.

 

 

Specifically in my case, solution was renaming com.apple.Boot.plist. The error was because the update overwrote the symbolink mach_kernel that was referring to mach_kernel.voodoo with the new kernel, and as I don't want to use voodoo anymore, I just had to edit that file.

 

Hope this helps someone some day.

Rodrigo