VMWare Fusion: “No Permission to access this virtual machine”

Question

I had a VMWare Fusion VM backed up on my home network file server (Ubuntu). I wanted to run it again, so I copied it back to my Macbook.

When I tried to launch it in VMWare, I got an error message:

No permission to access this virtual machine.
Configuration file: /Users/craig/WinXP Clean + Scanner.vmwarevm/WinXP Pro Test.vmx

The permissions look fine to me:

• The bundle directory is 777
• The bundle files (including the listed .vmx) are all 666
• User is craig (my current user); group is staff. I changed the group to wheel at the suggestion of this page, but that didn't help.
• Finder shows read & write for craig, staff, and everyone on the bundle directory
• The bundle dir is also not locked
• Finder also shows rw and unlocked for the .vmx file
• The parent directory is also rw & unlocked
• Disk Utility permissions check doesn't show any problems with any of the associated files

It sure looks like I should have wide open access to run this VM; why is Fusion complaining?

Answer 1

Are you the owner of all the files in the bundle recursively? At this discussion (at post #6), a solution to this problem is to run the following in Terminal:

sudo chown -R ${USER} "/Users/${USER}/Documents/Virtual Machines/Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm"

You'll need to replace Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm with WinXP Clean + Scanner.vmwarevm in your case.

Also, keep in mind that repairing disk permissions will never repair anything in your home directory. It's only applicable for Apple-installed software that are listed in /Library/Receipts.

Answer 2

It looks like you're using vmware-run to start the VM ? Not the fusion UI (I'm interpreting the copy-n-paste text in your post).

This might be the same problem as http://superuser.com/questions/57801/vmware-fusion-2-0-6-no-longer-wants-to-load-my-vms - my advice there may apply here.

Answer 3

I called up VMWare Tech support to get a solution for this. After some very helpful investigation by the VMWare Tech, we eventually got it working by creating a new VM based off of the old virtual disks.

The tech speculated that copying the files off my Mac to a Samba share might have caused the permissions to become improperly set. He mentioned that copying files onto and back from a FAT volume (with its rudimentary permissions system) can occasionally fix problems like these.

Answer 4

I had the same problem occur on my VM. Mine sounds like it was probably a different underlying cause than the original poster's, although the error message was exactly the same.

It turned out that I had a *.vmx.lck directory inside the bundle that must have been left over from an old execution. As soon as I deleted that directory, the problem went away and the machine was happy to start again!