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VMware Engineer Confirms macOS Catalina 10.15.6 Bug Causes Crashes with Virtualization

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macOS Catalina 10.15.6 seems to have introduced a bug that causes system crashes, especially when using virtualization software such as VirtualBox or VMware.

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Users of virtualization software have reported that macOS 10.15.6 crashes repeatedly when running virtual machines.

A regression in the App Sandbox component of macOS 10.15.6 is reportedly leaking kernel memory, causing macOS to crash. The purpose of an App Sandbox is to provide protection to system resources and limit an app's access to resources, such as memory.

VMware engineers have today diagnosed the issue and filed a "comprehensive" report with Apple, including a minimal reproduction case which should allow them to easily identify and address the issue. The engineer cautions that "it isn't looking good" going forwards, and it will likely fall to Apple to resolve the issue in a software update to macOS. It is unclear if this issue exists in developer and public betas of macOS Big Sur.

The workaround suggested by many users and VMware engineers is to refrain from installing macOS 10.15.6, or shutting down virtual machines when they are not in use and rebooting the host as often as possible.

Article Link: VMware Engineer Confirms macOS Catalina 10.15.6 Bug Causes Crashes with Virtualization
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/27/vmware-confirms-macos-virtualization-bug-causes-crashes/
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Oh Catalina .... even in your final builds you can't give up your reputation....

I really hope the reason for all of the crashes I get on a regular basis coming in and out of sleep, as well as my other reliability issues is because they had their A-team working on the massive Big Sur release for the past few years.... because Catalina has been a terrible experience.
 
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Quu said:
I've had a few crashes since installing this update and I am using virtual machines so I'm glad this bug has been found. Hope Apple fixes it quickly.
Click to expand...

I don't know, I haven't felt like they cared about Catalina outside of security issues.

I mean, I know for a fact I'm not the only one who crosses their fingers when they come out of sleep mode as to whether their mac will spontaneously reboot

And I know I'm not the only one who has complained for a year that my Mac launches every application I've opened in my lifetime on reboot - not just the ones I had open when I shut down, which is what the feature is supposed to do.

I still say shown past performance, they won't fix anything that people actually care about. If I hadn't seen Big Sur or the whole Apple Silicon announcement, I would have taken the lack of fixes in Catalina builds to be more proof that they don't care about the Mac anymore....
 
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Has anyone heard whether Apple Silicon Macs will run a Windows x86-64 VM on VirtualBox or Parallels?

I probably haven’t looked hard enough on the ‘net but I assume someone with a Developer Transition Kit has tested this?
 
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Lahmy88 said:
Has anyone heard whether Apple Silicon Macs will run a Windows x86-64 VM on VirtualBox or Parallels?

I probably haven’t looked hard enough on the ‘net but I assume someone with a Developer Transition Kit has tested this?
Click to expand...
Windows 10 ARM will happen but that’s all I read. Actually, I also heard that Federighi our Boot Camp out to pasture but was open to virtualization in general.

edit: just found this vague-but-encouraging statement.
 
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dguisinger said:
I mean, I know for a fact I'm not the only one who crosses their fingers when they come out of sleep mode as to whether their mac will spontaneously reboot

And I know I'm not the only one who has complained for a year that my Mac launches every application I've opened in my lifetime on reboot - not just the ones I had open when I shut down, which is what the feature is supposed to do.
Click to expand...

I am not denying that you are experiencing these problems, but I work at a fairly large university supporting hundreds of Macs and have not had a single user complain about either of these problems.
 
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Lahmy88 said:
Has anyone heard whether Apple Silicon Macs will run a Windows x86-64 VM on VirtualBox or Parallels?

I probably haven’t looked hard enough on the ‘net but I assume someone with a Developer Transition Kit has tested this?
Click to expand...

No, they will not.
 
Lahmy88 said:
Has anyone heard whether Apple Silicon Macs will run a Windows x86-64 VM on VirtualBox or Parallels?

I probably haven’t looked hard enough on the ‘net but I assume someone with a Developer Transition Kit has tested this?
Click to expand...
There's been extensive discussion of this topic on this forum. None of the existing virtualization tools will enable running Intel operating systems on Apple Silicon.
 
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It’s interesting that VMWare feel the need to publish this publicly rather than go through the normal channels. Do they feel it won’t get fixed without the external attention?
 
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I've had - what I presume is - this issue about 4 times in the past couple of weeks. My symptoms: VM becomes unresponsive, cursor still moves around but no menus appear to work. After a short while, the video display turns into a nasty pixellated mess. Nice!

Oh well, at least it's a known issue now and hopefully a fix will be in the pipeline at some point.
 
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