MacOS – VMWare Tools do not allow changing resolution in El Capitan

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Looks like VMWare Tools do not allow changing resolution in El Capitan. Input data as follows:

  • VMWare Workstation 12
  • Latest VMWare Tools 8.0.2 (here)
  • Mac OS El Capitan, build 15B42

I've tried everything I could find online. I set sudo nvram boot-args=rootless=0 before installation. I also disabled protection via csrutil disable in Recovery.

VMWare says it's installed successfully. I see that its drivers are loading in verbose boot log.

Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: Loaded com.vmware.kext.VMwareGfx Version 0297.78.63 Build 2977863 (Aug 11 2015 19:19:22)
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: Start: FB size=0x300000, FIFO size=0x200000
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: Start: host_bpp=32, bpp=32, num_displays=2
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: start: maxWidth 3840 maxHeight 1920 vramSize 33554432
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: setDisplayMode: (1) wxh=1024x768, 32 4096
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: SetMode: mode w,h=1024, 768 bpp=32
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: svga: SetMode: pitch=4096
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: setDisplayMode: Display ID=1, Depth ID=0
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: fb: setDisplayMode: wxh=1024x768, bpp=32, pitch=4096
Nov  5 13:51:38 localhost kernel[0]: gfx: gfx: UpdateTraces: Enabling traces.

Nov  5 13:51:43 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: Loaded com.vmware.kext.vmmemctl Version 0297.78.63 Build 2977863 (Aug 11 2015 19:19:20)
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: Opening balloon
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 0: 80
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 1: 16
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 2: 56
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 3: 64
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: offset 4: 76
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: memctl: Timer thread started.
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: hgfs: Loaded com.vmware.kext.vmhgfs Version 0297.78.63 Build 2977863 (Aug 11 2015 19:19:16)
Nov  5 13:51:44 Jacks-Mac kernel[0]: gfx: fb: VMwareFramebufferGetLastCustomResolution: Last custom resolution: missing

But unfortunately it's not working in practice – there are no screen resolutions besides 1024*768

I suspect it might be related to System Integrity Protection introduced in El Capitan. Suspiciously despite the fact that csrutil status says disabled in Recovery in real system it gives following result

enter image description here

Any thoughts how to make it work?

Best Answer

Admittedly, this is a very old thread (that I found from searching for com.vmware.kext.VMwareGfx), but I wanted to update with an answer.

I was able to get a working setup using Mojave 10.14.5, on Workstation 15 Player, using the copy of VMware Tools from Fusion 11. Additionally, I did not have to do any csrutil tweaks.

VMwareGfx

So perhaps you can try using those versions and see if things will work out of the box. Good luck!

(As for the commenter talking about the Apple licence agreement, I'm not a lawyer but I understand it's not a violation if you're running on Apple hardware. In my case I'm running this on my MacBook Pro, and I'm happy to report that macOS guests worked out of the box for me.)

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