VMware Fusion

VMware Fusion

XAIOS has a qualified virtual ARM64 guest profile for VMware Fusion 26H1 (26.0.0) on Apple Silicon. The supported profile is four vCPUs with E1000E and AHCI. It remains virtual-platform correctness evidence, not a compatibility claim for other Fusion releases, physical Apple Silicon performance, or production certification.

The generated VM uses the Debian 13 ARM64 GRUB chainloader to launch the same XAIOS UEFI loader used by the common firmware path. The kernel discovers its devices through ACPI/PCI rather than selecting a Fusion-specific core path.

Fusion's UEFI Graphics Output Protocol framebuffer is passed to the kernel when valid. The kernel continues a compact 8x16 console-style progress display after UEFI hands off at 20%, then renders the IPv4 address, an assigned public IPv6 SLAAC address when a validated Router Advertisement provides one, verified SSH state and the current local-authentication prompt with a blinking cursor at 100%. The common input path includes a USB HID boot-keyboard driver for QEMU xHCI. The Fusion bundle provisions xHCI so the same driver is available to the guest; interactive Fusion-window qualification remains separate from the QEMU input gates. PL011 serial remains the headless-console fallback.

Verified On Fusion 26H1 (26.0.0) ARM64

• PCI bridge traversal and Intel 82574L/E1000E-compatible NIC discovery.
• Bridged DHCP IPv4 configuration and the boot-screen lease address.
• Standard AHCI SATA discovery, ATA identify, writable xaibootFS format, and reload of the same VMDK after reboot.
• Mac-local public-key SSH command execution and SFTP upload/download.
• Persistent SSH writes across hard-stop recovery, guest reboot, orderly shutdown with storage quiescing, and a clean repeat boot.

Build the bundle with:

make vmware-fusion-image
make vmware-fusion-smoke

Typing at the Fusion console

The generated profile wires the serial port to fusion-serial.log, which is write-only: the guest prints to it but nothing can be typed back. The Fusion window itself shows the boot status screen — progress bar, address, SSH state and a XAIOS LOGIN: prompt with a blinking cursor — but that screen is a status display, not a terminal. It never echoes typed characters or renders command output, so it cannot be used to operate the system.

There are two ways to get an interactive session:

SSH, which is the intended administration path. The guest takes a bridged address, printed on the boot screen, and accepts admin / xaios:

ssh admin@<address printed on the boot screen>

A bidirectional serial pipe, for console-level access such as recovery or watching early boot. Build with the serial port as a pipe, then attach a terminal to the socket VMware creates:

XAIOS_FUSION_SERIAL=pipe ./platform/vmware-fusion/build-vmware-fusion.sh
./platform/vmware-fusion/run-vmware-fusion.sh
nc -U /tmp/xaios-fusion-console

Set XAIOS_FUSION_SERIAL_PIPE to move the socket. The default stays file so the automated Fusion smoke gate keeps reading fusion-serial.log.

The default development account is admin / xaios; it is public and must only be used on an isolated development network. For key-based SSH, package a disposable key when building and connect to the address shown by the guest:

XAIOS_AUTHORIZED_KEYS_FILE=/path/to/test-key.pub make vmware-fusion-image
ssh -i /path/to/test-key admin@guest-address

The generated bundle and its 256 MiB VMDK live under build/vmware-fusion/XAIOS.vmwarevm. Rebuilding the bundle creates a new VMDK; ordinary reboots preserve it.

make vmware-fusion-smoke builds a disposable public-key image and performs the complete lifecycle above. It leaves no VM running when it succeeds or fails.

Remaining Boundary

• Fusion multi-vCPU startup remains bootstrap-only.
• VMXNET3 is discovered, self-tested and activated, but cannot yet carry a frame; the qualified device remains E1000E. See F-02.
• IPv6 works on a bridged guest whose network offers it: a globally routable SLAAC address, inbound SSH/SFTP/UDP and outbound SSH/SCP. It did not until the E1000E receive filter stopped discarding all multicast, which is where router advertisements arrive.
• Snapshot and resume semantics are defined and gated -- see make vmware-fusion-snapshot-gate. A snapshot taken powered off is a point in time; a revert boots onto a filesystem the guest trusts; a suspend is not counted as an unclean boot. A revert intermittently leaves the guest refusing shell commands while SFTP still works (B-25).
• Long-duration Fusion service load, repeat-boot at volume and crash recovery against generated VMDKs remain separate work.
• Fusion on Apple Silicon does not validate x86_64 guests or physical hardware.

See the repository Fusion detail document, Hardware Support, and the Project Tracker.