VMware Fusion License packaging

[mconners]

Hi Everyone,

Today's crisis is related to VMware Fusion. We have version 8.5 installed, however, we are finding out the license we used to install it is expiring in 5 days. We are working directly with VMware to acquire a new license to use on our Macs. The question is, does anyone know of an easy way to package up or push out the new license without the need of repackaging Fusion?

Thankfully, this is only affecting a handful of our Macs.

Thanks in advance.

[JustDeWon]

Hmm.. You can possibly see if you can make adjustments to the Deploy.ini file which has your license and just package that and deploy it to the location /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/Deploy VMware Fusion.mpkg/Contents/00Fusion_Deployment_Items/Deploy.ini

I would test it first tho

[mconners]

Perfect. I will give this a shot and report back.

[mconners · Accepted solution]

@JustDeWon that didn't work. I did find the license file associated with our new number. It was located in /Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion and I copied this file to Composer and packaged it up. Once packaged, I pushed out with a policy and all is well. Thanks for guidance. It put me on the right path.

[sam2212]

Hi,
under which path you put that file in composer before packiging it ?

[franton]

The more elegant way of doing this, is to use some inbuilt commands that VMWare provides. e.g.

/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/Initialize VMware Fusion.tool set "" "" ${serial}

Where the "serial" variable, is the serial key you want the App to use. Avoids all the nasty business of snapshot packaging. It's essential the two blank "" fields are left in place or the command won't run.

[JustDeWon]

@mconners ... I'm glad you were able to get it worked out

[donmontalvo]

@franton thanks for the command, this came in quite handy today:

/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/Initialize VMware Fusion.tool set "" "" ${serial}

[r0b]

Having some issues using the above command, here's what I'm running

export serial=*****-*****-*****-*****-*****
/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/Initialize VMware Fusion.tool set "" "" ${serial}

Testing on a machine before deploying via JSS and when I open the Fusion application back up, the license in use has not changed although the command appears to run successfully.

Thoughts?

Edit: Got it working, works fine when deployed from the JSS with the above code.

[dmw3]

Hi all, having trouble getting the above command to work with VMware Fusion 11.5.6, the command runs ok with no errors, just the serial number does not get entered into the license file.

Have also tried this script with the same result.

Any help appreciated.

[valentin_peralt]

I have the same issue. It still asks for admin prompt. Can anybody help me?

[bigmikeey]

Ok here is the solution. Set at attribute with the serial number and then run the command line with a sudo command in front when testing this locally. But when running the script in Jamf you will not need so use "sudo" run Jamf run as a root user.

serial= "serial_number_here"
sudo /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/Initialize VMware Fusion.tool set "" "" ${serial}