MacOS Big Slur and VMware Fusion NAT not working

MacOS Big and VMware Fusion 12, NAT networking not working anyone run into similar issues before?

No internet/Network access with VPN or without VPN.

Any help is massively appreciated.

VM operating system: Ubuntu 20.04

1 Answer

Below is the workaround for this issue. It's a bummer it would not work out of the box.

Host Machine with no VPN:

1. Update the DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 within your VM (In my case Ubuntu)

2. Disable and enable the network again. (It should take ~10 sec to show the network connectivity.)

3. Done! You should have internet now.

If you're on a VPN your Host machine:

In your Host MacOS BigSur

1. Add the last two lines below into file /private/etc/pf.conf (symlink of /etc/pf.conf). The location these are added in the file is important and must be at the beginning along with the other nat

vi /private/etc/pf.conf 

#
# com.apple anchor point
#
scrub-anchor ""
nat-anchor ""
rdr-anchor ""
nat-anchor "com.apple.internet-sharing/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple.internet-sharing/*"

and then reloaded the pf.

sudo pfctl -d
sudo pfctl -e -f /etc/pf.conf

2. List all the DNS servers on your MacOS and make a note of the DNS IP addresses. (Please note you might have some duplicate IP addresses, just ignore them.)

% scutil --dns | grep 'nameserver\[[0-9]*\]'

 nameserver[0] : 10.32.111.250 nameserver[1] : 10.21.112.250 nameserver[0] : 192.168.0.1 ... ...

In your VM:

3. In your VM, update all the DNS entries in Network Settings:

or alternatively, you can add them in your /etc/resolve.conf

...
nameserver 10.32.111.250
nameserver 10.21.112.250
...

4. Disable and enable the network.
5. Done! you should be able to access the VPN sites.

If it still doesn't work disable IPV6. Or you may have to do similar settings for IPV6 as well.