At other times when I've added a raw disk using vmware-rawdiskCreator, VMware Fusion has asked me for my administrator password when I start to boot that virtual machine. And the whole process has worked before. However, when I attempt to do this now, I get: "Insufficient permission to access file; Cannot open the disk 'Raw.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.". But not only that; I'm not even asked for my administrative password. Maybe the confusion is that now I'm running VMware Fusion as an administrator, whereas before I was running it as an ordinary user (where it was assumed that authenticating to get access to the device was needed). But now I'm not even being prompted to provide my password, so this could be a misunderstanding (VMware Fusion assuming that it's not needed, or incorrectly reporting whether the device is accessible). From the vmware.log:
2013-08-22T09:52:20.777-08:00| vthread-13| I120: VTHREAD start thread 13 "vthread-13" pid 2209
2013-08-22T09:52:20.777-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISK: OPEN scsi0:0 '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/Virtual Disk.vmdk' persistent R[]
2013-08-22T09:52:20.777-08:00| vthread-14| I120: VTHREAD start thread 14 "vthread-14" pid 2209
2013-08-22T09:52:20.778-08:00| Worker#2| I120: DISK: OPEN scsi1:1 '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk1s4-disk12-1-Raw.vmdk' persistent R[]
2013-08-22T09:52:20.778-08:00| Worker#1| I120: DISK: OPEN scsi1:0 '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk0s4-disk11-0-Raw.vmdk' persistent R[]
2013-08-22T09:52:20.858-08:00| Worker#0| I120: Current OS Release is 12.4.0
2013-08-22T09:52:20.860-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened : "Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk" (0x1a)
2013-08-22T09:52:20.862-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened : "Virtual Disk-s002.vmdk" (0x1a)
2013-08-22T09:52:20.864-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened : "Virtual Disk-s003.vmdk" (0x1a)
2013-08-22T09:52:20.865-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened : "Virtual Disk-s004.vmdk" (0x1a)
2013-08-22T09:52:20.865-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened : "Virtual Disk-s005.vmdk" (0x1a)
2013-08-22T09:52:20.865-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-LINK : Opened '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/Virtual Disk.vmdk' (0x1a): twoGbMaxExtentSparse, 16777216 sectors / 8 GB.
2013-08-22T09:52:20.865-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-LIB : Opened "/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/Virtual Disk.vmdk" (flags 0x1a, type twoGbMaxExtentSparse).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.865-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DiskGetGeometry: Reading of disk partition table
2013-08-22T09:52:20.866-08:00| Worker#1| I120: FILE: File_GetTimes: error stating file "/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/rawdiskAuthorization": No such file or directory
2013-08-22T09:52:20.866-08:00| Worker#1| I120: RawDiskAuthLoadPrivilegesDictionary: raw disk authorization file doesn't exist yet, will ask for authorization.
2013-08-22T09:52:20.866-08:00| vthread-15| I120: VTHREAD start thread 15 "vthread-15" pid 2209
2013-08-22T09:52:20.866-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISK: Disk '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/Virtual Disk.vmdk' has UUID '00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00'
2013-08-22T09:52:20.866-08:00| Worker#0| I120: DISK: OPEN '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/Virtual Disk.vmdk' Geo (1044/255/63) BIOS Geo (0/0/0)
2013-08-22T09:52:20.866-08:00| Worker#2| I120: FILE: File_GetTimes: error stating file "/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/rawdiskAuthorization": No such file or directory
2013-08-22T09:52:20.866-08:00| Worker#2| I120: RawDiskAuthLoadPrivilegesDictionary: raw disk authorization file doesn't exist yet, will ask for authorization.
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#1| I120: DISKLIB-FLAT : "/dev/disk11" : failed to open (38): admin authentication failed or cancelled.
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: DISKLIB-FLAT : "/dev/disk11" : failed to open (38): admin authentication failed or cancelled.
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: DISKLIB-LINK : "/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk1s4-disk12-1-Raw.vmdk" : failed to open (Insufficient permission to access file).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: DISKLIB-CHAIN : "/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk1s4-disk12-1-Raw.vmdk" : failed to open (Insufficient permission to access file).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: DISKLIB-LIB : Failed to open '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk1s4-disk12-1-Raw.vmdk' with flags 0x1a Insufficient permission to access file (38).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: DISK: Cannot open disk "/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk1s4-disk12-1-Raw.vmdk": Insufficient permission to access file (38).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#1| I120: DISKLIB-LINK : "/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk0s4-disk11-0-Raw.vmdk" : failed to open (Insufficient permission to access file).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#1| I120: DISKLIB-CHAIN : "/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk0s4-disk11-0-Raw.vmdk" : failed to open (Insufficient permission to access file).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: Msg_Post: Error
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#1| I120: DISKLIB-LIB : Failed to open '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk0s4-disk11-0-Raw.vmdk' with flags 0x1a Insufficient permission to access file (38).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: msg.disklib.FILENOPERMISSION Insufficient permission to access file
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#1| I120: DISK: Cannot open disk "/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk0s4-disk11-0-Raw.vmdk": Insufficient permission to access file (38).
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: msg.disk.noBackEnd Cannot open the disk '/Users/admin-user/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vm-test.VM-vm-test-x64-test.vmwarevm/vm-test.VM-disk1s4-disk12-1-Raw.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
2013-08-22T09:52:20.867-08:00| Worker#2| I120: -
Note that it's suggested that I'll be asked for authorization.
I can confirm that, as this administrative user, I can dd of=/dev/disk11 if=/dev/zero. Also, originally I had wanted to set this up on the original /dev/disk0s4 partition which was formatted as HFS and then later I unmounted it and cleared the first few blocks with zeroes (so that it wouldn't be considered by OS X to be a true HFS volume). But the raw disk creator binary didn't like that (the request to only pass through that partition) and wasn't really able to add the device by partition. So, instead, I provided /dev/disk0s4 as the disk device (giving fullDevice as an argument), instead of providing /dev/disk0. That gave the permission error as described. Finally, I reformatted /dev/disk0s4 as a CoreStorage volume, causing a /dev/disk11 to be populated in "diskutil list" output. I then zeroed the first few blocks of /dev/disk11 and then issued:
$ /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk11 fullDevice diskname lsilogic
But, this resulted in this permissions problem as described. So maybe the assumption on the original problem (the idea that I couldn't use /dev/disk0s4) is incorrect. But definitely something is not working here. I'd expected to be prompted for the administrative password instead of having VMware assume that it's not possible to access the disk. And I can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can actually write raw data to /dev/disk11 or /dev/disk0s4 directly, as an administrator (I'm not logged on as root when I do this, nor do I use sudo). So I can access the raw device. But there's too much checking going on or the logic isn't implemented properly. But I'm not able to use the disk as a raw device. Trying to put a virtual disk file on that partition instead would introduce yet another layer of complexity whereas I don't wish this. I'd like to access the raw partition.