Rancher Desktop fails to start on MacOS 12.3

Noticed Rancher Desktop (1.1.1) now fails to start after the MacOS update to 12.3

Steps to Reproduce

1. Update MacOS to 12.3
2. Open/Start Rancher Desktop
3. Authorize privilege access

Result Kubernetes Error Error Starting Kubernetes Error: /Applications/Rancher Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/resources/darwin/lima/bin/limactl exited with code 1

Last command Run: limactl start --tty=false 0

Context: Starting virtual machine

Some recent logfile lines:

time="2022-03-15T04:59:58-07:00" level=info msg="Using the existing instance \"0\""
time="2022-03-15T04:59:58-07:00" level=info msg="Starting switch daemon for \"shared\" network"
time="2022-03-15T04:59:58-07:00" level=fatal msg="\"/private/var/run/rancher-desktop-lima\" doesn't seem to be writable by the daemon (gid:1) group"
2022-03-15T11:59:58.940Z: + limactl start --tty=false 0
2022-03-15T11:59:58.940Z: Error: /Applications/Rancher Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/resources/darwin/lima/bin/limactl exited with code 1
2022-03-15T11:59:58.940Z: Error starting lima: Error: /Applications/Rancher Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/resources/darwin/lima/bin/limactl exited with code 1
    at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/Applications/Rancher Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/dist/app/background.js:1:8692)
    at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:394:28)
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:290:12)

[jandubois]

We have determined the root cause of this issue:

Rancher Desktop has always erroneously created /private/var/run/rancher-desktop-lima with file mode 555.

We didn’t notice this because it was silently fixed by lima when it made sure the directory existed:

# head -1 /etc/sudoers.d/zzzzz-rancher-desktop-lima
%everyone ALL=(root:wheel) NOPASSWD:NOSETENV: /bin/mkdir -m 775 -p /private/var/run/rancher-desktop-lima

Now, this is actually a bug: mkdir -m 755 -p ... is not supposed to change the permission bits if the directory already existed. But it did, so it covered up the bug in Rancher Desktop.

This bug has been fixed in the Monterey 12.3 release (but not in e.g. the Catalina security update).

The best workaround for now is to run this command after each reboot (/var/run is deleted on reboot), before you invoke Rancher Desktop the first time:

sudo mkdir -m 775 /private/var/run/rancher-desktop-lima

We are planning to make a new Rancher Desktop release next week that addresses this issue.

[alexdepalex]

The permissions on the /private/var/run/rancher-desktop-lima directory were reset to 555.

dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  daemon   64 15 mrt 13:34 /private/var/run/rancher-desktop-lima

Workaround is resetting it to 775.