UPDATE 2011-11-19: According to several blogs, VMWare Fusion 4.1 now officially runs Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7 (as long as you confirm that you have a valid license for virtualization). A VMWare TechNote confirms this, so I assume the change is here to stay. In my testing, even my 10.4 VM worked just as before.
UPDATE 2011-11-22: According to VMWare, this new feature is a bug. The TechNote linked above is no longer available and the whole thing pretty much sounds like VMWare changed their mind and/or was pressured by Apple.
Back in 2009, I wrote about how to install Mac OS X (non-Server) versions in VMWare Fusion. Since then, Apple has released Snow Leopard (which worked just fine using the exact same hints). VMWare just released Fusion 4.0 today (which officially supports Lion as a guest OS), so I wanted to see whether my old hint still works.
Fusion 4.0 no longer uses /Library/VMWare Fusion for all its support files, but is all self-contained (it even runs all its background services on-demand, which I quite like) and has its stuff in /Applications/VMWare Fusion.app/Contents/Library. So MultiMac Helper (which patches Fusion’s Mac OS X Server detection stuff to trick it into also allowing the non-Server versions) no longer worked, but worked fine after fixing the paths. Grab a copy here: MultiMac Helper 4.app
Next, I fired up my Snow Leopard, Leopard and Tiger VMs one after another. Some of them showed “No operating system found” messages, but I was able to fix that by going into the CD/DVD settings and making sure the virtual drive was enabled and set to my physical SuperDrive. It still shows that message sometimes upon boot of the guest OS, but that can be fixed by restarting the VM, shutting it down and starting it again, or hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del. It might take a few tries to get it to work (might be a timing issue?), but will eventually boot up. The boot loader shows some EBIOS errors, but those don’t seem to matter.
I have not yet tried creating new 10.4/10.5/10.6 VMs yet, but that should still work the same as before.
If you’re having any issues (and if possible fixes for those), please let me know in the comments and I’ll update my post. I’m also attaching my VMX files to this post so that you can compare yours to them if you have trouble getting it to work: SnowLeopard.vmx Leopard.vmx Tiger.vmx
I can’t help it, every time I fire up my Tiger VM (which I only do like twice a year), I get all nostalgic about the Aqua GUI. Ok, it’s horribly inconsistent (glossy white menu bar, structured semi-transparent menus and light gray title bars), but hey, it still looks cool.
Note
Before proceeding, make sure you have an appropriate license for Mac OS X. I.e., don’t install two copies if you only own one — in general, this means you need the Family Pack or an additional copy. Also, make sure that you’re allowed to virtualize your copy of OS X — in Germany that is perfectly fine as limitations imposed by the EULA are effectively not legally binding (which is the reason why the German computer magazine c’t was able to publish MultiMac Helper), but you will need to check what applies in your own country.
UPDATE: If you create a new VM, you need to remove firmware = "efi" from the VMX, or it will complain about the OS not being the server version at some point during boot. If you see the black BIOS-style screen right after powering up the VM, you’re fine. If you see a grey screen with the VMWare logo on it, the VM is set to EFI mode.
However, even then I have not been able to successfully boot a Snow Leopard DVD. This appears to be due to the way VMWare Fusion handles non-EFI OS X boots: Upon boot, it connects darwin.iso to the VM, loads its special bootloader from there. VMWare Fusion 2.0 and 3.0 somehow managed to do that without interfering with the Snow Leopard DVD, but Fusion 4.0 fails at that. I assume it’s not something the VMWare folks would be regression testing because Fusion 3.0 and later by default boot OS X guests in EFI mode.
So the conclusion would be (at least until someone figures out how to patch the virtual EFI) that you need to create your 10.4/10.5/10.6 VMs on VMWare Fusion 2.0 (or 3.0 which requires you to manually remove the firmware = "efi" line as well). They’ll run in Fusion 4.0 just fine.
Alternatively, you could try (haven’t tested it yet) to leave the VMX with firmware = "efi", pull an image from your OS X DVD, convert it to read/write, touch /Volumes/OS X Install DVD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist (to make Fusion believe it’s a server DVD), convert it to read-only, boot it in the VM, install it. Rebooting into the OS will fail (as it does not have ServerVersion.plist), so remove the firmware = "efi" to switch the VM back to the patched non-EFI bootloader.
Tags: 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, leopard, lion, mac os x, snow leopard, tiger, vmware fusion
Hi,
Tested with Fusion 4.0.1 with the helper. and it does not work. still telling me that it is not the server version.
It should definitely not be saying that it’s not the server version. The helper modifies darwin.iso (OS X VMWare tools and bootloader) and replaces all checks for ServerVersion.plist (only exists on Server versions) with SystemVersion.plist (exists on every system).
Try running the following two commands and post the output in the comments:
ls -l /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages
grep -ai version.plist /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages/darwin.iso
Also, take a look at your VMX file and compare it to mine. I vaguely recall that Fusion 3 introduced some change that by default no longer uses the bootloader on the VMWare tools iso, but instead emulates an EFI. However, there’s a VMX option that you can use to switch back to the old bootloader (I believe by removing a line that says something like firmware = “efi”).
I tried installing Snow Leopard, but it says that the guest operating system is not Mac OS X Server. I ran the MultiMac Helper 4.app file before I did it.
grep -ai version.plist /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages/darwin.isoThis hardware configuration is not supported by Darwin/x86. (%d)Quiet Boot%s,%sKernel Cache/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/kernelcache %s.%08lXSystemVersion.plist/System/Library/CoreServices/ The operating system is not Mac OS X Server.
ls -l /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages
total 146112
drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 204 Sep 15 15:13 Originale
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12951552 Sep 15 15:13 darwin.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 256 Sep 15 15:13 darwin.iso.sig
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 446 Aug 26 23:10 tools-darwin.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 451 Sep 15 15:13 tools-key.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1679 Sep 15 15:13 tools-priv.pem
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 447 Aug 26 23:10 tools-windows.plist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 61833216 Aug 26 23:10 windows.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 256 Sep 15 15:13 windows.iso.sig
@Pik: looks alright, the image was patched successfully. Did you check for the firmware = “efi” line in your VMX? It might exist by default, so just remove it.
Thanks a lot for updating the ct tool, it’s working fine for me on Lion with VMs for 10.6 and 10.5 (created with Fusion 3 – so no report whether creation still is straight forward).
Yes, the firmware = “efi” line existed by default. The problem I have now is that it’s refusing to boot from the cd/dvd after I removed the line. It’s just complaining that Mac OS guest is using this CD-ROM device.
@Pik: Please take a look at the last paragraph of my blog post where I added a suggestion on how to install a VM in EFI mode and then switch it over to BIOS mode for productive use. Let me know if that works.
It doesn’t look like it wants to startup from an installation disk image of Snow Leopard. Basically after a while it’s showing a “not allowed” logo during the boot-up process instead of the Apple logo.
Maybe the easiest way is to run Fusion 3 for the installation, and then upgrade to version 4 after that.
I just tried EFI booting a Snow Leopard DVD image with the ServerVersion.plist trick and it worked. You need to make sure that you select the DVD drive (not the Install Mac OS X volume on the DVD) when clicking File – New Image from disk1.
However, I have not been able to actually install it — the Installer froze a couple percent into the process. However, you might be able to install Snow Leopard natively onto a USB disk, boot up the VM from the modified DVD image and then clone the USB disk onto the virtual hard drive.
Yes, Fusion 3 is probably the easiest way to go for now…
I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to install 10.6 into a VM from both Fusion 3.1.3 and 4 using the listed tool as well as touching the install disc image to fool Fusion that it is the server version. Neither works and both return the same result.
If I dont’ delete the firmware=”efi” line from the VMX, the VM will boot then eventually show the ghostbusters sign and make it no further.
On Fusion 4, I can press CMD+V and get the full verbose and it’s hanging after the CPU initialization with a message of “Waiting for root device”
If I delete the efi line from the VMX, I get the bios-look boot screen followed by a pop-up saying “no os found” Tell that OK and it says I can’t eject the CD because it’s in use by the guest OS.
Installed Fusion 3.1.3 on another machine (also Lion) and the results differ only slightly.
With the efi firmware, it’s exactly the same, except I can’t look at the verbose boot.
Without the efi firmware, I get an option to select what to boot from (CD/DVD,HD, quit) none of which work.
Ok, This is what I did. and it worked
I ran Multi Mac
Then modified a Snow Leopard disk image to include the /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist file.
And Installed
Once installed,
I switched the scsi cdrom device to an ide device in the vmx. set ide0:0.startConnected = “FALSE” and disabled efi
Still got the cdrom error, but clicking cancel let me pass through.
Once booted, I again created /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist on the live volume.
shutdown, re-enabled efi and now it boots with no errors.
My vmx:
.encoding = “UTF-8″
config.version = “8″
virtualHW.version = “8″
scsi0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
ide0.present = “TRUE”
ide0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
memsize = “1024″
scsi0:0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0:0.fileName = “Mac OS X 10.6 64-bit.vmdk”
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “nat”
ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000″
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet0.addressType = “generated”
ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = “TRUE”
usb.present = “TRUE”
ehci.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge0.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge4.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge4.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge4.functions = “8″
pciBridge5.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge5.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge5.functions = “8″
pciBridge6.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge6.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge6.functions = “8″
pciBridge7.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge7.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge7.functions = “8″
vmci0.present = “TRUE”
smc.present = “TRUE”
hpet0.present = “TRUE”
ich7m.present = “TRUE”
usb.vbluetooth.startConnected = “TRUE”
tools.syncTime = “TRUE”
displayName = “Mac OS X 10.6 64-bit”
guestOS = “darwin10-64″
nvram = “Mac OS X 10.6 64-bit.nvram”
virtualHW.productCompatibility = “hosted”
keyboardAndMouseProfile = “macProfile”
proxyApps.publishToHost = “FALSE”
tools.upgrade.policy = “upgradeAtPowerCycle”
powerType.powerOff = “soft”
powerType.powerOn = “soft”
powerType.suspend = “soft”
powerType.reset = “soft”
extendedConfigFile = “Mac OS X 10.6 64-bit.vmxf”
ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:1e:f4:52″
vmci0.id = “589231186″
uuid.location = “56 4d 0e 6d 81 db c9 8e-2f 42 29 52 23 1e f4 52″
uuid.bios = “56 4d 0e 6d 81 db c9 8e-2f 42 29 52 23 1e f4 52″
cleanShutdown = “TRUE”
replay.supported = “FALSE”
replay.filename = “”
scsi0:0.redo = “”
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = “17″
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = “21″
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = “22″
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = “23″
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = “24″
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = “16″
usb.pciSlotNumber = “32″
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = “33″
ehci.pciSlotNumber = “34″
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = “35″
usb:1.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0″
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = “67108864″
usb:1.speed = “2″
usb:1.deviceType = “hub”
usb:1.port = “1″
usb:1.parent = “-1″
ide0:0.present = “TRUE”
ide0:0.autodetect = “TRUE”
ide0:0.deviceType = “atapi-cdrom”
ide0:0.startConnected = “FALSE”
firmware = efi
checkpoint.vmState = “”
scsi0:1.fileName = “auto detect”
floppy0.startConnected = “FALSE”
ide0:0.fileName = “auto detect”
usb:0.present = “TRUE”
usb:0.deviceType = “hid”
usb:0.port = “0″
usb:0.parent = “-1″
@SlimSCSI: very nice, though the ServerVersion.plist trick has some shortcomings — most notably that it breaks all OSX updates inside the VM. For that reason, I recommend (and use it myself) removing firmware=efi and instead running the patched darwin.iso. It does not work as smooth as the EFI method (you mentioned the cdrom error — in my testing, in about 1 in 5 boots you need to reboot to get past it), but once the OS is up, everything runs perfectly fine.
@Michael Kuron Copying the contents of SystemVersion.plist to ServerVersion.plist fixes the updates. What are the other shortcomings?
@SlimSCSI: Really? I recall that that still caused OSX to believe it was the server version (e.g. the login windows displays “Mac OS X Server”) and thus broke Software Update and disabled a couple other features. In fact, that was why MultiMac Helper was created (the ServerVersion.plist trick has been around much longer and blog posts about it still mention that it breaks Software Update) — patching darwin.iso allows you to run an unmodified guest OSX.
But if it works for you, that’s great.
This was my first attempt at booting SL in fusion, So I am unaware of the history. So far, it has been working well for me. I can report back in a few weeks.
There are two people named Donk and Mac Son of Knife over at InsanelyMac.org who created bsdiff patches for VMWare ESXi and VMWare Workstation (and have announced Fusion patches) to allow OSX booting in EFI mode. I am not going to post a link to the source, but if you’re feeling adventurous, you might want to check this method out.
I’m having trouble installing Mac OS X 10.6 in VMware.
My setup: VMware Fusion 4.0.2, Mac OS X 10.6.2 install DVD for Mac mini (Early 2009).
1. Apply MultiMac-Helper-4.app
2. Insert the Mac OS X 10.6 install DVD, launch Disk Utility, and create a disk image from it. Select the DVD/CD device (in my case PIONEER DVD-RW DVRTS08), NOT the “Mac OS X Install DVD” because the disk image made from the latter does not boot. Then choose File > New… > Disk Image from disk2… > Image Format: DVD/CD Master > Save, and wait for a while.
3. Mount the .cdr disk image by double clicking it, and in the Terminal create an empty ServerVersion.plist file:
touch “/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist”
Then unmount the disk image.
4. Create a new VMware virtual machine: Create New > Continue without disk > choose the .cdr disk image, Operating system: Apple Mac OS X, Version: Mac OS X Server 10.6 64-bit or Mac OS X Server 10.6 [32-bit].
…my 64-bit CPU, 64-bit EFI Mac mini can’t boot Mac OS X 10.6 in 64-bit mode without hacking the stock Apple EFI (on the other hand, it boots Mac OS X 10.7 by default in 64-bit mode just fine).
…so I’m not sure whether I should configure VMware in 64- or 32-bit mode with Mac OS X 10.6 (with Mac OS X 10.7 64- and 32-bit both work OK). So I have always tried both 64- and 32-bit options.
The installer disk image now boots into the “Mac OS X Server”
language selection window. But when I choose continue, there is an alert “Mac OS X can’t be installed on this computer.”
Is it just that my Mac mini install DVD is missing something?
The install DVD that came with your Mini will only install on a Mini. You either need a retail DVD, or you might be able to modify the PKGs on the DVD to not perform the model check (I’m sure somebody has blogged about this somewhere).
In fact the situation is similar to what I described in my post on installing Tiger in VMWare: back then, the retail DVDs were PowerPC only. So I ended up installing my machine-specific disc on real hardware, pulling an image, and restoring that from a Leopard DVD booted in VMWare.
Hello Michael,
My current environment is as follows:
OS X Lion 10.7.2
VMWare Fusion 3.1.3
– OS X Snow Leopard Client (Retail Version)
The current setup works fine, however I purchased VMWare Fusion 4 to take advantage of the latest software upgrade.
In a short summary, I could not get VMWare Fusion 4 to boot Snow Leopard, subsequently I back out and reversed everything back to VMWare 3.1.3.
I have looked thru insanelymac.org in hoping to find specific instructions regarding the necessary steps for getting and preparing VMWare Fusion 4 to boot and ultimately migrate my Snow Leopard image to VMWare Fusion 4 friendly.
I had a strong feeling the solution is right in front of me once the fog is cleared, as I didn’t think rebuilding from scratch is necessary.
Thank you in advance.
Best regards,
Michael L.
> So I ended up installing my machine-specific disc on real hardware, pulling an image, and restoring that from a Leopard DVD booted in VMWare
Thanks for the tip! I successfully created Mac OS X 10.6 VM the following way (no hacks required with VMWare 4.1). Luckily I had some spare external disks to fiddle on. Sorry for the detailed post, but this serves also as a memo for me because I’m still a novice when it comes to VMWare.
1. I made a small 10 GB partition (9 GB would have been enough but I wanted to play it safe) and installed Mac OS X 10.6.2 on it from the Mac OS X 10.6.2 install DVD for Mac mini (Early 2009). I installed only essential system software and Rosetta (my goal is to switch to Mac OS X 10.7 while having access to old applications that need Rosetta).
2. I then booted to my main Mac OS X 10.6.8 disk and with Disk Utility made a read-only “Mac OS X 10.6.2 installation.dmg” from that small partition with Mac OS X 10.6.2 on it.
3. Then I switched to 10.7-only: I booted to my Mac OS X 10.7.2 disk, launched VMware Fusion 4.1 and used Mac OS X 10.7.1.dmg to install a Mac OS X 10.7 32-bit VM (Mac mini (Early 2009) can’t boot 64-bit Mac OS X 10.6 kernel without hacking the EFI, so I chose to use 32-bit Mac OS X 10.7 here).
4. I shut down the VMWare’s Mac OS X 10.7.1 installation and added another HD to it via Virtual Machine > Hard Disk (SCSI) Settings… > Add Device… > New Hard Disk > Add… > Apply. I launched the 10.7.1 VM and initialized the new HD with the Disk Utility via clicking the new device (the one without disks on it) > Erase (I named the new disk as “HD”).
5. Then I shared the Desktop folder of the host (“Mac OS X 10.6.2 installation.dmg” was on the host’s Desktop) via Virtual Machine > Sharing Settings… > Shared Folders: ON, add Desktop folder.
6. Then I launched the Disk Utility and clicked the new empty “HD” on the left > Restore > dragged the new empty “HD” from the left to the Restore’s Destination panel > Source: Image… > navigated to the “Mac OS X 10.6.2 installation.dmg” > Restore.
7. Now I essentially got a dual-boot VM so i could just use the Startup Disk control panel inside the VM to determine whether to boot from the 10.7 or 10.6 HD. To make a Mac OS X 10.6-only VM I did the following after shutting down the VM:
8. Create New VM > Continue without disk > Use an existing virtual disk > navigate to the 10.7 VM (by default it is at ~/Documents/Virtual Machines) and choose the (10.6′s) “Virtual Disk.vmdk” > Make a separate copy of the virtual disk > Choose > Continue > Opreating System: Apple Mac OS X, Version: Mac OS X 10.6 [32-bit] > Continue > Finish > Save. Then the Mac OS X 10.6.2 VM successfully booted!! The only glitch I’ve sofar noticed is that while the 10.6 VM boots up, the Apple wireless mouse gets briefly disconnected.
9. Now can optionally delete the 10.7 VM or just the 10.6 HD in it.
OK, VMware Fusion 4.1 should now allow users to virtualize also non-server retail versions Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6
I tried several times to install retail version of Mac OS X 10.5 to my Mac mini (Early 2009) in 64- or 32-bit modes, but the Mac OS X installer always hangs half-way with no error messages.
Anyway, I just ordered the retail version of Mac OS X 10.6 from Apple Store (29 EUR) because I guess it won’t be much longer available from Apple (I already have the Mac OS X 10.6.2 installer DVD for Mac mini).
I wasn’t able to install either 10.5 or 10.6 with Fusion 4.1 (same as mh wrote) and my existing VMs for those that ran fine on Fusion 4.0x don’t run anymore (they ran once but were very unstable).
Any ideas what is up there?
Not sure what the problem is there — it works perfectly fine for me (I have not done any extensive testing, but it feels the same as before). However I have not tried installing new VMs — all my VMs were created on Fusion 2.0 with the original MultiMac helper.
I’m really baffled myself. I tried to make a clean install, getting rid of ANY trace of Fusion except my virtual machines. Still getting weird behavior. Mostly the existing VMs tend to crash and burn and are also horribly slow
Giving up and moving back to 4.01
I’m experiencing a similar problem installing from a retail DVD of Snow Leopard. Goes fine until about 1/4 installed, then hangs a long time, then finally puts up a message “necessary files not found.” BTW. once SL is installed, how exactly does one add Rosetta (which is the whole point of the exercise)?
Sorted it out. The culprit on my system was a Safari prerelease. Downloaded the uninstaller, ran it and now all is back to normal.
@dfs: Rosetta is on the DVD AFAIK, alternatively SL will download and install Rosetta when the first ppc program is run.
Today the news about VMWare Fusion 4.1 went through the blogosphere. Seems like people are having mixed success. My guess would be that simply because of the new popularity of OSX on Fusion more people are finding bugs.
@Dom: Safari/WebKit sounds like an odd cause for this. But if uninstalling it helped, great.
Regarding 10.7 on VMWare: According to the macenterprise mailing list, 10.7.2 removes the driver for the SCSI adapter that VMWare emulates. Manually putting it back supposedly works: http://groups.google.com/group/macenterprise/msg/a1797aac6d620db1
> The install DVD that came with your Mini will only install on a Mini.
This new .vmx option enables host model pass-through:
hw.model.reflectHost = “TRUE”
This will cause the VM to see the same model ID as the host. The default for this option is FALSE. Be aware that using this option may cause VM portability issues since the guest may now depend on this behavior and the type of the underlying Mac.
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1865986?tstart=0
One source said that these options should only be used to workaround issues when installing from hardware-specific DVDs, and should be removed from your .vmx file after the install has completed, and Mac OS in the VM has been updated to its latest version via Software Update.
I could now install from the Mac OS X 10.6.2 install DVD for Mac mini in VMware 4.1 with no other hacks besides the hw.model.reflectHost = “TRUE” line.
The install went otherwise OK, but at the very end of the install VMware freezed requiring a force quit as well at the very end of the Mac OS X account creating. But then it launches OK.
BTW, how do you edit the .vmx file? I Option-right-click the VM and choose Open Config File in Editor which opens TextWrangler.app in my setup. But TextWrangler by default tries to save the files as Western (Mac OS Roman); I have changed this to Unicode (UTF-8) because the files starts with .encoding = “UTF-8″ line.
On the other hand, VMware support pages suggest opening the VM package in the Finder, and editing the .vmx with TextEdit.app’s default settings.
Does VMware care which encoding or which kind of line breaks (the default seems to be UNIX LF) the .vmx file uses?
I was able to create a Mac OS X 10.6 client using Fusion 4.1 from a disk image of a Snow Leopard installer DVD. I tried several times until I found what I had to do: create a disk image selecting the DVD/CD device NOT the “Mac OS X Install DVD”, Image Format: DVD/CD Master. Did not need any helper app, nor modify or patch any files.
Thanks to mh for pointing me in the right direction
@John: Good point there regarding creating the disk image. My recommended procedure for pulling an image off a bootable DVD is dd if=/dev/disk1 of=disk.iso
I re-tried installing Mac OS X 10.6 from scratch and this time I experienced no VMware freezes. But maybe giving the VM more memory than the default 1 GB and more CPU cores would help during the installation??
Ragarding 64- vs 32-bit in my Mac mini (Early 2009) that can’t boot Mac OS X 10.6 in 64-bit mode without hacking the stock Apple EFI (on the other hand, it boots Mac OS X 10.7 by default in 64-bit mode just fine):
I installed also in 64-bit mode in VMware but nevertheless the Activity Monitor reports the kernel_task running only in “Intel” (i.e not Intel (64 bit) as most of the processes) and the System Profiler also reports “64-bit Kernel and Extensions: No”.
So it seems that the VM is running in 32-bit although VMware was told to install as 64-bit.
What do you see in other Macs (MacBooks have the same limitation regarding 64-bit boot in Mac OS X 10.6)??
> create a disk image selecting the DVD/CD device NOT the “Mac OS X Install DVD”, Image Format: DVD/CD Master.
Actually all Disk Utility Image Formats work the same here as long as you grab it from the device, so I’ve used the default “compressed” .dmg which is somewhat smaller. But if you need to modify the disk image, then pick the read-write .dmg or DVD/CD Master .cdr ( what is their difference BTW?).
Of course you can later convert the compressed image to read-write and vice versa with the Disk Utility.
I tested how VMware 4.1.1 update handles Mac OS X 10.6 VM created under the more forgiving v4.1. (I bought a retail version of Mac OS X 10.6 although I already had Mac OS X 10.6 for Mac mini).
As expected, the boot now halted at an alert “The guest operating system is not Mac OS X Server. The virtual machine will power off.”
There seems to be at least two options to bypass that error:
A) Before upgrading from VMware 4.1 to 4.1.1, do this in the Terminal inside the VM:
sudo touch /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist
…to add an empty ServerVersion.plist file in that folder.
BTW, if you copy and rename SystemVersion.plist as ServerVersion.plist (i.e. with text inside), the VM boots into server mode via EFI and BIOS.
So it seems that an empty ServerVersion.plist might allow future Mac OS X updates to happen correctly, right?
B) If you don’t add that ServerVersion.plist file, you have to:
1. Apply MultiMac Helper 4.app which patches Fusion’s Mac OS X Server detection stuff to trick it into also allowing the non-Server versions.
(As is said elsewhere here, the helper modifies darwin.iso (OS X VMware tools and bootloader) and replaces all checks for ServerVersion.plist (only exists on Server versions) with SystemVersion.plist (exists on every system). VMware uses some signature checking, so you’ll need to re-sign all VMWare Tools ISOs with your own certificate, otherwise VMware will refuse to run).
2. You also need to remove the
firmware = “efi”
line from the VMX, or it will complain about the OS not being the server version during boot.
When booting an existing VM this way via BIOS, VMware connects darwin.iso to the VM, loads its special bootloader from there. There are some alerts you can bypass by answering OK to the 1st and whatever to the 2nd message:
> Your Mac OS guest is using this CD-ROM device. …Note that if no physical media is currently inserted, you can safely continue.: OK
> Your Mac OS guest is using this CD-ROM device…: OK or Cancel continues the boot.
…but then VMware always unsuccessfully and unnecessary tries to reinstall VMware tools so you must cancel it and unmount the VMware Tools. How can this be bypassed?
@mh: I never had the issue that VMWare Tools try to reinstall and fail. Usually, darwin.iso should unmount itself after the bootloader was loaded. I provided my VMX files in the blog post, so you could check if there are any differences.
I don’t recommend the ServerVersion.plist trick — as I said before, I’ve previously had trouble with installing updates. But your mileage may vary, so use whatever works for you.
For now, I’d recommend to stay on Fusion 4.1. The only difference between 4.1 and 4.1.1 is that they re-added the server version check.
The InsantelyMac.org patches supposedly also work (but I’m not sure whether they’ve been updated for Fusion 4.1.1).
I’m currently running Fusion 4.1 and probably staying with it for a while, so I won’t be able to test anything that involves messing with ServerVersion.plist, darwin.iso or vmware-vmx.
You’re right: Software Update didn’t see the Safari 5.1.2 update with the ServerVersion.plist trick and EFI boot.
Via BIOS boot and SystemVersion.plist -only the Software Update was OK.
…but via BIOS boot the VMware Tools .iso is always mounts and the VMware Tools installation must always be cancelled.
@mh: Did you try hiding the VMWare Tools virtual disc in /etc/fstab in the guest OS as described on http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060930150059172 ? I used that method for something else a few years ago and it worked. If you do want to update VMWare Tools some time, you’d need to manually mount the virtual disc using Disk Utility, but that’s probably preferable over having it automatically mounted on every boot.
Would anyone be willing to post VMWare 4.1, or send it to me directly? I’m so bummed now that their website refuses to allow us to download the version that has the ‘bug’ that allows Snow Leopard client to function. Google cache was unhelpful (hoped that an old version was still hanging around)
I had jumped to buy 4.1 as soon as the news broke, but unfortunately the version that came in the box was 4.0, and I have been unable to get any version to work with Snow Leopard client, even after running MultImac Helper 4
TIA