MSoK

Thanks MSoK for the clarification about the unlocker.

I’ve managed to get OS X 10.8.3 running on my AMD processor ESXi server, although VMware Tools needed a little modification and for some reason the ‘Fit Guest’ doesn’t appear to work which is slightly annoying. Maybe someone with more knowledge will know why?

For anyone interested in getting OS X 10.8.3 working on an HP Microserver N54L running ESXi 5.1 U1 here is a brief list steps:

Firstly thank you for the unlocker! It works really well on workstation 9, but I am having some trouble with ESXi. I'm running ESXi 5.1 U1 (Build 1065491) and I'm using the vSphere client that came with it, but I can't see any changes that the unlocker has made, should I? For example when I create a new VM I see the option for OSX 10.7, but not 10.8, is that normal once unlocked as I already had those options before I ran the unlocker? As far as I know the uinlocker installed OK, or at least I didn't get any error messages. Any help is much appreciated and if you need any more information please just ask.

P.S. I'm quote new to Linux\ESXi so I may have not done something that is obvious!

Thanks madburg. I just thought with VMware anouncing support for 10.8.3 in U1 they would at least let you choose 10.8 as an option, obviously not. I'll have to give it a go this weekend and see if I can get OSX up and running, although my machine is AMD based so it will probably be more of a challenge

Thanks MSok!

Oh man, so do you recommend I FIRST uninstall the (just delete the .app ?) unlocker VMTools, then install the ESXi VMTools. Or Just run the install (and hope) it either uninstall's or upgrades the unlocker ones, that explains why I am receiving "unsupported" status for the tools.

Yeah, much appreciate all the guidance. Back when I found out about insanelymac and unlocker I was already running a cluster and vCenter, I learned quickly it was a no go. By just removing the control of the host via vCenter was enough, but like you said this baggage must have cared over and was a receipt for bad things to come (which it did ). I will definitely check out the new mini mac's but what do you do to get redundant storage for VMs? at least Raid 1...  as I miss vCenter, vMotion, etc....

So I finished (at 2am) installing from scratch/fresh, it was interesting to see how from even the very beginning steps like the usb key, it was partitioned differently by 5.1.0 U1... vmnic's assignments changed, that screwed me up a bit. under 5.0 U1 I had vmnic0-4, now under 5.1.0 U1 I had vmnic 1-5. Getting by mgmt network under my LAG was a mother f'er as I been through this before with 5.0, installing the updated mpt2sas drivers, setting scratch/syslog locations configuration, license, port groups, local balance, all over again, anyways... all the backups and screenshot help out alot. So I was now running 5.1.0 U1 FRESH as a summer breeze

Interestingly (this is all before applying unlocker) I was seeing high cpu utilization upon reboots (no VMs running) last quite some time. During that time the Health Status (CIM) where showing normal with stats. Once the CPU utilization dropped like it should since no VMs where running, the Health Status change to unknown and lost stats... So it is not an unlocker thing (THANKS VMWARE! you figure by U1 things like this would be working).

So a nervous as I was, I installed unlocker v110. HOLY SHIZZLES, the test 10.8.3 guest I had waiting, booted that dmg quick fast and I was on my way (you have to use the disk utility to erase the VM disk, then only can you install), no issue between reboots, no issues at all. Proceeded to move on to powering on my previous 10.7.x VM (with the data I need) booted right up!!! So I am back to OS X virtualization, sweet.

So one one question I can think of at the moment, VM Tools displays "Running (unsupported)" is that to be expected. I copied the darwin.iso that was included in the unlocker v110 source to the datastore, mounted to the VM and installed those exact tools? Things like "Restart guest" that depend on the Tools seem to work just fine...

So clearly upgrading from 5.0 U1 to 5.1.0 U1 was not a good thing when it comes to unlocker... (really at the end of the day, no upgrade from anyone is perfect...) so whether it was vCenter setting left behind or a combination of things, I can say from my experience it was night and day if you want to utilize unlocker. Thanks guys!

I'm not sure that since there was no replies if something bad was found with the information I posted.

Today, I decided to uninstall unlocker v110, as esxi 5.1.0 U1 Health Status (CIM) and other hardware statuses (like hardware acceleration for storage statues) where all acting up all this time. And since the moment I upgraded from 5.0 U1 to 5.1.0 U1 I installed unlocker v110 I could not be sure if it was a compatibility issue with my hardware and this new version of esxi or unlocker causing it. I can confirm it was indeed unlocker v110 causing it. Everything is perfect now that unlocker v110 is uninstalled.

I just took a screenshot of what the esxi Health Status (CIM) looks like when unlocker is not installed and esxi 5.1.0 U1 works properly. WIth unlocker v110 installed all statuses displayed "unknown" (no fan speeds etc...) as well as miss-reporting in other areas via the vSphere client. There were also lags in vm guest consoles when powering up vm's, this too is now functioning properly.

Re-running the tests on the osx 10.8.3 guest with the mounted dmg gave the exact behavior (with the unlocker v110 uninstalled), so this version of unlocker is not working properly under esxi 5.1.0 U1 and unfortunately causes other stability (for a lack of better words at the moment) issue with the base esxi.

To verify with you, all I did is copy the 3 files (install.sh, uninstall.sh, Unlocker.ESXi) to a folder in my datastore (no other files), than ran chmod +x against the 3 files (they turned green color via putty once that was done) and executed ./install.sh from the path in which they reside on the datastore. The output I posted in a previous post, Donk verified.

Your thoughts are appreciated.