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How to Install Retail OS X 10.6 "Snow" and OS X 10.7 "Lion" under VMware ESXi 5


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I have created this topic as an installation guide and consolidated view for installing OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" and OS X 10.7 "Lion" under VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 5 it is based on Donk's topic "ESXi 5 Mac OS X Unlocker" link below:

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1745191

[uPDATED: 04/NOV/2011]

VMware Workstation 8, Player 4 and Fusion 4 have now been released, Donk's "Generic Unlocker" is now available. A new "How to Install Retail OS X 10.6 "Snow" and OS X 10.7 "Lion" under VMware Workstation 8 and Fusion 4" topic specifically for the desktop vistualisation products, i.e. Workstation 8, Player 4 and Fusion 4 is now released, see link below:

[uPDATED: 04/NOV/2011]

 

Please use Donk's topic for questions regarding the Unlocker and this topic for questions regarding Mac OS X installation and guide update requests.

 

[uPDATED: 12/NOV/2011]

PLEASE NOTE: Donk has released an update to his "universal unlocker" (unlock-all) which supports all current variants of VMware, i.e. ESXi 5 (including the latest patch), Workstation 8, Player 4 and Fusion 4. The new "universal unlocker" (unlock-all) is a consolidation of Donk and Zenith432's work and provides the unlocker and scripts to stop and start relevant services as well as install the latest darwin.iso for installing VMWare Tools. The current version is "unlock-all-v101.zip"

[uPDATED: 12/NOV/2011]

 

[uPDATED: 04/NOV/2011]

Donk's original "ESXi 5 Unlocker" was build specific and was indicated in the unlocker by the patch number as VMware have now released a number of patches for ESXi 5 the latest being "ESXi500-201111001.zip" this changes the ESXi 5.0.0 build number from the original 469512 to 504890, see link(s) below.

 

The recommended installation method is to uninstall the "unlocker" update ESXi to the latest build version (currently 504890), a re-boot will be required, install the new "universal unlocker", again a re-boot will be required. The option to choose Apple Mac OS X as a Guest operating system will be present when creating New Virtual Machines, this will confirm the "universal unlocker" has patched your VMware correctly.

[uPDATED: 04/NOV/2011]

 

[uPDATED: 28/SEP/2011]

However only Apple Mac OS X 10.6 can be selected when creating a new virtual machine, Apple Mac OS X 10.7 can only be selected once the new guestOS has been saved and you edit the settings.

[uPDATED: 28/SEP/2011]

 

[uPDATED: 25/SEP/2011]

Please can you add the following information we require to help sort issues out!

 

1. The VMX file associated with the guest

2. The latest vmware.log file found in the same folder as the guest

 

Please attach the files to a post, do NOT copy them in-line as that only slows us down. Without this information it is hard for us to work out what may be going wrong.

[uPDATED: 25/SEP/2011] (Thanks for the reminder from Donk)

 

"The guide will appear here shortly, just need a little more time to iron out some of the new 'oppotunities' Apple have given us with trying to install Lion"

 

Links to all the relevant and related topics in the InsanelyMac forum:

[uPDATED: 04/NOV/2011]

Donk's ESXi 5 (unlock-all) Mac OS X Universal Unlocker:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1745191

 

Donk's Workstation 8, Player 4 and Fusion 4 (unlock-all) Mac OS X Universal Unlocker:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1750629

Although I have supplied both links the "universal unlocker" is identical and supports ESXi 5, Workstation 8, Player 4 and Fusion 4.

[uPDATED: 04/NOV/2011] (Thanks to Donk and Zenith432)

 

[uPDATED: 28/SEP/2011]

Zenith432's Updated Unlocker(s) for ESXi 5, Windows and Linux (Workstation 8 and Player 4) and OS X (Fusion 4):

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1752790

[uPDATED: 28/SEP/2011] (Thanks to Zenith432, Donk and gokumba)

 

MSoK's How to Install Retail OS X 10.6 "Snow" and OS X 10.7 "Lion" under VMware Workstation 8 and Fusion 4:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1750634

 

 

MSoK's How to Install Retail OS X 10.6 "Snow" under VMware Workstation 7 or Player 3:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1622074

 

[uPDATED: 20/SEP/2011]

Link(s) to darwin.iso from ESXi 5 (current version 5.0.0) and Fusion 4 (cuurent version 4.0.1) to install VMware Tools:

http://rapidshare.com/files/829645494/darwin500.iso

http://rapidshare.com/files/3379463815/darwin401.iso

 

"Official Mirror" for Donk's "Unlocker" files:

http://rapidshare.com/files/2931986862/unl...i500-469512.tgz

http://rapidshare.com/files/1255338683/unl...i500-474610.tgz

http://rapidshare.com/files/3682694876/unl...-windows-u1.zip

[uPDATED: 20/SEP/2011]

 

Special thanks to Donk without who's continued time and commitment none of this would be possible.

 

Regards MSoK.

(I will try to keep this post updated, with all relevant contributions gratefully received and credited)

I downloaded ESXi 5, but it seems like it needs an entire hard-drive for itself. Is it possible to install it on a partition and coexist with other partitions on the same drive? If not, and I get an external drive, is a USB flash drive enough? How many GB does it need? Can it use VMDK files stored on NTFS partitions? Thanks.

Hi MSoK,

 

i tried using a Lion USB stick and a SD-card as installation medium. Both are booting in my MacBook Pro, but not in the VM i've created. There i just see the apple-logo of the bootloader and nothing happens.

Does Donks patch allow booting a plain Mac installation medium under esxi5 or do i need some other tweaks in addition to that for the installation?

 

 

cheers,

oegie

Hi MSoK,

 

i tried using a Lion USB stick and a SD-card as installation medium. Both are booting in my MacBook Pro, but not in the VM i've created. There i just see the apple-logo of the bootloader and nothing happens.

Does Donks patch allow booting a plain Mac installation medium under esxi5 or do i need some other tweaks in addition to that for the installation?

 

 

cheers,

oegie

 

How are you connecting the USB stick to the guest?

 

I downloaded ESXi 5, but it seems like it needs an entire hard-drive for itself. Is it possible to install it on a partition and coexist with other partitions on the same drive? If not, and I get an external drive, is a USB flash drive enough? How many GB does it need? Can it use VMDK files stored on NTFS partitions? Thanks.

 

You can install ESXi onto a USB drive , but you will need to have an internal disk partitioned with VMFS5 the native format for drives. Also the hardware requirements are very specific for ESXi and not all hardware works. Best to check out the whitebox community at VMware forums and vm-help.com which also has help for this topic.

Hi Donk,

 

i connected the usb stick via the vSphere Client (Win 7 x64) to the VM. The result is the same as trying to boot the VM from the iso-file. Just the apple logo and nothing more. As stated before my mac is able to boot from that usb stick.

 

 

thx,

oegie

Hi Donk,

 

i connected the usb stick via the vSphere Client (Win 7 x64) to the VM. The result is the same as trying to boot the VM from the iso-file. Just the apple logo and nothing more. As stated before my mac is able to boot from that usb stick.

 

 

thx,

oegie

 

OK so when the guest starts you have hit the USB icon on the console and connected the drive. The next step would be to boot to the EFI BIOS screen. ON the 2nd page of the guest settings dialog box select the checkbox to boot to BIOS. Once in there select Boot Manager and the EFI Shell. Can you then run a map command and grab a screenshot and we can see if the drive is being seen? (I would do screenshots but I only have a few minutes free at work before 3.5 hours of meetings.)

 

The other option if you have a Snow Leopard guest is to create an empty VMDK and restore InstallESD.dmg onto that then you can use that as a second drive for installing Lion.

Hi Donk,

 

thanks for your support!

Can't test the usb-stick right now, but i booted from iso with -v and got the following output as seen in the attachment.

 

 

cheers,

oegie

 

Ahh that is a known Lion issue on non-Apple hardware. Add -v npci=0x2000 to the boot command line. It is still slow but does speed it up over the defaults.

I try install Snow Leopard Server 10.6 and after 10.6.8 combo update and all ok! :)

After I try install Lion using iso image but nothing, it hangs up on gray with apple logo.

So I tried using Snow Leopard for creating a vmdk restoring on it my iso. It's the same... it hangs up on boot screen.

How I can put -v and other options, like thos suggested by Donk, during boot??? please, help me...

Hi DFox,

 

try to enter the EFI BIOS as Donk said:

"On the 2nd page of the guest settings dialog box select the checkbox to boot to BIOS. Once in there select Boot Manager and the EFI Shell."

Once there you enter "boot -v npci=0x2000" and cross your fingers ... ;-)

 

bye,

oegie

Ok, you have to install 10.7.1 before applying the vanilla ESXi 5 vmware tools. After the update they install just fine (by copying the darwin.iso into the VM and mounting it via hdiutil mount darwin.iso).

Hoping that i find time for some vMotion testing tomorrow.

 

cheers,

oegie

Ok, you have to install 10.7.1 before applying the vanilla ESXi 5 vmware tools. After the update they install just fine (by copying the darwin.iso into the VM and mounting it via hdiutil mount darwin.iso).

Hoping that i find time for some vMotion testing tomorrow.

 

cheers,

oegie

You should be able to just install them from the menu as integral toESXi 5 install, under /vmimages/tools-isoimages(?). Works great for SL but CD issue for Lion causes issues. However once installed should be fine. I didn't upgrade to 10.7.1 and they did install OK. Maybe need to do that to fix IDE CD drive.

I tried this configuration: two IDE device (empty vmdk as HD, vmdk with lion.dmg restored).

On boot I entered into EFI and boot with "boot -v npci=0x2000" parameters.

So this is the screenshot... It hangs but I do not understand how to resolve...

 

Please help me!

 

post-289462-1315469829_thumb.png

You are trying to install via CD-ROM. This does not seem to work at the moment, because Lion does not see the device inside the VM.

Try to install via usb boot stick (i used Lion Disk Maker for the creation). This worked for me flawlessly.

One important question: after path, during creation of a virtual machine, would "Lion OS X 10.7" option appear?

Or the only possible selection will remain Snow Leopard??? If so, I have to manually modify my VMX configuration file???

 

Thank You

Oh thank You very much...

Ok, I successfully installed Lion on my ESXi 5 with the use of vmdk trick.

I found that Lion does not see any IDE device, only SCSI devices! Can someone confirm this?!?

Yep. That seems to be an issue at the moment.

Yes that is the issue. The Lion support in Fusion 2011 beta always creates SCSI drives and CDROMS. I can't find a way to create a SCSI CDROM in ESXi except as pass-thru to actual server drive.

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