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OS X Yosemite Installation on VMWare Workstation 11


jiggyman
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Hello fellow Insanelies.  VMWare Workstation 11 is here! And along with it are some interesting things to note.  Most noteworthy among them:

 

  • OS X boots without the need for unlocking VMWare.  That's right.  I was able to actually install Yosemite natively, using Plop Boot Manager (to boot from usb).  The installation goes without a hitch.

 

  • Just like VMWare Workstation version 10, EFI boot works flawlessly.

 

  • We can allocate more than 128MB of VRAM to VM Guests.  I have tested it with my installation of Yosemite, but the results have been mixed (more on this later).  

There is a not-so-nice detail to add here:

 

  • You can't simply upgrade your previous OS X guests to VMWare 11 guests.  They simply won't boot, giving a weird error.  More work by people with a little more knowledge than me will have to be done.

With all this being said, I started this thread out of my excitement to finally be able to go at least go through the install process without having to modify any part of the boot process with unlockers, or command-line attributes.  I'm hoping to get help from my fine friends here on InsanelyMac with the rest of the process; getting the post-installation boot to work.  Right now, the install works, but once it's done and the guest reboots, it hangs once the progress bar get's nearly halfway.  I can boot the guest with using the USB install stick as a bootloader of sorts, which leads me to believe we can make some mods and have a fully booting OS X Guest.  Additionally, the VRAM amount varies from 3 MB to 484 MB, but that may also be a product of the way the system is currently booting.  I'll keep working at it, but I need help.  

 

****UPDATED****

 

OK, Let's start this off with a disclaimer.  This is not a guide, just an information post for my fellow Insanelies.  If I have time in the immediate future, I will work on a guide for both Yosemite and Mavericks. Now, on to the fun stuff :D  :D  :D  I was pretty excited about the VMWare Workstation 11 release, after all it's been hyped up to be.  However, after playing around with different install combinations, and post install tweaks, I'm both happy and disappointed. First, the disappointment:  I have not been able to allocate more VRAM to my OS X VMs.  The maximum I was able to achieve was 128 (both with SVGA II on Mavericks and natively with VMWareGFX kext on Yosemite).  The SVGAII driver still doesn't work on Yosemite either.  On my Windows, ESX5.5i and CentOS hosts, increasing the VRAM worked perfectly.  That said, I'm still investigating the guts of VMWare 11 and the methods we are using to make the graphics work.  Other than that, I am happy to report that I was able to get Yosemite and Mavericks both booting and running very smoothly.  Yosemite is still a work in progress, as it's still quite messy post-boot.  For instance, when I watch a video, it sometimes slows to a crawl.  At other times, the whole system freezes while I'm copying files, or watching a youtube video.  The Yosemite experience is just not quite right, and yet I can't even attribute that all to VMWare, as my daughter's MB Pro has the same issues with Yosemite.  Mavericks, however, is another story.  I have gotten it tuned to run perfectly, and I even have my USB 3.0 and Bluetooth passed through as well.  I'm able to watch HD movies, burn discs with Toast, and a host of other things, just as I would on a normal MAC.  

 

The installation was pretty easy, and as I said, I'll post a guide when I get some time this coming week.  I used a Chameleon USB installer and the Mavericks/Yosemite file I downloaded from the Apple Store to do the install.  I think the best thing about the newest edition of VMWare is the ability to install and run the software without unlocking VMWare. Woot Woot!  Ok, that's all rambling I have for now.

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@jiggyman,

 

Can you explain the process that you used to install Yosemite on VMWare Workstation 11?  I rely heavily on my OS X VM, but the graphics performance in Yosemite has rendered it practically useless.  I've been hoping that the ability to allocate more vram in Workstation 11 would help solve the issue - have you had any luck with the vmsvga2 driver?  If I can get Yosemite installed then I can start looking for solutions too...

 

Also, I wonder if your issue with hanging at boot is more of a Yosemite bug than a VM problem... at work we recently bought 5 new Mac Minis, which came preloaded with Yosemite.  Every time we reboot the machines, every single one of them hangs at about 1/2 progress.  The only solution so far has been to force shutdown, restart again, and repeat 2-4 times until eventually it boots successfully.  A bit of searching suggests that this is a common issue after upgrading to Yosemite, and some claim that it will eventually finish loading if you let it sit for long enough.

 

Details about your setup would be greatly appreciated, so hopefully we can get things running smoothly.

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I have Mavericks and Yosemite in VM's and after installing VMWare 11, neither will boot past the ~50% mark. The same thing occurs if you try to boot them in VMWare 10 that has not been patched, so I think we still need to patch/modify VMware 11. Hopefully, someone will discover what is needed to do that.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Same issue here. After upgrading VMWare Workstation to version 11, my OSX Test VM's (10.9 and 10.10) won't start anymore. When try to start the startup process will hang at 50% or so.

Someone knows how to fix this?

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Same issue here. After upgrading VMWare Workstation to version 11, my OSX Test VM's (10.9 and 10.10) won't start anymore. When try to start the startup process will hang at 50% or so.

Someone knows how to fix this?

 

issue has been fixed, Check the link below...running VMWARE 11, and OS X 10.10 has been updated to vmware 11....running without a hitch.

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/303311-workstation-11-player-7-and-fusion-7-mac-os-x-unlocker-2/page-4?do=findComment&comment=2100269

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I made the stupid mistake of simply upgrading my previous OS X guests to VMWare 11 guests, now i cant run it. hopefully there will be a fix soon cuz im going insane, and i dont want to go back to vmware 10 when i already upgraded all my Guest machines.

 

You can run vmware 11 guests on workstation 10, I did upgrade too and installed back workstation 10 until osx unlocker is available.

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