Recently I have published a post about the difficulties and available hints on installing Lion on VMware as a virtual machine. Here is the great news: I managed to install on my Windows 7 32Bit OS with VMware. This guide is part of the full complete guide which I will be publishing in coming days.The available Lion installation DMG is not working with VMware on non apple computer. We need to create a bootable installer image which can be used as a boot loader and installation medium to complete our task. Here I show how to create a bootable Lion OS X Installer Image for VMware in Windows host.
Create a macOS/OS X VM on VMware ESXi 6.5 & VMware Workstation 12.5.2 Pro. Running a MacOS/ OS X virtual machine is not anything new and has been supported for quite some time, as long as you are running said VM on a supported hypervisor with Apple Hardware.
Joe Chilcote has written a tool, vfuse, which converts a never-booted OS X image (such as created with a tool like AutoDMG) into a VMDK and configures a VMware Fusion VM. Vfuse can also configure a Packer template alongside the VM, configured with the vmware-vmx builder.
How to Install macOS Sierra Final on VMware on Windows. Patch the VMware. Open Patch Tool folder then right click on win-install.cmd file, Select “Run as Administrator”. Step 3: Create New Virtual Machine. Open VMware Player or Workstation then select “Create new virtual machine”, Guest OS: Apple Mac OS X Version: Mac OS.
I’m demonstrating these steps in Intel Core2duo computer with 3GB RAM with Windows 7 32Bit computer and VMware workstation 7.1.
What You Need?
1) Working Snow Leopard Virtual Machine in VMware or VirtualBox
Check my earlier guides to install Snow Leopard on VMware or on VirtualBox
2) Lion Leopard Installation DMG (Available for developers in Apple site and some torrents sites). You can use the original retail DVD after the final release.
Why You Need This Installer Image?
1) There are no boot loaders available to boot the original Lion installer in VMware.
2) The installation package available in DMG file can’t be installed in virtualization platform.
Steps to Follow.
1) Attach a 5GB new virtual hard disk (VMDK) file to working Snow leopard Virtual machine.
2) Press Initialize when you start the Mac OS X virtual machine. Create a partition with following configuration in newly attached 5GB virtual hard disk.
Name – LionInstaller
Format: Mac OS X Extended
Partitions: Single partition – Apple Partition Map
3) Now attach the Lion Installation DMG or ISO you downloaded from Apple or Torrent sites to VMware virtual machine’s CD drive. Once you connect, it will be automatically mounted in SL virtual machine.
Convert DMG file to ISO in Windows host as shown here. The file is mounted as “Mac OS X Install ESD” under Volumes.
4) We need to copy the base system image from mounted ISO to our LionInstaller (new VMDK file). Mount the base system image from terminal and run the following command.
This will mount it as “Mac OS X Base System” in desktop and under Volumes.
5) After Base System mounted, we can use Restore feature under disk utility to copy the entire data.
Go to Disk Utilities and select the source and destination as shown below to start the restore – this will copy the entire base system to 5GB hard disk.
Provide the root access password.
6) Copy the kernelcache files with following command.
7) Modify the plist file to enable the kernelcahce we copied in new installer disk.
Go to /Volumes/LionInstaller/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ and open com.apple.Boot.plist file with TextEdit.
Enter following string and save the file.
If you face any permission issues, save this file to Desktop or any other folder then move to the destination, this time it will ask to authenticate, provide root access password.
OR, use sudo vi command to modify this file in terminal.
Make sure this file is modified as shown in above example in new installer image.
8.) Now copy the installation packages by following commands.
Second command will copy large size of data to new VMDK file. Wait for some time.
9) We are almost done. Since VMware supports Mac OS X server versions only, newly created installation image should be flagged as server version.
Run the following command.
That’s it, our bootable Lion installer image is ready and it can boot in VMware without any boot loaders. Shutdown the running Snow Leopard virtual machine and remove the 5GB VMDK file from virtual machine. This VMDK file can be attached to other new Lion VM to boot and install.
I successfully managed to install Lion OS X 10.7 on my VMware workstation 7.1 in Windows 7 Intel host computer with this image.
I will be sharing the complete installation steps in coming days. Stay tuned with Sysprobs.
This guide is based on other guide published in obviouslogic.com, where he created installer image on Mac host computer and used the same image in VMware Fusion. Big thanks for obviouslogic.com owner for excellent idea which can be used in Virtual machine and Windows VMware also.
I’ve started using ESXi servers more and more for hosting my test Macs, both here and at work. As part of that, I’ve found it to be considerably easier for me to build the VM inside of VMware Fusion on my Mac and move it to ESXi, then build it from scratch on my ESXi server.
That said, I’ve found the process for moving OS X VMs has not been straightforward. When I first tried moving 10.8.x VMs, I tried both VMware’s OVF Tool and VMware’s Standalone Converter, but neither initially appeared to provide me with the ability to transfer working OS X 10.8.x VMs.
In the end, I was able to find a way to use VMware’s Standalone Converter to transfer 10.8.x VMs, but the process involves some extra steps on the ESXi server’s end.
The process I’ve developed involves using a Windows 7 VM running inside of VMware Fusion, with the VMware Standalone Converter application installed. One thing to note before proceeding further is that I did not try this with a vSphere server. All my work has been done with VMware’s free ESXi server, so it may be that there’s an easier way to do this with vSphere. See below the jump for details.
1. Launch Standalone Converter and select Convert Machine.
2. For Select source type: , select VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine then hit the Browse button.
3. Locate the .vmx file stored inside your VMware Fusion VM and select it.
4. Once the .vmx file is selected, hit the Open button.
5. Verify that everything looks OK at the Source System window, then hit the Next button.
6. For Select destination type:, select VMware Infrastructure virtual machine. Once done, supply the login credentials for the ESXi server that you want to copy the VM to and hit the Next button when finished.
7. If the ESXi server is using a self-signed SSL certificate, a warning will appear. Click the Ignore button to continue.
8. In the Destination Virtual Machine window, a listing of the current VMs on the ESXi server should appear. Name the VM that’s being imported as desired and hit the Next button.
9. In the Destination Location window, select the datastore on the ESXi server that the VM will be imported to and hit the Next button.
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10. In the Options window, leave the default settings alone and hit the Next button.
11. In the Summary window, hit the Finish button.
Once all the conversion choices have been made, the VM will then be uploaded to the ESXi server. It’s important to know that the OS X VM will upload in an unbootable state.
At this point, you will need the VMware vSphere Client application to do the rest of the work on the ESXi server.
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13. Launch VMware vSphere Client and log into the ESXi server.
14. If the ESXi server is using a self-signed SSL certificate, a warning will appear. Click the Ignore button to continue.
15. The ESXi administration console should appear, with the uploaded VM appearing as a powered-off VM.
16. Select File: New: Virtual Machine… to create a new VM.
17. In the Configuration window, select Custom. This option is needed because we want to re-use a part of the uploaded VM.
18. In the Name and Location window, name the new VM as desired. To avoid problems, name the VM something different from the uploaded VM.
19. In the Storage window, select the datastore where you want to store the new VM.
20. In the Virtual Machine Version window, use the default option of Virtual Machine Version: 8.
21. In the Guest Operating System window, select the following options:
Guest Operating System: Other
Version: Apple Mac OS X 10.7 (64-bit)
22. In the CPUs window, select the desired number of cores.
23. In the Memory window, select the desired memory configuration.
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24. In the Network window, select the desired number of network cards.
25. In the SCSI Controller window, leave it at the default selected SCSI controller.
26. In the Select a Disk window, choose the Use an existing virtual disk option.
27. Select the datastore where you had previously uploaded the OS X VM to from the Standalone Converter application and hit the Open button.
28. Select the folder that corresponds to the name of the uploaded OS X VM and hit the Open button.
29. Select the .vmdk file inside the uploaded VM and hit the OK button.
30. Verify that the correct path is showing in the Disk File Path line and hit the Next button.
31. In the Advanced Options window, leave the settings at the default configuration.
32. In the Ready to Complete window, verify everything looks OK and hit the Finish button.
The new VM should now listed. At this point, the uploaded VM can now be removed.
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33. Select the uploaded VM and select Remove under the Edit menu.
34. When asked to confirm the removal, hit the Yes button.
With the uploaded VM removed, the new VM can be booted to verify that it is working correctly.