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Tag: VMware

OSX on VMware Workstation 10

by on May.29, 2014, under Apple, VMware

So you want to install OSX on VMware Workstation … ?  Normally, this doesn’t quite work 🙂  During the creation of a new virtual machine, you won’t see the option to install OSX, and I’m pretty sure even if you would succeed to install it using another linux distribution, it won’t boot up after the installation. Or maybe it does ! But then it will boot up forever and ever 😉

You will have to patch your VMware Workstation, but first things first.  You need Mavericks (or OSX 10.6 -> 10.8) installation media, so here’s a procedure on how to create a bootable DVD (there are plenty of procedures to create a bootable USB drive with Mavericks on it, so Google for those!)

So after downloading the Install OS X Mavericks.app file from the Mac App Store (or Google for it), run these 12 commands in Terminal to create a Mavericks.iso file and then burn it to a dual layer DVD with Disk Utility.  If you use this DVD to perform a fresh install on a Mac, you may then boot up from it by holding the option key down and then install Mavericks. This will not install a recovery partition. To do that, uncompress and run the script file from here :

Recovery Partition Creator

  1. hdiutil attach /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_app
  2. hdiutil convert /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg -format UDSP -o /tmp/Mavericks
  3. hdiutil resize -size 8g /tmp/Mavericks.sparseimage
  4. hdiutil attach /tmp/Mavericks.sparseimage -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build
  5. rm /Volumes/install_build/System/Installation/Packages
  6. cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/Packages /Volumes/install_build/System/Installation/
  7. hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_app
  8. hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_build
  9. hdiutil resize -size `hdiutil resize -limits /tmp/Mavericks.sparseimage | tail -n 1 | awk ‘{ print $1 }’`b /tmp/Mavericks.sparseimage
  10. hdiutil convert /tmp/Mavericks.sparseimage -format UDTO -o /tmp/Mavericks
  11. rm /tmp/Mavericks.sparseimage
  12. mv /tmp/Mavericks.cdr ~/Desktop/Mavericks.iso

The ISO that has been created, can now be burned to a dual-layer DVD using Disk Utility. If you want to use this DVD to install an OSX virtual machine on VMware Workstation, you need to patch Workstation with this script :

Workstation Patcher

Unzip, and run the script as Administrator.  Also, make sure Workstation isn’t running at that point.

That’s it.  When you restart VMware Workstation, you should have the option to install OSX. Now use the DVD you created, or use a bootable USB drive with Mavericks on it.

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