Installing/Running OS X 10.5/6 on Fusion 4.1

[Gideon007]

Hi all,

I have issues with running existing VMs of OS X 10.5 and 10.6 (self installed following some tutorials on the net) on Fusion 4.1. They are extremely unstable, behaving as if they have long hiccups during which nothing works.

Trying to install 10.6 fresh fails as well. I tried with both my SL DVD and an image I made of the DVD (with disk utility).

Used default settings for OS X 10.6 64-bit and when it autostarts after creating the VM it hangs a long time on the grey apple screen, eventually it gets to the spinning wheel, sometimes spinning and then stopping the spinning again for a long time. When going the DVD way the DVD stops spinning alltogether eventually.

When I use the DVD image I'll get to the strange grey screen with the darker grey stop sign so something is wrong there as well

the process vmware-vmx is running with 100% during this.

After long waiting I eventually force shut down the VM and delete it.

Anyone know why this is proving to be that difficult?

[WoodyZ]

Client version of Mac OS X other the 10.7 are not supported to be virtualized and is not currently allowed by Apple!   So don't expect to get any help in these forums for illegal installs of OSes in violations of the respective SLA's!

[Gideon007]

did you see the news that Fusion 4.1 apparently allows virtualizing client versions of 10.5 and 10.6?

Edit: anyways, I'm now downloading the 10.5 server image from Apple's development center and will report how I fare with this.

[WoodyZ]

Gideon007 wrote: did you see the news that Fusion 4.1 apparently allows virtualizing client versions of 10.5 and 10.6?

It doesn't matter that it can be done, what matters is at the present time Apple only allows the client version of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) to be legally virtualized!  VMware has only caused more problems by removing it licensing check and unless Apple plans to change the SLA's I expect Apple to be taking some legal action against VMware over this change to VMware Fusion.

[Gideon007]

Any idea why VMWare should do away with the server check and instead ask the user whether he has the right license? There must be some kind of reasoning for this and documentation not yet updated to reflect this. On monday there will probably be more information available...

Until then anyone else have some useful advice for a change?

[Gideon007]

As I suspected the issue remains with the server version of 10.5 (legally downloaded from the Apple Development stuff). Exact same behaviour.

Makes me think... I am running Lion and I had Fusion 3.x installed before I upgraded to Fusion 4.0 - with 4.0 I had no problems, with 4.1 I have...

Do I need to do a cleansing of Fusion, making sure nothing remains and then start over? Any links? Going to look up the knowledge base and the links on the starting page of the forum now, but if anyone got a link to such a how to I'd be grateful.

[Gideon007]

Does attaching or sending the log help? In the log of my failed attempt to install 10.5 Server you can clearly see when it kind of hangs since it still registers me clicking with the mouse in the grey screen and unlocking the mouse from the VM.

[SvenGus]

Well, anyway, it can't hurt to reinstall Fusion; in order to do that, you should remove (IIRC):

/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app

/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion (if it exists: it's from Fusion 3.x)

/Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion (everything inside that folder, except the license file)

~/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion (if it exists)

~/Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion

~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.* (and the related lockfiles)

... reboot, and then reinstall Fusion 4.1 (simply drag and drop into the /Applications folder).

You'll have to add your VMs to the VM Library again.

BTW, in Fusion 4.1 the VM Library isn't centered on the screen by default, anymore (and neither is it in the top left angle, but rather somewhere in between): why?

Not sure all this will solve any problems, but one can always try...

[Gideon007]

Thanks, I did that yesterday and along with it nuked some files in /var /tmp that related to VMWare.

Unfortunately it didn't help. Curiosly I tried with Fusion 4.01 (I still had the light dmg in my download folder) and it too fails miserably now

So something changed on my system since the 4th of November (last time I had it successfully running acording the log files in my OS X virtual machines).

And I can't think of anything, except that I installed the Safari 5.1.2 preview beta from the development center.

According to my download folder I only installed Firefox 8 and 8.01, dropbox 1.2.48, itunes 10.5.1, xquartz 2.7.0 and uninstalled Flash.

Hmm, I also installed the Sane scanner stuff and it installs libusb, don't know whether that can be relevant.

[SvenGus]

I, too, have all those programs (Flash included, and also Mattias Ellert's great TWAIN-SANE packages): so, it probably has nothing to do with them...

[Gideon007]

grrrr, so much for that hope

(the safari beta, too?)

next thing to test is whether my Logitech K750 keyboard could play a part, it's new, too.

then I'll have to enable the debug logging....

[SvenGus]

Ah, no, I don't have the Safari beta installed: so that could perhaps (?) be one of the possible causes of your problems...

[Gideon007]

that would teach me to not always use betas and similar. lets see if I can get rid of it...

[Gideon007]

I'll be...

Uninstalled the Safari 5.1.2 prerelease and all is fine again. My existing VMs don't crash and a test installation of 10.5 server ran right away!

Now, do VMWare people actually read the forum or should I explicitly report this issue?

If they do, the Safari 5.1.2 prerelease caused the process vmware-vmx to run at 100% and thus the OS X VM's were really taking a long time to start and would crash soonish. Installations would just hang eventually.

Thankfully Aplle provides an uninstaller for prereleases...

This really needs to be looked at since Safari will eventually get the upgrade on all systems so breakage will happen.