topic Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium in VMware Fusion Discussions

Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

CaliDuck916 — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 18:48:37 GMT

I am unable to create a Big Sur VM in Fusion 12 using the macOS 11.0.1 installer.

Any suggestions? Fusion is up to date.

For our testing purposes, I am not looking to upgrade a Catalina VM to Big Sur. That has been tested already.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

realhank — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 19:51:56 GMT

I had exactly the same problem. Do you have any update yet?

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

snyktechops — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 20:31:39 GMT

same issue

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

CaliDuck916 — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 20:40:03 GMT

No solution yet, apparently VMWare is aware, so I imagine we'll see a fix soon.

In the meantime I'm exploring this:

https://github.com/rtrouton/create_macos_vm_install_dmg

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

realhank — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 20:41:09 GMT

Already tried. No luck. Please let me know how it goes.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

taylorcurtis805 — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:38:20 GMT

I was able to get one setup by creating an iso with the installer..run the following:

hdiutil create -o /tmp/BigSur -size 17000m -volname BigSur -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
hdiutil attach /tmp/BigSur.dmg -noverify -mountpoint /Volumes/BigSur
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/BigSur --nointeraction
hdiutil detach /volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur (this didn't work for me but was able to force eject with finder.)
hdiutil convert /tmp/BigSur.dmg -format UDTO -o ~/Desktop/BigSur.cdr
mv ~/Desktop/BigSur.cdr ~/Desktop/BigSur.iso

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

realhank — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:44:13 GMT

I can create an iso file but it's not bootable. Is your iso file bootable?

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

realhank — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 01:08:02 GMT

Oh yeah, it worked. Thanks mate.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

gringley — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 02:15:29 GMT

I have the same error.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

realhank — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 10:07:46 GMT

You can follow instructions given by taylorcurtis805. Then create a custom vm and load the iso file via CD/DVD.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

KarthikeyanM — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 15:02:58 GMT

Same issue with VMWare Fusion 12 and macOS Big Sur 11.0.1

https://github.com/rtrouton/create_macos_vm_install_dmg - this works.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

pfruth — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 16:44:46 GMT

Thanks Karthik. That worked perfectly for me

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

tchung1970 — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 06:06:36 GMT

create_macos_vm_install_dmg.sh (from https://github.com/rtrouton/create_macos_vm_install_dmg) created two files:
+ macOS_1101_installer.dmg
+ macOS_1101_installer.iso

I used macOS_1101_installer.dmg with VMWare Fusion 12 Pro and I'm able to install macOS Big Sur (11.0.1)

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

CaliDuck916 — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 18:08:53 GMT

Thank you all for the contributions made here! Friendly tip - be sure to exclude the host system creating the installer from any Big Sur software restriction in your MDM.

The scripts posted above led to a "Kill 9" error - which was Jamf in our case killing the installer process during the createinstallmedia function.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

CaliDuck916 — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 18:39:27 GMT

@taylorcurtis805 I was able to fix the force eject with adding -force to that line:

hdiutil detach /volumes/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur -force

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

DavidDunham — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 13:56:53 GMT

This is still not working ...

Tried this as alternative to Paralells ...but too many problems (what a pitty).

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

Doc69 — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 15:34:50 GMT

I'm getting the same error in Fusion 13.0 and Ventura 13.2 via "Install macOS Ventura.app".

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

Aaroncool — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 17:37:17 GMT

I use this https://github.com/rtrouton/create_macos_vm_install_dmg to create bootable img and then got it working.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

Technogeezer — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 18:04:21 GMT

That script works well - I've used it. Make sure you tell it to create an ISO, which you can then assign to the virtual CD/DVD drive and boot from it to install the VM.

Re: Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

Technogeezer — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 20:31:57 GMT

I took a look at what VMware did in the tool that they use to create "bootable macOS media from the Install macOS ... ,app."

What I see makes me doubt once again how Mac-savvy their engineering staff is.

The script from GitHub.com takes a very straightforward approach that's the same as what @taylorcurtis posted - use the Apple-provided createinstallmedia application within the application's bundle and target the output to a disk image file instead of a physical device. They then use macOS hdiutil commands to create an ISO out of that DMG file.

VMware tries to do something similar, but for some inexplicable reason (perhaps for backward compatibility or lack of effort to keep up with what Apple has done) tries to create a .vmdk file using their own code instead of Apple's utility. That process is dependent on extracting and copying what they think should be the files contained in the contents of Apple's installer bundles. Apple appears to have made changes to the contents of the installer bundle that VMware's tool doesn't recognize. So, the process fails.

Perhaps VMware ought to take a good hard look at what this script does and realize they need to seriously rework that tool and not just try to "patch" around it. This has obviously been broken ever since Big Sur was released (and I bet it is due to Apple changing things up to support Apple Silicon).