ESXi 5.x on new Apple Mac Mini 6,2 Late 2012 *NOT* working

[ViennaAustria]

Hello!

I bought one of the new MacMinis, which were presented yesteraday, plugged two 8GiB DD3-1600 modules in (OsX reported 16GiB of memory, as the models before) and tried to install ESXi 5.1 Build 799733. It started promising:

Initializing chipset...

Initializing timing...

Initializing scheduler...

Initializing processors...

Initializing ACPI...

*BANG*

Pink screen!

NOT_REACHED bora/vmkernel/hardware/intel/vtd.c:3638

cr0=0x8001003d cr2=0x0 cr3=0x449ad500 cr4=0x12c

*PCPU0:4096/bootstrap

PCPU  0: SISISISISISISIS

Code start: 0x41800c600000 VMK uptime: 0:00:00:04.301

and a stackdump.

I tried instalkling 5.0 and 5.0 U1 also, but with the same result.

It is the regular MacMini with an i7 4C 2.3GHz and one 1TB SATA drive (http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD388LL/A with no extras), not the MacMini Server.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

PS1: I was unable to boot the ESXi setup from USB key! Since other USB keys (OsX setup for example) didn't work either, I suspect that there's some EFI boot problem from the new USB3 ports. Booting from CD worked, however.

PS2: on the earlies models we had the problem, that the Alt key wasn't recognized after powering on, when there is an USB hub between the keyboard and the Mac (a KVM switch for example). That seems to be fixed now: whenever I press the Alt key at the powerup chime, I get the Apple "boot menu", even with our KVM switch in between.

[telecastle]

What are you using for drives? SSD or HHD? My problem is not as much bandwidth between the CPU and storage as it is low IOPS that 7500 RPM RAID5 array can yield. I'm using iSCSI to QNAP TS-569L via a 1Gbps link with RAID 5 consisting of 3 7500 RPM WD RED drives in the QNAP, but again, I don't think bandwidth is the bottleneck.

Do you have instructions how to load the driver to support Pegasus R6? If so, could you post them here?

Thanks.

Sent from my iPhone

[lamw]

You can install the Thunderbolt Ethernet VIB here http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/running-esxi-55-on-apple-mac-mini.html which should fix the problem.

Also, thanks for sharing information regarding the use of a Thunderbolt Storage, I know this is something a lot of people have been interested in.

[dbobel]

"The devloper had to modify the existing usbnet driver included in ESX so that's why there's two modules in the forum."

Where can i find the modified files? What drivers have you used, the Linux driver from the asix folder (ax88179vz024)?

hope to hear from you soon

[telecastle]

How many VMs are you t

Sent from my iPhone

[AK_____28]

I am away from my computer right now but I'll get this information for you. If you don't hear from me in the next couple days then send me another message because I am often forgetful.

[MacSS]

Hey everyone, long time, no post.

I have been running over a dozen Mac Mini machines with 10.8 and now, 10.9 for some time. I recently bought another machine, and wanted to go straight to 10.9. The VMs are ready to go, but for the life of me I cannot get a working 10.9 iso. I have been at it for about 4 hours now (not funny!). I have followed instructions of 8 different sites, and for some reason cannot seem to get the VMs to boot the iso.

Can someone please help me out here.

Thanks!

Gian

[lamw]

Have you taken a look at these instructions here VMware Documentation for OS X 10.9?

I was able to install it w/o any issues, just need to convert the image to bootable ISO (you can find instructions online) and installs as expected.

[MacSS]

Yes, thank you for that. I have been able to install 10.8 and then do the upgrade no problem. I was just trying to create a 10.9 out of the gate. I actually managed to create a bootable 10.9.0 iso when Mavericks came out, but I forgot how I made it. I now have a 10.9.2 download and was trying to do the same thing. I was just trying to save time down the road by having to do less updates.

Thanks for the reply.

Gian

[lamw]

HOWTO: Create bootable Mavericks ISO Here are the instructions I used to build a Mavericks ISO and was able to successfully perform a brand new install

[dariusd]

Hey lamw,

Does the installed OS have a Recovery HD?  Last time I tried installing from an .iso, the installer did not create the Recovery HD, which makes it impossible to activate FileVault in the guest, as well as making it impossible to access the Recovery HD environment without attaching recovery media, as well as causing as-yet-unknown problems next time Apple decides to do something interesting that depends on the Recovery HD.  It'd be great if it did create the Recovery HD again, however we should be careful not to recommend this unofficial technique if it does not produce a complete and correct installation.

Thanks,

--

Darius

[HPReg]

I agree with Darius. Unless something has changed in 10.9, the only supported way to install 10.9 in a VM on ESX is to do what the Guest OS Install Guide recommends, i.e.:

1) Install 10.8

2) Upgrade to 10.9

On Fusion, it is different: you can install 10.9 from scratch in a VM. Darius and I are working on making this work on ESX as well, but that is a long-term project.

[lamw]

dariusd Thanks for clarifying

[MacSS]

Darius,

I agree with what your saying, but I wanted to just add this:

On Apple hardware with multiple drives such as a mac mini server, if the drives are configured to use software RAID 0 or 1, which is fully supported by Apple, the recovery partition is not created, so I don't think running without the recovery partition should cause any issues, just limit some functionality of using the recover partition or file file vault. Perhaps beyond the scope of ESXi, but something to know.

Gian

[dariusd]

Certainly, but when installing in a RAID configuration the OS X Installer will issue a warning: OS X: "Some features of Mac OS X are not supported for the disk (volume name)" appears during instal...

In the case of installation into a VM from a non-standard .iso image, everything looks exactly like the OS installed as normal, and no warnings are issued, but it will not have created the Recovery HD, and thus the functionality of the guest is (slightly) limited without the user being aware.

I agree that most users shouldn't care (as long as Apple does fully support and test the no-Recovery-HD configuration), but I have reservations about promoting the use of a procedure that we know will cause users' VMs to deviate markedly from the vast majority of OS X installations.  It increases the risk of end-users being impacted by defects that might escape Apple's internal testing due to the unusual nature of the deployment.

(I think we're totally on the same page here, just wanted to be clear about my reasoning.)

Thanks,

--

Darius

[MacSS]

So I logged onto one of my mac mini VMs today, and was prompted with an alert that I had x-amount of days left in my trial. I recently did a new install on a new machine. I clicked the get license and logged in, and was given a license code at the top of the web page. I then took that number and pasted it into the cofig > licensing and was given an alert that it was not a good license code. I remember this happening a while back on a previous machine, but forgot what the fix is.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Gian

[Erik_Bussink]

Thanks a lot William for the link on how to create a bootable Mavericks ISO. That was very useful.

Erik

[Shaw_Way]

Where can I get a copy of the drivers below. I have tried everything, including trying to build them myself.

I get the following error:    warning: passing argument 7 of 'usb_fill_control_urb' from incompatible pointer type.

First load the custom usbnet driver with:

   vmkload_mod /<path to driver>/usbnetvz024

Then load the ASIX USB3 Ethernet adapter driver with:

   vmkload_mod /<path to driver>/ax88179vz024

[Shaw_Way]

Where can I get a copy of the drivers below. I have tried everything, including trying to build them myself.

I get the following error:    warning: passing argument 7 of 'usb_fill_control_urb' from incompatible pointer type.

First load the custom usbnet driver with:

   vmkload_mod /<path to driver>/usbnetvz024

Then load the ASIX USB3 Ethernet adapter driver with:

   vmkload_mod /<path to driver>/ax88179vz024

[AK_____28]

Link to page one of the thread. I suggest a complete read through as the very last driver versions didn't work.

http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4320&sid=0f2f1c530bf84fedd0553186803b10c2