Mac OS X 10.10/10.11 does not install on XServe 3,1 ESXI 6.0 U2

[matthiaslink77]

Hi there,

I was trying to install Mac OS X 10.10 or 10.11 on ESXI 6.0 U2 (3620759) but having no luck at all. My Hardware is a genuine Apple XServe 3,1 from 2009. Installing OS X 10.11 bare metal is no issue, but not the goal here.

First thing I found out is, that the Web-Client does not create a valid config (.vmx) File at all, so I tried the old vSphere Client, which does much better.

But smc.version = "0" is still missing, so I added that as well.

Still - not a chance to see the installer start up completely.

All I can get is an Apple logo, loading till (I guess) the end and then I get a white circle, which is strikthrough.

What I can see from the logs is, that is should somehow be related to VNC, but that is a guess only.

Did anyone experience something alike?

Please take a look at the screenshots and logs as well.

Thanks a lot.

Matthias.

[dariusd]

Hi Matthias,

There is no supported way to install OS X 10.9+ in a VM from an .iso file.  OS X itself now insists on being installed from a writable disk (a hard disk or a USB key), and although there are techniques which claim to produce an .iso installer that sometimes appears to work, the resulting OS X installations are subtly broken and unsupportable by either VMware or Apple.

The officially-supported way of installing OS X 10.9+ in a VM is actually to start with OS X 10.8 and upgrade – refer to VMware Documentation for OS X 10.10.

If you want a solution that doesn't involve starting with OS X 10.8, you can try using the createinstallmedia script that's embedded in the OS X installer .app to create a hard disk image, upload it to your datastore, and attach that to your "empty" OS X virtual machine as a secondary hard disk.  Remove or disconnect any existing .iso file from earlier attempts.  You should then be able to boot the OS X installer and install OS X from that secondary disk onto the blank virtual hard disk, and then you can remove the secondary hard disk once the installation is done.  That will most closely mimic what would happen when installing OS X onto a physical Mac using an external hard disk or USB key as the installation source.

Hope this helps!

--

Darius

[FrankBE]

>>OS X itself now insists on being installed from a writable disk (a hard disk or a USB key), and although there are techniques which claim to produce an .iso installer that sometimes appears to work, the resulting OS X installations are subtly broken and unsupportable by either VMware or Apple.

Could you point me to some documentation that elaborates on that subject? I run ESXi 6.0 upd2 on a Mac Mini late 2012. I can create a bootable USB on a physical mac for 10.9+ OS'ses but how can I boot from that bootable usb in a VM ? I tried coverting the usb to a vmdk (with the usb plugged in), then clone that "virtual" vmdk to vdi then clone the "physical" vdi to to a "physical" vmdk (with no need for the usb to be connected) all to no avail

Thx