Fusion 12 Big Sur - Unable to create installation medium

[CaliDuck916]

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.

[realhank]

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

[snyktechops]

same issue

[CaliDuck916 · Accepted solution]

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

[realhank]

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

[taylorcurtis805 · Accepted solution]

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

[realhank]

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

[realhank]

Oh yeah, it worked. Thanks mate.

[gringley]

I have the same error.

[realhank]

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

[KarthikeyanM]

Same issue with VMWare Fusion 12 and macOS Big Sur 11.0.1

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

[pfruth]

Thanks Karthik.  That worked perfectly for me

[tchung1970]

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)

[CaliDuck916]

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.

[CaliDuck916]

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

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