High Sierra in Fusion 7

[vmfh]

How can I install High Sierra (or, for that matter, any OS X >10.10) in Fusion 7?

I did install Sierra a couple of months ago, AFAIR using 10.10 as a OS option. It installed successfully in about half an hour, but then I deleted the VM and now I cannot reproduce the build and get this message

Unable to create the installation medium.

[vmfh]

I checked https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2017/06/test-driving-high-sierra-on-fusion-8-5.html and it would seem that it won't be possible. Maybe someone comes up with a workaround.

In the meantime I upgraded a 10.9 VM with the current 10.13 installer app and it breaks the installation half through, as, I suppose, since it doesn't give the option, it converts to APFS by default. Only chance for Fusion 7 seems to get a hand on GM or last beta.

Any other ideas?

[wila]

Hi,

It only converts to APFS if your virtual hard disks are SSD.

As you mention Fusion 7 your virtual hard disks are not likely to be virtual SSDs, so High Sierra will not convert to APFS.

IOW, the problem you are bumping into is likely to be something else.

The Tech Preview has been public and is here: Fusion Pro Tech Preview

--

Wil

[vmfh]

wila​, thanks for pointing that out — then what could be the problem? This is what I see. The tech preview you linked to is probably +10.9, I'm still on 10.8.

[wila]

Hi,

I don't know... could be something in the Fusion 7 EFI implementation that does not support the change in partitioning. But that's a total guess.

The best way to test would be to take a Fusion 10 created High Sierra guest that has no APFS, change that to Fusion 7 hardware. Then see if you can still boot.

Once it passes that test you might be able to use that VM and copy it to a Fusion 7 host.

Btw, if you don't have a host OS that passes the install requirements, you can always still create a macOS guest that does, enable Hypervisor functionality on it and install Fusion in the guest... Yes the nested guests will be slow, but it is a way to get past these requirements.

edit: OK, figured to save you some time as I have a High Sierra (developer seed) guest here. I took a snapshot, removed the APFS disk and changed the hardware level to version 11.

That still boots OK. Next up is cloning the VM and copying it to a Fusion 7 host. Will keep you posted.

Also note that the nested guest OS path is the painful way for installing a HS guest and least likely to succeed. The easier way would be to install a supported macOS on your host in a different disk or partition. That is what I would do in your case.

--

Wil

[ColoradoMarmot]

Not compatible, and definitely not supported.  Upgrade to Fusion 10.

BTW, if you're on 10.8, you're way out of date and no longer get security patches.  That machine shouldn't be connected to the Internet at all.

[wila]

Hi,

Ok as an update, the test succeeded High Sierra as a guest OS does run on Fusion 7.

I still had to change the Guest OS to OS X 10.10 but after that I could successfully boot the HS guest on my Fusion 7 test host.

Of course the host itself should be capable enough to run High Sierra, otherwise it is a no go.

Does it work well? I have no idea, this is where the experiment stops as far as I'm concerned as I was only curious if it could work.

All the warnings from dlhotka still apply, but I figured you are aware of all that.

--

Wil

[vmfh]

Hey wila​, thanks for the testing! That's good news.

In the meantime I tried upgrading a 10.12 VM to 10.13 but it breaks halfway through. I checked this post but the fs is not even mapped in my VM.

Do you think this fix could work on Fusion 7 in order to avoid the nestting I see as only option for my setup?

[wila]

Hi,

Nope, AFAIK you need the High Sierra variant, the Sierra script won't work.

For example this one:

GitHub - norio-nomura/high-sierra-vm-installer-fix: Fix for creating macOS High Sierra VMs using VMw...

(Note that I have NOT tested it myself, just googled it)

I have seen some mentions of a script in my twitter stream as well, but haven't tagged it so can't locate it.

--

Wil

[vmfh]

I tried the High Sierra variant you mentioned to no avail. It broke halfway through. Then I tried the nestting: 10.8 host and 10.9 guest with Fusion 8.5.8. It did install 10.13 but with APFS by default, the process didn't present any option. Of course I cannot use it on Fusion 7 even with hw v11. Any ideas?

[wila]

Hi,

I'm really surprised that it decided to convert to APFS. What virtual hard disk type did you set? Is it SCSI then?

According to the hackintosh community there's an option in the installer if you want to avoid APFS

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-avoid-apfs-conversion-on-high-sierra-update-or-fresh-instal...

BTW, good to know that the nested alternative worked. I imagine it did take a while.

--

Wil

[vmfh]

It's a SATA. Should I use SCSI? Did you use the current installer from MAS or a GM/beta version? I cannot explain why it did convert by default.

I read about that option too. In fact, I did upgrade a 10.9 VM to 10.13 in Fusion 7 by using --converttoapfs NO, but the resulting VM is ~30G instead of ~18G.

I could wrap the binary startosinstall in a script that calls that option and try again.

Do you know another way to pass such an option to the installer from Fusion 7 or any other workaround to avoid APFS?

UPDATE

I marked the answer below as correct, as it's the most straightforward, but I'd be nonetheless interested in how you avoided APFS.

[vmfh · Accepted solution]

These two steps work in Fusion 7:

1. Install this fix for High Sierra.

https://github.com/norio-nomura/high-sierra-vm-installer-fix

2. Run the following command from the installer

/Volumes/Image\ Volume/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO --agreetolicense --volume /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/

I.e., make a new VM, select the installer app, select 10.10 as the OS, play the VM, select language, then in macOS Utilities select Utilities, Terminal.

[wila]

Hi,

Glad to hear you figured it out and thanks for sharing your result with the community!

When I read your reply I'm not quite clear on one part though.

"play the VM, select language, then in macOS Utilities select Utilities, Terminal."

Why does one have to select the terminal. Is that to execute your step 2?

Edit: Re. your question "How did you evade APFS". Also used SATA disks and didn't do anything in addition to that, just ran the installer (last developer beta, 2 days before official release) and it did not create an APFS disk even while I wanted to get it as APFS. It seems like apple is looking at more than just the disk type for deciding on what to use. Everything I read about it says "it will only convert if SSD" So unless you added a vmx entry that makes it show up as SSD, I wouldn't know why your partition ended up as APFS.

PS: Marking your answer as correct is fine and looks like the most correct to me as well. I'm here to help out and learn, not for collecting points.

--

Wil

[vmfh]

"play the VM, select language, then in macOS Utilities select Utilities, Terminal."

Why does one have to select the terminal. Is that to execute your step 2?

Yes.

just ran the installer (last developer beta, 2 days before official release) and it did not create an APFS disk even while I wanted to get it as APFS.  It seems like apple is looking at more than just the disk type for deciding on what to use.

Would you try the current release? Maybe it's not the installer also looking at other settings in addition to the disk type, but rather it not being capable of determining where it's installing and trying the default. Only the betas offered the option, see here.

PS: Marking your answer as correct is fine and looks like the most correct to me as well. I'm here to help out and learn, not for collecting points.

I wouldn't come up with it without your testing and guidance.

[wila]

Hi,

My beta didn't offer that option either.

Will revisit it in a while I am hoping the answer to that question will come without me having to unravel it.

Currently nose deep in x64 assembler and some reverse engineering, so having fun with that atm (not that I should be doing that, what I should be doing is accounting ugh)

--
Wil

[vmfh]

Hi wila​, I realised that drag and drop doesn't work and vmtools install fails, of course. Do you think installing vmtools from v8 or v10 would allow this feature in v7?

[wila]

Hi,

There's a fair chance that that will work.

For a while now, newer versions of vmware tools are supposed to work OK'ish on older versions of VMware's product.

In the past the general recommendation was to remove newer VMware Tools installs when moving to an older platform, AFAIK that recommendation no longer counts.

Unless it is different for the hosted platform, which might well be as it has a more tight integration with the host OS.

FWIW, latest tools are here:

Index of /45848/tools/releases/latest

or

http://www.vmware.com/go/tools

or if you prefer a direct download what is used by Fusion 8/10

CDS Repository - /var/www/public/stage/session-237/cds/vmw-desktop/fusion

--

Wil

[vmfh]

Hi wila​

I couldn't find vmtools in the first link you provided, the third one doesn't have the latest version.

I downloaded VMware-Tools-10.1.15-other-6677369.tar.gz from http://www.vmware.com/go/tools.

I tried first replacing the darwin.iso in /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages and installing from within Fusion 7, but it didn't work.

From the High Sierra VM I connected to darwin.iso, installed and restarted. It worked just fine. Tested on 10.13.1.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Why not just upgrade to a version that has full support?  Fusion 7 is almost three years old at this point, has known issues that haven't been patched (including security vulnerabilities), and the upgrade isn't all that expensive.  VMWare often runs a black-friday deal too.