Installation of Mac OS X 10.6 Server guest hangs

[skymoo]

I've been trying to install Mac OS X 10.6 Server, from a DVD image of 10.6.0 Server, as a guest using VMWare Fusion 6 on 10.9 and after a few minutes into the installation process the guest just seems to hang. It responds but installation stays at around 25-15 minutes remaining. Earlier today I left it running and after a couple of hours it still showed 18 minutes remaining. I shutdown the VM and started the installation process, it again hangs.

Anyone have any ideas why the installation process is hanging?

[WoodyZ]

It's been a while so I'm pulling this from memory which may be fuzzy however IIRC Mac OS X 10.6.0 Server had issues installing and you should try with a higher version.  As an example I have an image of a Retail OS X 10.6.3 Server DVD and it installs just fine.  BTW You cannot use a image created from a Bundled DVD it needs to be from a Retail DVD.

[skymoo]

I installed a while ago under Fusion 5 from the same image without problems. The only DVD image I have access to is the 10.6.0 image as part of my membership in the Mac Developer Program, all subsequent versions of 10.6 Server (that I have access to) are updates and not full versions.

[WoodyZ]

I don't have time to search the Fusion forum however I'm fairly sure there were some issues with the Mac OS X 10.6.0 Server and the workaround was to use a incremented release.  So I'd see if an incremented Mac Developer Program version was available and give it a try.  Otherwise I have nothing else to offer as I don't have time at the moment to delve any further, sorry.

The other choice is to use VMware Fusion 5 to create the VM then run it under a later version.  I have VMware Fusion 5, 6 and the latest Tech Preview installed on the same system although only one can be run at a time.  So you could temporarily used VMware Fusion 5 to see if it will will install again under it.

[skymoo]

I'll give that a try, thanks.

[ColoradoMarmot]

I recall the same thing Woody - around 10.6.3 something major changed if I remember right.

To the OP:  Apple was selling 10.6.8 server licenses for around $20 as recently as a few months ago - you might try giving them a call and see if they still are.

[skymoo]

Thanks for the tip, I have a license the problem is that I only have the media for 10.6.0. At the end of the day I'm only trying to virtualise 10.6 so that I can support our software on this OS. But as it's out of support by Apple it may just be more straightforward to just drop support for 10.6, especially as most of our users seem to be using 10.8 or higher...

[ColoradoMarmot]

If you can drop support for 10.6, I'd definitely recommend that.  Like Woody, I'm pretty sure that original versions won't work because of CPU differences, so spending the $20 on an updated install version is probably the only option.