Lion VM Install - 4.1.1

[ALG4]

Hi,

I've tried following the documented instructions to install Lion as a VM under 4.1.1, and I cannot get it to work. I have an image of the installer (the Install ESD recovery image), and I've tried booting from that, but it just sits at the Apple logo forever (this worked "unofficially" in previous versions to get a VM installed).

Since the official instructions now state to use the actual install .app file, I took that from the mounted disk image, but still have no luck. I cannot get past the point of dragging the .app into the assistant window. On another thread, someone mentioned that it needed to be in /Applications, but that didn't work either. When I try to drag it over, the window frame never turns blue as the instructions state.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[dariusd]

Hi ALG4,

The .app file from within InstallESD.dmg is not sufficient -- If you are going to install from the .app, you have to directly use the .app you obtained from the App Store (i.e. the app which contains InstallESD.dmg).

Really the drag-and-drop of the .app is just a shortcut to use InstallESD.dmg (from inside the .app) as the install media, so it sounds like you had it right to begin with.  How long did you wait with the guest at the Apple Logo?  Note that Lion no longer has the "spinner" that earlier versions of Mac OS had, so it might look like it has frozen, and it might take a minute or more to finally display the Installer inside the guest.  Perhaps try again and leave it for a few minutes if you didn't already do so.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[ALG4]

Ah, that makes sense.

Well, it's been at the Apple logo for at least an hour now, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I suppose I can also try re-downloading from the AppStore, but it'd be nice not to have to do that if I have the image here already.

[dariusd]

Yeah, one hour is more than enough to conclude that it is not making any progress...

Just to check: Are you directly connecting the InstallESD.dmg to the VM as a virtual CD/DVD image, and not using a physical disc or USB device constructed from InstallESD.dmg?

Can you try doing a verbose boot of the guest?  To do this, power on the VM, quickly click inside the VM's window so that it grabs the host keyboard, then press and hold Command+V.  You should then see some text from the installer as it boots, and that might give us an idea of what is happening.  Feel free to post a screenshot of the verbosely-booted VM if you think there is something useful that we can help decode.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[ALG4]

Yeah, I'm using the actual .dmg, and not a physical disc o usb.

It appears to be stuck on [ PCI configuration begin ]:

[Gideon007]

It *could* be that you are being bitten by the issue I had with the Safari 5.1.2 preview http://communities.vmware.com/message/1867209#1867209

Now that Safari 5.1.2 is out I expect more people to be having issues with that if it hasn't been fixed in the final release of Safari. I haven't installed Safari 5.1.2 for this reason and will wait until this gets verified.

I notified VMWare support of this issue and they aknowledged it so I expect there will be a fix soon (if it is this issue).

When you open activity monitor and look at all processes is vmware-vmx running with 100% (or more) when you try to install Lion? This could be the hint that it is indeed *my* problem

[ALG4]

Nope, the host machine is running the 10.7 initial release, and Safari is 5.1.

The vmx machine process is only using ~2% cpu.

[Gideon007]

oh well, sorry that this wasn't the culprit.

[ALG4]

Any one have any ideas on this? I guess my screenshot didn't post right, so I'll try again:

[dariusd]

Hi ALG4, and sorry for not getting back to you about this.  The screenshot doesn't tell us much, unfortunately... After powering off the VM, can you look inside the VM bundle (in Finder, Ctrl+click the VM and choose Show Package Contents), find vmware.log, and attach it to a reply in this thread?  That's the next place that we can look for clues.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[ALG4]

Ok, I've got the log, it's attached.

[dariusd]

Hmmm... This isn't right...

2011-12-06T14:16:36.077-08:00| vcpu-0| I120: CDROM: Connecting scsi1:0 to '/Users/administrator/Desktop/Mac OS X Install ESD.dmg'. img=1 raw=0 remote=0

[...]

2011-12-06T14:16:38.633-08:00| vcpu-0| I120: Guest: Warning: Mounting unclean HFS+ volume "Mac OS X Install ESD".
2011-12-06T14:16:38.986-08:00| vcpu-0| I120: Guest: About to boot: EFI VMware Virtual SCSI CDROM Drive (0.0)

Is InstallESD.dmg mounted on the host?  If so, you should probably unmount it... it's not necessary to mount it, and in fact that can only complicate matters.  InstallESD.dmg should in fact be a read-only disk image, so you should never get the "unclean" warning with an original InstallESD.dmg unless Apple sent out a bogus disk image... Have you converted it to a read-write disk image?  If it is in some format and situation where the host could potentially modify it while the guest is trying to read it, the guest will most likely become horribly confused (i.e. it might try to repair the filesystem, while it's a read-only virtual DVD).  If in doubt, roll back to a "known good" and read-only InstallESD.dmg and try again.

Let me know if this helps!

Cheers,

--

Darius

[ALG4]

Ok, I found that the image was mounted, so I un-mounted it and tried again. Same thing. So I even re-made the image (making sure to specify "DVD/CD Master") from the physical dvd I have. Same thing again. I've attached the log.

[dariusd]

Hi ALG4,

The vmware.log you attached wasn't useful, because it omits the early part of booting where the interesting messages might be printed... it seems the virtual machine was suspended while booting and was then resumed, and the log only covers the resumed VM.  You'll need to attach a vmware.log from a fresh boot-hang-poweroff cycle.

If you attach the physical disc to the VM's CD/DVD drive directly, do you get the same result?

Was the disc originally created directly from an unmodified InstallESD.dmg?  What process did you follow to create it?

If it doesn't work from the physical disc either, I think the easiest solution would still be to download the installer again and extract a fresh copy of InstallESD.dmg.  If you hold down the Option key while clicking the Purchases button in the App Store toolbar, it'll allow you to download the file again.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[Shootist · Accepted solution]

If you created that InstallESD.dmg image from something you downloaded from Apple in an attempt to save the install file for future use using some of the guides out on the net that very well may be the problem.

I did all that and what I ended up with was a non functioning installer. It looked fine, it read fine but when I tried to use it an error would pop up just after it started. And I ws just testing it on a NEW Macbook Pro, not in a VM

I did this twice, 3.5+ hours of downloading x 2, and the same thing happened.

I suspect Apple changed the installESD.dmg in some way to stop people from using those methods and so they would either need to download it from Apple, a one time shot then deleted, or buy the USB stick includinig the OS Apple is now selling for $69 to reinstall the OS.

That is when I said Good Bye Apple/Mac.

I really don't think it has anything to do with the virual machine or VMware Fusion.

Next is to actually buy one of the USB sticks from Apple or find someone that has a Known Good InstallESD.dmg file and give it another shot in a VM.

Good Luck.

[ColoradoMarmot]

I had to do that myself - the first copy was corrupt.

Make sure you quit the installer before you copy the DMG out of it.

[Shootist]

I did and still no go for me.

But thanks for the tip.

[ALG4]

I created the image by just burning the image which is inside of the "Install" app that gets downloaded when you buy it in the store (by looking in "Show package contents").

This is definitely not an Apple issue, as I've used this same DVD to install on another physical Mac, and even created Lion VMs succesfully in Fusion previously, however that was under 4.0, before it had official support. With 4.1+, it does not work. The whole point of the dmg is for the recovery image partition, so it doesn't make sense for Apple to make it non-functional, that completely defeats the purpose of it. Why would they change the licensing to allow VMs to be created and then block using the image (which is the main method of creating a VM)?

I highly doubt this is some "sinister" plan by Apple to make the install a "one-time" shot, and force people to buy it again. Especially since you can re-download any time by holding down option in the AppStore. Plus, they get all their profit from hardware anyway (which is why Lion is $29 to begin with).

I'm doing the download again now, and I'll see how it goes.

[Shootist]

Well it is a well documented fact that if you want to reinstall the OS and use the hidden recovery partition to wipe the drive and or just reinstall the OS over the top of the original OS that when you are done downloading the needed files from Apple and the install finishes the installESD.dmg get deleted from the hard drive.

Why on earth have they taken to this practice? In fact why on earth have they not supplied the need disk with the machine to reinstall the OS in the first place.

[dariusd]

Hi ALG4,

I think I may have figured out what has happened...

I have a disc I prepared using Disk Utility to directly burn InstallESD.dmg to a physical DVD.

With that disc inserted in the host's SuperDrive, if I go into Disk Utility and select the Mac OS X Install ESD partition and image that by choosing File > New > Disk Image from "Mac OS X Install ESD"..., an attempt to boot a VM from the resulting image fails in exactly the way you describe.

If instead I go into Disk Utility and select the host's DVD drive itself (in my case, HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GH41N, which contains the Mac OS X Install ESD partition), then choose File > New > Disk Image from disk2..., an attempt to boot a VM from the resulting image succeeds every time.

Imaging just the main partition is not sufficient... the installer expects to see the whole disc image.

Can you try imaging the whole disc and see if that works for you too?

Cheers,

--

Darius