Many of you may have wanted to run a Mac OS X virtual machine in your vSphere setup but get hit with the error that darwin11–64Guest is not supported, as outlined in VMware KB 2006093. As the KB explains that this is because you must be running Apple certified hardware to run a Mac OS X virtual machine. I’m sure that this has to do with the licensing of the OS X product. But you may want to run a vm or two to test software in your environment.
The Workaround
What is Unlocker for VMware. Before we go any further, we should basically have an idea of VMware unlocker for macOS GitHub and how it works. VMware Unlocker for macOS or macOS Catalina Unlocker VMware 15 ( Unlocker for VMware ) is a handy tool that replaces a couple of files such as VMware-vmx, vmwarebase.dll, vmwarebase.so and patches macOS settings and installation features like options. VMware macOS Unlocker. By default, VMware does not provide the option to create macOS and Mac OS X machines. Fortunately there is a tool that helps me unlock this option, this tool is VMware macOS Unlocker. It supports Windows, Linux and MacOS. Skip this step if you were able to create a macOS virtual machine. Download & Install macOS Unlocker on VMware Workstation/Player. Now, when you dot some idea about unlocker and you got how it works. Unlocker comes in when you install macOS or any other version of Mac on VMware. While installing any macOS operating system on VMware you will be asked to choose an operating system. VMware Unlocker is a program that allows you to install Mac OS X onto any computer using VMWare or VirtualBox to create a Hackintosh. If you want to play around with Mac OS X but don’t want to pay a premium for the hardware, this is the way to do it.
Luckily the heavy lifting to get around this has been done by InsanelyMac user Donk. He has created an unlocker tool for non-Apple hardware to be able to boot Mac OS X virtual machines. His tool works for other versions of VMware like Workstation but I’m going to focus on using it for ESXi.
There are two different versions of his unlocker utility, one for ESXi 5.0/5.1/5.5 and another for ESXi 6.0. Make sure that you use the appropriate utility for the version of your ESXi host.
How It’s Done
ESXi 6.0
Download Mac OS X Unlocker for VMware V2 (currently V2.0.6) from the InsanelyMac download page.
- Extract unlocker206.zip to a folder on your computer.
- Upload the contents to a datastore on your ESXi host.
- Put your host in maintenance mode.
- Enable the ESXi shell by following these directions if you haven’t already done so.
- Open the ESXi shell.
- Navigate to the directory on the datastore where the unlocker was uploaded to:
Where Datastore is the datastore name where the patch file was uploaded to, and DirectoryName is the directory you created on the datastore.
- Make the install script executable.
- Run the install script.
- Reboot the ESXi host:
- Exit maintenance mode, and enjoy.
- Use the darwin.iso file in the tools folder to mount and install VMware Tools.
ESXi 5.0/5.1/5.5
Download Mac OS X Unlocker for VMware (currently V1.3.0) from the InsanelyMac download page.
- Extract unlocker-all-v130.zip to a folder on your computer.
- Upload the contents to a datastore on your ESXi host.
- Put your host in maintenance mode.
- Enable the ESXi shell by following these directions if you haven’t already done so.
- Open the ESXi shell.
- Navigate to the directory on the datastore where the unlocker was uploaded to:
Where Datastore is the datastore name where the patch file was uploaded to, and DirectoryName is the directory you created on the datastore.
- Make the install script executable.
- Run the install script.
- Reboot the host.
- Exit Maintenance Mode, and enjoy.
- Use the darwin.iso file in the tools folder to mount and install VMware Tools.
Installing Mac OS X
You have to follow certain instructions to install Mac OS X from the installation media. It’s not complicated but it’s not straight forward either. You can view these instructions on the VMware website:
Summary
This quick little fix has been working for me on two virtual machines running Mac OS X 10.10. In the two weeks I’ve been running them I’ve yet to have any issues, performance or otherwise, with using this fix or using the virtual machines. I hope this article helps solve the issue of running Mac OS X on non-certified non-Apple hardware.
27 12 2016
UPDATE 05/2017: when updating VMware workstation, the suspended/paused OSX VM seems to work fine but won’t boot up again (e.g. after updating to the latest OSX version which requires a reboot). I had to reinstall the unlocker and it’s working again … i’m still using unlocker v2.0.8 but on git there is a 2.0.9: https://github.com/DrDonk/unlocker OSX 10.12.4 is working, too.
Install VMware Player or VMware Workstation from http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-for-linux.html
In order to see “Apple OSX” you need to install VMware Unlocker:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/339-unlocker/
VMware Player is free for personal non-commercial use. Please consider licensing VMware player and/or workstation if you are using this for commercial / business purposes. Thank You!
IMPORTANT: (Note: in VMWare 12.5 i didnt have to do this anymore:)If you create a new VM using version 11 or 12 hardware VMware will stop and create a core dump.There are two options to work around this issue:
1. Change the VM to be HW 10 – this does not affect performance.
2. Edit the VMX file and add:
smc.version = “0” |
Hint: the button “VM -> Install VMware tools” doesn’t work, just manually mount the “darwin.iso” file that has been downloaded by the unlocker and install the tools. Worked for me with OSX 10.12.2 also!
Vmware Unlocker 15.5
InvoicePlane: self-hosted, open source, web-based Invoicing tool (cross plattform) based on php/mysqlRunning Apple OSX 10.12.2 macOS Sierra in VM VMware workstation player under GNU/Linux Elementary OS