SnowKitty running on VMware Workstation

[Zenith432]

It boots up fine but I got stuck at the Welcome screen without working mouse. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

You need AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext and ApplePS2Controller.kext to be in /System/Library/Extensions. They're both in vmsl.tar.gz.

 

Do I actually need ps/2 keyboard and mouse on my host?

No, of course not. Your host's hardware has nothing to do with it. VMware always simulates a ps/2 mouse & keyboard in the guest. You just need the guest OS to have a ps/2 driver. If you set the "vusb" entries to enabled, it also emulates a USB mouse & keyboard in the guest (in addition to the ps/2 keyboard & mouse!). Unfortunately, the USB HID emulation is flaky and doesn't work for everyone.

[picmax]

I followed your instructions and installed the vmsl package. I verified that I have the files by booting up with my old Leopard installation. I must be missing something.

 

Could you please share your VMX file?

 

Max

 

You need AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext and ApplePS2Controller.kext to be in /System/Library/Extensions. They're both in vmsl.tar.gz.

 

No, of course not. Your host's hardware has nothing to do with it. VMware always simulates a ps/2 mouse & keyboard in the guest. You just need the guest OS to have a ps/2 driver. If you set the "vusb" entries to enabled, it also emulates a USB mouse & keyboard in the guest (in addition to the ps/2 keyboard & mouse!). Unfortunately, the USB HID emulation is flaky and doesn't work for everyone.

[danfireman]

I am having a few difficulties. I can't get a SL DVD to boot in VMWare 7 at all? Anything I am doing wrong?

[greythorne]

im having this problems as per the image. followed your guide to the letter but got this!!

 

any idea why.

 

[Speedy179]

hey can some one upload his VMware image of the Sl please?

[TheGreatDeceiver]

hey can some one upload his VMware image of the Sl please?

somebody already did. search the torrents (specifically on the bay). It's over 4 or 8Gb though (depending on which one you choose). I highly recommend to make your own though. Something goes wrong with the other one you have no idea why.

[saivert]

Changing guestOS = "darwin10-64" to guestOS = "darwin10" and booting using -legacy kernel switch seems to speed up the virtualization a lot. Now even the VMsvga2 driver seems to work its magic too.

 

 

I guess running full blown 64-bit Snow Leopard is not an option on my computer.

 

Also I'm running with full hardware virtualization, that means:

monitor.virtual_exec = "automatic"

monitor.virtual_mmu = "automatic"

 

Host machine specs:

OS: Windows 7 64 bit (7100, RC)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (@ stock with SpeedStep)

Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 (rev 1.0)

Memory: 4GB Corsair Twin2X DDR2

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB

 

 

PS: Is there anything to gain by running Snow Leopard client instead of Server? I'm currently running Server. Not running any services though.

 

PS #2: Just installed latest Ensonq driver and now audio is working (as long as I'm running 32 bit at least for now), And it does not click or scratch as much as before. Good work ya'll!

[Zenith432]

I've uploaded a new vmsl.tar.gz (see link in post #10) with a kernel that fixes the problem where it sometimes locks up when you start the boot too quickly with Chameleon/pcefi. It may still delay for a few seconds, but it won't lock up. The patches made to XNU-1456.1.26 are attached to post #10.

 

uname -a
Darwin Snow.local 10.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.0.0: Mon Oct 19 12:00:18 UTC 2009; zenith432:xnu-1456.1.26/BUILD/obj/RELEASE_I386 i386

[alch555]

After installation SL I have only one problem: when i run .mkv file in VLC player I hear sound, but I can`t see video.

Help me to solve this problem (if it`s possible).

[saivert]

Seems there has been confusion over using Workstation 6.5 vs Workstation 7 RC here.

VMware created a custom Darwin bootloader for their Fusion product for running Mac OS X Server. These bits are also in their Workstation 7 product. It works by auto-mounting darwin.iso (which is not bundled with Workstation so has to be copied from Fusion) which contains the custom bootloader.

PS! Fustion also has a EFI firmware based boot but this is not functional in the Workstation product...yet (optimistic).

 

 

Would be nice to assemble a article that explains things a bit better and has an overview of what all the various kexts, kernels and bootloaders are used for.

 

Package, Description

 

vmsl.tar, bootloader + modified kernel and kexts for Workstation 6.5

 

vmware-darwin-snowy.zip, modified darwin.iso (VMWare tools) for booting SL on Workstation 7 )which doesn't have all bits from Fusion to run completely unmodified)

 

vmware-darwin-voodoo.zip, modified darwin.iso (VMware Tools) for booting L and SL on Workstation 6.5 or 7 with unsupported CPU (Nehalem).

 

vmware-darwin-200.zip, package for installing darwin.iso on Workstation and fix signatures to it gets auto-mounted by Workstation when booting L or SL.

 

VoodooPS2Controller.kext, driver for PS2 Keyboard and Mouse. Must be installed to avoid glitches and lockups with mouse and keyboard. Still needed on Workstation 7 RC with SL as guest.

[bxb13]

@Zenith432:

Thanks for all your hard work, and the new kernel patch works like a charm -- no freezes in over 20 reboots. I used your tutorial to get SL on VMWare Workstation 7 using CHameleon and PCEFI 10.4, and I installed VMWAre tools from Fusion 3.0. I've gotten everything working pretty well, but I still can't get the Autofit Guest to work. The resolutiuon inside VMware stays at whatever I set it inside SL and never changes. Do you have any suggestions on what I can try to change that?

 

Also, I used to have SL installed using Donk's darwin.iso file to boot it with guestOS="darwin10-64", and I was able to get my keyboard and mouse running with vusb.enable="TRUE", but with your method, only PS2 works (and I tried changing the Kexts with no success). Is there any way to get native VM USB to work instead of PS2?

 

Thanks.

[Zenith432]

and I installed VMWAre tools from Fusion 3.0. I've gotten everything working pretty well, but I still can't get the Autofit Guest to work.

You need to patch snowy-darwin to get it to interface with VMsvga2. See post #39 in this thread. Without a patch, snowy-darwin only interfaces with VMware's driver VMwareGfx.

 

Also, I used to have SL installed using Donk's darwin.iso file to boot it with guestOS="darwin10-64", and I was able to get my keyboard and mouse running with vusb.enable="TRUE", but with your method, only PS2 works (and I tried changing the Kexts with no success). Is there any way to get native VM USB to work instead of PS2?

You can enable vusb emulation with "freebsd-64", but for some reason it results in erratic keyboard & mouse behavior to the point where they become unusable. I've been trying to figure out for some time why this happens, but I don't have an answer. When I use vusb emulation with "darwinXX-64", the mouse works okay, but the keyboard still suffers from uncontrollable auto-repeat sometimes. I don't know why that happens either. One potential cause of this is that MKS emulates both PS/2 and USB mouse & keyboard. In the presence of drivers for both interfaces, I'm not sure how the OS X WindowServer arbitrates them. On Windows for instance, you can have multiple mice and they can all move the cursor.

 

Currently, if you use a guestOS of "darwin...", VMware's guest BIOS is set up so that it doesn't boot from a virtual hard drive at all. It only boots from a virtual CD drive - for instance, darwin.iso. I've made a boot CD image with pcefi 10.4, and I can boot using pcefi with it and guestOS set to "darwin...".

[bxb13]

You need to patch snowy-darwin to get it to interface with VMsvga2. See post #39 in this thread. Without a patch, snowy-darwin only interfaces with VMware's driver VMwareGfx.

 

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure that I understand thic correctly -- I got the darwin.iso from installing Fusion 3.0, I then uninstalled Fusion and installed tools from the ISO and rebooted. I then applied the patch from post #39, but still can't get the autofit to work. When you say "snowy-darwin", I start thinking about Donk's patched ISO that he uses to boot into SL without using PC EFI and with guest=darwin10-64, so am I messing something up?

 

Also, I used your method with PC EFI specifically so that I don't have to used the extra ISO to boot from and because Donk said in his thread that the SVGA driver was a bit better if used with your patched darwin.iso instead of his. So, if there is really no way to get the USB mouse and kbd to work, then I'll just live with it being PS2. I just figured that deleting all the PS2 kexts would allow USB to work freely, but that didn't work and it seemed weird to me that it worked fine when I used "guest=darwin10-64".

 

PS2 is really a minor annoyance, but I would really like to resolve the video driver issue.

[Klinzani]

I've been reading these threads with great interest as I've been eager to get OSX running virtually on my desktop. I want to share my experience thus far as well as ask a few quick questions.

 

Background:

My host system is Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit). I managed to get iPC 10.5.6 installed successfully using VMware Server 2 (on a virtual IDE drive using the darwin.iso to boot), and updated it to 10.5.8. I had no joy trying to go to 10.6 with Server 2 so I switched to the latest VMware Player (3.0.0 build-197124) which supports darwin10-64. Happily, I got 10.6 installed to a new virtual SCSI drive using Zenith432's instructions here on the thread and the sound driver from the Ensoniq thread (worked like a charm!) I've backed up my work thus far in preparation for trying to update to 10.6.1 or later (no snapshots is a minor inconvenience but interestingly Player will honor previously existing snapshots).

 

Notes and questions:

In the original instructions earlier in this thread, you note that one should make the Snow virtual HDD the primary one (and thus the 10.5.x one becomes secondary). How does one swap drives that way when the one with 10.5.x is IDE rather than SCSI? I managed to get it all to work out long enough to copy the data I wanted to keep (there was very little anyway) but the IDE stayed primary while it was in place. (Why was my old drive IDE? As I recall it was supposed to be preferable to install 10.5.x on an IDE virtual drive, to get everything running right, so I'm probably not the only person who would have this question.) It would be good to specify in the instructions how to do that in a mixed-HDD-type environment.

 

Every attempt I made to install SL with the default options failed miserably because of some HP printer driver (unfortunately my log of the exact error is long gone). I see others mentioning this issue, suggesting that one deselect the printer drivers entirely (along with the additional languages if you can do without them). Another good thing to note in your instructions (Does anyone know why this happens? Does this printer thing also fail on Apple hardware? It seems weird to me that it happens so consistently.)

 

I'm not able to get this config to boot without using vmware-darwin-snowy.iso. I've tried changing the guestOS to freebsd-64 and the VM fails to boot (OS not found). The iso boots plenty quick and gets out of the way nicely but it'd be nice (if possible at all) to boot pure EFI. I did install pcefi.10.3Does EFI in VMware work for anyone yet, even in the release candidates? but that didn't help. I do plan to try a reinstall of it later but I wonder, am I barking up the wrong tree?

 

Edit: this goes back to the IDE/SCSI swap. Apparently because I never was able to properly swap the two drives installing pcefi didn't work. Now that the 10.6 SCSI drive is primary and the IDE is history I reinstalled pcefi and Chameleon works now. However, now my mouse (USB) does NOT appear to work in the 10.6 VM booted this way... I'm not quite sure why that is but I know it worked with the ISO method so I may just go back to that for now.

 

Afterthoughts:

I think this thread, particularly the instructional post, is the best guide I've seen for getting 10.6 installed on VMware (mainly because it actually worked!) Kudos to Zenith432 and the rest of you who've worked hard on this and for the very detailed instructions... I'm impressed, especially when a newbie like me can get this far, this fast (well, a newbie to OSX anyway...)

[NWang]

I use the darwin.iso to install a VM with Leopard 10.5.8. And I follow exactly the instructions in #10 to install Snow Leopard 10.6 in this VM. But after finishing, I tried to boot into the new disk and it loads a few seconds and the splash screen showed up then said something like the CPU has been disabled, etc. Any idea?

[Klinzani]

I use the darwin.iso to install a VM with Leopard 10.5.8. And I follow exactly the instructions in #10 to install Snow Leopard 10.6 in this VM. But after finishing, I tried to boot into the new disk and it loads a few seconds and the splash screen showed up then said something like the CPU has been disabled, etc. Any idea?

 

I had the same the problem you're having as I struggled to get this working.

 

First, use darwin10-64 for the guestOS type if you are booting via the ISO method! This OS type is valid in the latest beta/RC builds of VMware Player and Workstation. You will probably need to manually edit the .vmx file to get this to work. Using the ISO with guestOS set to freedsd64 in 10.6 will lead to the boot-time error you describe.

 

Also, use the right ISO. I've been using vmware-darwin-snowy.iso (rather than the old darwin.iso) to boot 10.6 (see this thread). Not sure if this will affect the issue but it's best to be up-to-date on this as well.

[br0adband]

Will be giving this a shot later on today, just wanted to point out that VMWare Workstation 7 is now a finished product as of yesterday:

 

http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/new.html

 

I'll report on my experiences as I can. Currently running 10.5.8 perfectly...

 

Q8400

2GB DDR2 667

250GB Maxtor 7200 rpm 16MB SATA I

LG Blu-ray multiformat drive (reads/burns BD, reads HD DVD, reads burns DVD/CD)

PNY 9500GT 1GB (CI/QE support with just an EFI string courtesy of OSx86Tools)

 

so I'm hoping to get this "SnowKitty" working in a VM as my primary OS is Windows 7 x64.

[TheGreatDeceiver]

can't let this fall all the way back. People need to see this.

xcuse me.

[Klinzani]

Note: what I said applies to the final VMware Player 3.0.0 as well (10.6.1 works like a charm!) I am still using the ISO method as noted earlier.

[adamsweeting]

Thanks to the posts on this thread I've got Snow Leopard working very nicely in VMware workstation 7 with the vanilla kernel.

 

Props to Donk and Zenith.

 

Quick question to Donk and Zenith... Have you guys managed to get the kernel working in 64bit mode?

[dubblea13]

i'm pretty sure i followed everything correctly, but after i'm supposed to change the snow drive to scsi0:0, i try to boot and it hangs at "boot1: error". i'm new to this so i'm probably just missing something obvious. any ideas?

[jessamy]

Can anyone help me?

 

I want to run Snow Leopard on my windows xp laptop.

 

I read with great interest the posts from Zenith and Donk.

I have downloaded the files recommended – VMWare workstation 6.5.3 build-185404 as suggested.

I also downloaded the Darwin from the link given.

 

When I tried to power on, I was asked for a licence number.

I went to VMWare website and was not able to find a free trial for VMWare workstation 6.5.3, so I downloaded a free trial of VMWare workstation 7.

 

I now have a licence key for the free trial of this (and I am happy to buy the full licence if I can get this to work.)

 

I then tried this version with the same Darwin as above, but I had an error message:

 

It says:

 

Mac OS is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMWare Workstation supports hardware virtualization.

 

Anybody got any good ideas? I would appreciate any help.

 

NB – I am new to Mac OS but otherwise fairly computer friendly!

[jessamy]

Thanks to the posts on this thread I've got Snow Leopard working very nicely in VMware workstation 7 with the vanilla kernel.

 

Props to Donk and Zenith.

 

Quick question to Donk and Zenith... Have you guys managed to get the kernel working in 64bit mode?

 

I see you have got Snow leopard working with Vmware workstation7. Please could you let me know how you did this.

 

I have both of those and am running:

 

Windows xp prof

3Gb memory

CPU dual core celeron

 

I want to run Snow leopard as a virtual drive.

 

I have followed instructions from this blog but the cfg file wasn’t working properly.

 

I can write the cfg file myself – but if I do that, do I then install from the snow leopard iso file?

If I then start installing the Snow Leopard iso file, how can I make sure it installs onto the virtual drive which I downloaded?

Do I have to create a partition or format the virtual drive first?

 

It appears to be close to working, I just have a few questions as above. I would appreciate any help or advice that you can give. Jessamy

 

 

Thanks to the posts on this thread I've got Snow Leopard working very nicely in VMware workstation 7 with the vanilla kernel.

 

Props to Donk and Zenith.

 

Quick question to Donk and Zenith... Have you guys managed to get the kernel working in 64bit mode?

@adamsweeting

 

I see you have got Snow leopard working with Vmware workstation7. Please could you let me know how you did this.

 

I have both of those and am running:

 

Windows xp prof

3Gb memory

CPU dual core celeron

 

I want to run Snow leopard as a virtual drive.

 

I have followed instructions from this blog but the cfg file wasn’t working properly.

 

I can write the cfg file myself – but if I do that, do I then install from the snow leopard iso file?

If I then start installing the Snow Leopard iso file, how can I make sure it installs onto the virtual drive which I downloaded?

Do I have to create a partition or format the virtual drive first?

 

It appears to be close to working, I just have a few questions as above. I would appreciate any help or advice that you can give. Jessamy

[fabri22]

Snowing fine here.

Thank for sharing your precious knowledge.

 

Just an issue

The Snow Preview.app doesn't work. I get only grey screen with pics. Thumbs and pdf are fine

Previous leopard versions didn't have this problem

 

my working vmx

.encoding = "windows-1252"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "7"
maxvcpus = "4"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
memsize = "1024"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "Snow Leopard.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
ehci.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
mks.enable3d = "TRUE"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
roamingVM.exitBehavior = "go"
displayName = "Snow Leopard"
guestOS = "darwin10-64"
nvram = "Snow Leopard.nvram"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
extendedConfigFile = "Snow Leopard.vmxf"
keyboard.vusb.enable = "TRUE"
mouse.vusb.enable = "TRUE"
monitor.virtual_exec = "automatic"
monitor.virtual_mmu = "automatic"
ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:97:55:b9"
uuid.location = "56 4d 55 7c 09 da b6 c2-96 2d 87 f6 85 97 55 b9"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 55 7c 09 da b6 c2-96 2d 87 f6 85 97 55 b9"
cleanShutdown = "FALSE"
replay.supported = "TRUE"
replay.filename = ""
scsi0:0.redo = ""
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"
usb.pciSlotNumber = "32"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "33"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "34"
ehci.pciSlotNumber = "35"
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "36"
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "134217728"
usb:0.present = "TRUE"
usb:1.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
vmci0.id = "-2053679687"
usb:1.deviceType = "hub"
usb:0.deviceType = "mouse"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
tools.remindInstall = "FALSE"
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"
isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = "FALSE"
sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.hostPath = "C:\Users\VAIO\Desktop"
sharedFolder0.guestName = "Desktop"
sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"
sharedFolder.maxNum = "1"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ich7m.present = "FALSE"
smc.present = "FALSE"

[vinylavenger]

oh my science.

 

it worked first time. i almost can't believe it!

 

thanks so much...