Workstation 11/12, Player 7/12, Fusion 7/8 and ESXi 6 Mac OS X Unlocker 2

[MSoK]

the vmware player even after unlocking, moving the efi file and editing the other it will not run my retail dvd iso

oops i miss your post.  thank you!

No problem, let us know how you get on following the How To, it remains a work in progress and I am happy to amend if anything does not work or is unclear.

[tatersalid]

Alright... so... I have a hopefully incredibly simple problem. 

I get a corrupted download every time I try to download the unlocker...

No freggin idea why, unless it is something server side but I doubt I would be the only one to say anything.

Any help is immensely appreciated. 

[Donk]

Alright... so... I have a hopefully incredibly simple problem. 

I get a corrupted download every time I try to download the unlocker...

No freggin idea why, unless it is something server side but I doubt I would be the only one to say anything.

Any help is immensely appreciated. 

 

I tried the one on InsaneleyMac and my server and the dowmloads are OK. Have you tried from my server http://www.daveparsons.net/downloads/unlocker206.zip. You haven't got some anti-virus software stripping exes from zips?

[cotarelo]

Hi!

Is it possible to reverse engineer an application that was created with a virtual mac os x that was running under unlocker?

 

I mean, if I create an iPhone application, is it possible to know that it was created under a non apple hardware?

 

Thanks a lot,

[lizbeth]

lizbeth,

 

Have a look at the following How to, it should answer all your questions:

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/290949-how-to-install-os-x-10x-snow-leopard-lion-mountain-lion-mavericks-and-yosemite-in-vmware-workstation-1011-or-player-67/

Actually i did look at that and i dont see the answer to my question.  The iso file i make from my commercial dvd or using the commercial dvd directly, in either case the dvd doesn't boot.  Editing the vmx file and changing the setting from efi to bios fixes it as does creating a virtualbox with the vmware format and then loading that from within vmware and using the virtual box created hard drive works also.  Using vwmare and creating the apple guest, even asking for a bios setup - it still defaults to efi.  Not trying to be critical but the answer isnt found in the instructions as far as i can tell.

[Donk]

Actually i did look at that and i dont see the answer to my question.  The iso file i make from my commercial dvd or using the commercial dvd directly, in either case the dvd doesn't boot.  Editing the vmx file and changing the setting from efi to bios fixes it as does creating a virtualbox with the vmware format and then loading that from within vmware and using the virtual box created hard drive works also.  Using vwmare and creating the apple guest, even asking for a bios setup - it still defaults to efi.  Not trying to be critical but the answer isnt found in the instructions as far as i can tell.

 

Hi. Can I check where you are with this as there have been a few posts?

 

1. You are running Linux as the host OS - what distro?

2. You were using VMware Player but have also tried Workstation - which versions? Which would you prefer to use moving forward?

3. You have been using a retail copy of Lion for testing. Which version? What format DMG?

4. And which version of my unlocker?

 

Lots of questions but want to see if I can help, and may need to setup a test system.

 

I am thinking of building a little virtual appliance to go with the unlocker that can automate building installation media for those without access to a Mac. So this is useful info for me.

[Donk]

Or make a UEFI capable iso using either Clover OR Ozmosis!!

Does that build a clean retail image that is no additional boot loaders added? With the latest VMware products it only supports EFI booting for OS X guests and so the closer to retail the better. My little project is actually to emulate what is done inside Fusion to build boot media and am doing it mainly for my personal interest in building a small virtual appliance.

[Donk]

Just a matter of copying EFI folder from Clover to destination before turning it to iso.

 

Ozmosis, which is in fact a UEFI driver, can run from HD as well as in FW, but needs more fiddling than Clover to work. ( I mainly use it from FW, but am trying it on my Laptop from HD )

 

Point being, You don't need to select Mac as the operating system to get it to boot, UEFI or Legacy for Clover/Ozmosis

 

Yes I get that but the unlocker is the way I want to run things and with 300K downloads just from here, it is also the way many others want to run it as well. "Each to their own" as the say.

[serezha]

Vmware workstation/fusion Technology Preview 2015 is out. What about unlocker support?

[Donk]

Vmware workstation/fusion Technology Preview 2015 is out. What about unlocker support?

Yes it woirks.

[bengalih]

2.0.6 is out and allows the use of vCenter to manage OS X on ESXi hosts. Many thanks again to Sam B. Also note that I am also hosting all the releases of unlocker as well. So you can get it without registering here, which is something I have been asked to do a few times.

Hey Donk...thanks to you and Sam and everyone else getting this out.  I've been holding off my upgrade to ESXi 6 until this was available.  I do a lot of software testing on multiple versions of OSX and this makes it much easier.

 

I'd like to ask some questions regarding this release and ESXi  compatibility:

 

1) Is vSphere stable with this?  I remember about 2 years ago there was an issue with vSphere stability that got fixed, just want to make sure I'm not going to have anything unexpected in this new one.

 

2) Could you give a brief description of what is/the necessity for "smcPresent vCenter compatibility"

 

3) Could you give a bit of insight on: "Added new EFI firmware files to remove Server check for 10.5 and 10.6".  What is the need for this?  I am pretty sure I built 10.5/10.6 images without any additional firmware on ESXi 5/5.5.  Although it is *possible* that my original 10.5 was build with one of the firmware hacks and then cloned and upgraded to 10.6.  I'm just trying to understand the need for these and why it only impacts 10.5/10.6

 

4) Regarding the VM HW level 11 issues.  Is it that we can't initially create at 11, we can't upgrade to 11, or...?  One fix is to change the HW level to 10, but that I believe is only possible on initial build correct?  You can't downgrade from 11 to 10.  Also, the other fix of smc.version = 0, does this mean we can run at 11 if we set this value?  What (if any) negative impact does setting this to 0 have?

 

thanks again - hopefully you have some time to answer so  I can get a better understanding of the basics and can figure the rest out on my own

[Donk]

Hey Donk...thanks to you and Sam and everyone else getting this out.  I've been holding off my upgrade to ESXi 6 until this was available.  I do a lot of software testing on multiple versions of OSX and this makes it much easier.

 

I'd like to ask some questions regarding this release and ESXi  compatibility:

 

1) Is vSphere stable with this?  I remember about 2 years ago there was an issue with vSphere stability that got fixed, just want to make sure I'm not going to have anything unexpected in this new one.

 

2) Could you give a brief description of what is/the necessity for "smcPresent vCenter compatibility"

 

3) Could you give a bit of insight on: "Added new EFI firmware files to remove Server check for 10.5 and 10.6".  What is the need for this?  I am pretty sure I built 10.5/10.6 images without any additional firmware on ESXi 5/5.5.  Although it is *possible* that my original 10.5 was build with one of the firmware hacks and then cloned and upgraded to 10.6.  I'm just trying to understand the need for these and why it only impacts 10.5/10.6

 

4) Regarding the VM HW level 11 issues.  Is it that we can't initially create at 11, we can't upgrade to 11, or...?  One fix is to change the HW level to 10, but that I believe is only possible on initial build correct?  You can't downgrade from 11 to 10.  Also, the other fix of smc.version = 0, does this mean we can run at 11 if we set this value?  What (if any) negative impact does setting this to 0 have?

 

thanks again - hopefully you have some time to answer so  I can get a better understanding of the basics and can figure the rest out on my own

Hi

 

I will attempt to answer this for you.

 

1. Sam did most of the vSphere testing, whilst i use plain ESXi. I do know Sam had used it to test vMotion and other aspects of vSphere operations and it worked well for him. The instability in the earlier unlocker was fixed by changing the patching mechanism, not the actual byte changes, and I did release an update 1.3.1(?) to some that proved the new approach was stable. This method has been used for the version 2 unlocker, and now I have had no reports of any instabilities.

 

2. The smcPresent variable is essential for vSphere to manage OS X on an ESXi box. Bascially it is telling vSphere that ESXi is running on Apple hardware, which then enables the vSphere OS X functionality. See William Lam's post on this http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/08/when-can-i-run-apple-osx-on-vsphere-5.html.

 

3. Only server versions of 10.5 and 10.6 were supported by Apple and VMware due to Apple licensing restrictions. Before ESXi 6 you could remove the check easily in the code allowing regular desktop version to be loaded. However the code changed and the test is now in the virtual EFI firmware. To bypass the check I had to extract, decompress, patch and recompress the EFI files inside VMware vmx executables. There are other ways of circumventing this check which may have used before including one that creates a file that VMware check for to see if server version (/System/Library/COreServices/ServerVersion.plist). Either way works. This is not needed from 10.7 on as Apple changed the EULA.

 

4. This issue seems to have gone away as of the ESXi 6 GA, and latest Workstation on Linux, and only remains a problem for Workstation on Windows. I would just go ahead and create the version you require.

 

Hope that helps and please let me know how it works for you. There have been over 35000 downloads of the latest version over the last few weeks, and not a lot of feedback. Hopefully that is a good thing!

[bengalih]

Hi

 

I will attempt to answer this for you.

 

1. Sam did most of the vSphere testing, whilst i use plain ESXi. I do know Sam had used it to test vMotion and other aspects of vSphere operations and it worked well for him. The instability in the earlier unlocker was fixed by changing the patching mechanism, not the actual byte changes, and I did release an update 1.3.1(?) to some that proved the new approach was stable. This method has been used for the version 2 unlocker, and now I have had no reports of any instabilities.

 

2. The smcPresent variable is essential for vSphere to manage OS X on an ESXi box. Bascially it is telling vSphere that ESXi is running on Apple hardware, which then enables the vSphere OS X functionality. See William Lam's post on this http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/08/when-can-i-run-apple-osx-on-vsphere-5.html.

 

3. Only server versions of 10.5 and 10.6 were supported by Apple and VMware due to Apple licensing restrictions. Before ESXi 6 you could remove the check easily in the code allowing regular desktop version to be loaded. However the code changed and the test is now in the virtual EFI firmware. To bypass the check I had to extract, decompress, patch and recompress the EFI files inside VMware vmx executables. There are other ways of circumventing this check which may have used before including one that creates a file that VMware check for to see if server version (/System/Library/COreServices/ServerVersion.plist). Either way works. This is not needed from 10.7 on as Apple changed the EULA.

 

4. This issue seems to have gone away as of the ESXi 6 GA, and latest Workstation on Linux, and only remains a problem for Workstation on Windows. I would just go ahead and create the version you require.

 

Hope that helps and please let me know how it works for you. There have been over 35000 downloads of the latest version over the last few weeks, and not a lot of feedback. Hopefully that is a good thing!

 

Donk - thanks for those.

 

Unfortunately, I've realized that my Dell PE 2900 III servers are not on the ESXi 6 HCL - so I might not be able to upgrade anyway.  If anyone has tried ESXi 6.0 on PE 2900 server successfully let me know!

 

But, I will ask for some more clarification:

 

1.  Ok..I'm actually not using things like vMotion.  I mostly use vSphere for templates/cloning and resource pools.  I don't expect these things to work on OSX per-se, I just don't want to cripple this functionality for natively supported systems.  As  I mentioned an old issue with the unlocker seemed to lock/freeze my sessions to the server requiring me to restart some agents on the ESXi box.  That seems to have gone away either in 5.5 or with the newer unlockers.  I just wanted to make sure this stuff was clean.

 

2.Just curious about this and reading the article, along with my issue #4.  If you turn smc.version = 0 doesn't that effectively disable the smc and not allow vCenter to manage?  Or version is not the same as "present",  I used the API path in the article you mentioned and the smc.present is showing as false on my 5.5 running unlocker.  Are you saying that the newest version of the unlocker patches this so that vSphere sees an SMC and will allow me to start/stop systems from vSphere?  If so...that's awesome (finally!)

 

3. Gotcha.  I missed the "server" part.  I don't need to run any versions of server before 10.7 so this won't affect me.

 

4. Ok that's great too.  You might want to update the original instructions to note that so other people don't need to ask.

 

Now I just need to decide I want to take the risk of upgrading to 6 without being on the HCL, or if i want to wait a while to see what others find!

[Donk]

Donk - thanks for those.

 

Unfortunately, I've realized that my Dell PE 2900 III servers are not on the ESXi 6 HCL - so I might not be able to upgrade anyway.  If anyone has tried ESXi 6.0 on PE 2900 server successfully let me know!

 

But, I will ask for some more clarification:

 

1.  Ok..I'm actually not using things like vMotion.  I mostly use vSphere for templates/cloning and resource pools.  I don't expect these things to work on OSX per-se, I just don't want to cripple this functionality for natively supported systems.  As  I mentioned an old issue with the unlocker seemed to lock/freeze my sessions to the server requiring me to restart some agents on the ESXi box.  That seems to have gone away either in 5.5 or with the newer unlockers.  I just wanted to make sure this stuff was clean.

 

2.Just curious about this and reading the article, along with my issue #4.  If you turn smc.version = 0 doesn't that effectively disable the smc and not allow vCenter to manage?  Or version is not the same as "present",  I used the API path in the article you mentioned and the smc.present is showing as false on my 5.5 running unlocker.  Are you saying that the newest version of the unlocker patches this so that vSphere sees an SMC and will allow me to start/stop systems from vSphere?  If so...that's awesome (finally!)

 

3. Gotcha.  I missed the "server" part.  I don't need to run any versions of server before 10.7 so this won't affect me.

 

4. Ok that's great too.  You might want to update the original instructions to note that so other people don't need to ask.

 

Now I just need to decide I want to take the risk of upgrading to 6 without being on the HCL, or if i want to wait a while to see what others find!

OK so points 1 & 2 relate to the host ESXi box. The smcPresent variable is for the host not the guest and enables all the operations for vSphere to be enabled for an OS X guest. It is stable and you should be able to carry out power ops, and anything else you can do from vSphere against the ESXi host which is running OS X guests. The freezes you has with pre 1.3.1 unlocker were due to the way I over-used the ram disks and are resolved now.

 

Point 4. I think we left it in until we had more data from users, but I will update next time I release.

 

Sorry can't help with the Dell question.

[disname]

Hi. Where is the "guest" folder? sorry i'm not getting it.

[Donk]

Hi. Where is the "guest" folder? sorry i'm not getting it.

Sorry I don't understand your question. What are you asking about in more detail please?

[disname]

Sorry I don't understand your question. What are you asking about in more detail please?

i don't understand this step "1. Copy efi32-srvr.rom to guest folder.". i don't know where is "guest" folder and i'm new in vmware workstation.

[MSoK]

i don't understand this step "1. Copy efi32-srvr.rom to guest folder.". i don't know where is "guest" folder and i'm new in vmware workstation.

evildog2,

 

Unless you have changed the "Default location for virtual machines" under VMware Workstation and are running windows the guest folder will be something like:

 

C:\Users\MSoK\Documents\Virtual Machines\Snow Leopard

 

Where MSoK is my Windows user account and Snow Leopard is what I called the OS X Virtual Machine.

[disname]

evildog2,

 

Unless you have changed the "Default location for virtual machines" under VMware Workstation and are running windows the guest folder will be something like:

 

C:\Users\MSoK\Documents\Virtual Machines\Yosemite

 

Where MSoK is my Windows user account and Yosemite is what I called the OS X Virtual Machine.

my machines is located in E:\VMware machines\Yosemite shoild i place the .rom file in it?

 

EDIT: i just placed it and edited wmx file but i'm still on boot manager. how do i do?

 

EDIT 2: i think the VM can't read converted ISO file. i just converted DMG to ISO.

[Donk]

my machines is located in E:\VMware machines\Yosemite shoild i place the .rom file in it?

 

EDIT: i just placed it and edited wmx file but i'm still on boot manager. how do i do?

 

EDIT 2: i think the VM can't read converted ISO file. i just converted DMG to ISO.

 

You do not need this file if you are using Yosemite (efi32.rom) only needed for Leopard and Snow Leopard.

[disname]

You do not need this file if you are using Yosemite (efi32.rom) only needed for Leopard and Snow Leopard.

ok but how to remove boot manager?

[ElCoyote_]

Hi Dave,

Thank you so much a thousand times for these unlockers.

 

I stayed on workstation 10.x until yesterday (Aug 23rd) when I found the 2.x family of your unlocker. Thanks a ton.

 

I have since then updated to workstation 11.1.2 and all of the VM's are running happily.

 

One thing I noticed is that vmware (the product) SIGSEV's (I'm on Linux RHEL6) when I try to 'edit' the configuration of an OSX VM.

Strace'ing the process shows a call trace similar to this:

read(29, 0x7fd60a2e2030, 7)             = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)

gettid()                                = 19983

poll([{fd=29, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout)

fstat(29, {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0777, st_size=0, ...}) = 0

fcntl(29, F_GETFL)                      = 0x802 (flags O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK)

--- SIGSEGV {si_signo=SIGSEGV, si_code=SEGV_MAPERR, si_addr=0} ---

geteuid()                               = 1502

gettid()                                = 19983

write(2, "/build/mts/release/bora-2780323/bora/lib/string/str.c:211 Buffer too small\n", 75) = 75

write(2, "/build/mts/release/bora-2780323/bora/lib/string/str.c:211 Buffer too small\n", 75) = 75

write(2, "/build/mts/release/bora-2780323/bora/lib/string/str.c:211 Buffer too small\n", 75) = 75

write(2, "Panic loop\n", 11)            = 11

exit_group(1)                           = ?

+++ exited with 1 +++

 

I wonder if anyone has seen something like this on Linux..

 

Vince

[fhanik]

 

Hi Dave,

Thank you so much a thousand times for these unlockers.

 

I stayed on workstation 10.x until yesterday (Aug 23rd) when I found the 2.x family of your unlocker. Thanks a ton.

 

I have since then updated to workstation 11.1.2 and all of the VM's are running happily.

 

One thing I noticed is that vmware (the product) SIGSEV's (I'm on Linux RHEL6) when I try to 'edit' the configuration of an OSX VM.

Strace'ing the process shows a call trace similar to this:

read(29, 0x7fd60a2e2030, 7)             = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)

gettid()                                = 19983

poll([{fd=29, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout)

fstat(29, {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0777, st_size=0, ...}) = 0

fcntl(29, F_GETFL)                      = 0x802 (flags O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK)

--- SIGSEGV {si_signo=SIGSEGV, si_code=SEGV_MAPERR, si_addr=0} ---

geteuid()                               = 1502

gettid()                                = 19983

write(2, "/build/mts/release/bora-2780323/bora/lib/string/str.c:211 Buffer too small\n", 75) = 75

write(2, "/build/mts/release/bora-2780323/bora/lib/string/str.c:211 Buffer too small\n", 75) = 75

write(2, "/build/mts/release/bora-2780323/bora/lib/string/str.c:211 Buffer too small\n", 75) = 75

write(2, "Panic loop\n", 11)            = 11

exit_group(1)                           = ?

+++ exited with 1 +++

 

I wonder if anyone has seen something like this on Linux..

 

Vince

 

 

I removed the Sound card configuration completely in my VM settings, and now I don't get the error anymore.

[trungpt]

Dear bros, have anyone tried with VMWare Workstation v12?

[Donk]

Dear bros, have anyone tried with VMWare Workstation v12?

I have only had time to test on Workstation Pro 12 oin Windows, but it is all working for me. You still need to do the smc.version = "0" change.