Booting to a default NetBoot set with VMWare Fusion’s Technology Preview
As a follow-up to the previous post, the NetBoot support built into VMWare Fusion’s June 2012 Technology Preview also supports easily booting to a default NetBoot set.
To boot to a default NetBoot set, hold down the N key on your keyboard when the VM starts up. Just like a physical Mac, the VM should then look for and boot from the default NetBoot set.
An added feature for VMWare Fusion’s NetBoot support is that VMs will automatically try to boot from a default NetBoot set if the VM can’t find a boot OS otherwise. I was able to verify this by setting up a new and completely unconfigured VM, where there was no OS install disk or disk image selected to boot from. (To make sure it was able to see the NetBoot set, I did change the Network Adapter settings to Ethernet Sharing: Ethernet.)
The VM started and found no OS on the VM’s boot disk or elsewhere. It then booted to my network’s default NetBoot set without any intervention on my part.
Leave a comment
Recent Comments
 | Ben LeRoy on Losing a giant |
 | Peter-Erik on Downloading installer packages… |
 | nathanhaggard on Losing a giant |
 | andras0602 on Disabling login window clock d… |
 | Jeff on Losing a giant |
Der Flounder 
I’ve setup a self contained net boot environment. DHCP, Netboot, netboot client, are all VM guests. I was able to get it to work one but it did not survive a reboot and I’m not sure what I did to get to work.
My setup is DHCP/Netboot server on RedHat. Client is 10.7 64bit OSX VM with no OS.
Here are some steps I know I did:
install vmware tools
set up shared folders
On DHCP/Netboot server setup eth0 as host only static IP
On guest server setup eth0 as host only DHCP
install dhcpd
copy over dhcpd file
install tftp server and client
enable tftp
change the directory to /tftpboot
copy over booter and dmg
chkconfig httpd on
chkconfig dhcpd on
chkconfig xinetd on
chkconfig iptables off
stop iptables
verify tftp works
Here’s my dhcpd.config file
————————————–
authoritative;
log-facility local7;
allow bootp;
allow booting;
subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 10.0.0.192 10.0.0.254;
option routers 10.0.0.2;
option broadcast-address 10.0.0.255;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option domain-name-servers 10.0.0.2;
option ntp-servers 10.0.0.2;
default-lease-time 60;
max-lease-time 300;
option vendor-encapsulated-options 01:01:02;
#option vendor-class-identifier “AAPLBSDPC/i386/VMware7,1”;
option vendor-class-identifier “AAPLBSDPC”;
filename “/10.7.4/booter”;
next-server 10.0.0.2;
option root-path “http://10.0.0.2/darwin-10.7.5.dmg”;
option dhcp-parameter-request-list 1,3,17,43,60;
}
————————————————
Any suggestions?
I’ve started using vm’s in replace of physical machines for testing and package building.
The above works well but does not not work for already configured VM’s? I am unable to netboot from system prefs selecting NB set or combination of keys at startup… Does it work for you?