Using macOS installer disk images to boot VMware Fusion virtual machines to macOS Recovery

Booting a VMware Fusion virtual machine to the macOS Recovery environment can be challenging, as Fusion uses Command-R as a keyboard shortcut for restoring snapshots.

This is the same keyboard shortcut as booting to macOS Recovery for Intel Macs so if you’re not very fast, or you don’t have the virtual machine window selected correctly, you may be looking at an unwanted request to restore a snapshot instead of macOS Recovery.

Fortunately, there’s a workaround for this behavior which will reliably get you into macOS Recovery. For more details, please see below the jump.

create_macos_vm_install_dmg updated for macOS Big Sur installer disk images

As part of testing macOS Big Sur 11.0.0, I’ve updated my create_macos_vm_install_dmg script. For more details, please see below the jump.

Upgrading from ESXi 6.7 to ESXi 7.0 via SSH and esxcli

Following VMware’s release of ESXi 7.0, I upgraded my ESXi 6.7 server to ESXi 7.0 using SSH and esxcli. For those interested, see below the jump for the details of the process I used.

Using bootstrappr to build testing VMs with VMware Fusion

As part of my preparation for next week’s WWDC conference, I’ve been working on ways to build virtual machines using VMware Fusion for testing. In previous years, I have used NetBoot-based solutions to help me with this process. With NetBoot going away though, I’ve started using bootstrappr as my replacement deployment tool.

Bootstrappr is designed to install packages and scripts, but in my case I’m having it install only one package: a firstboot package created by First Boot Package Install Generator.app. The firstboot package in turn installs a set of installer packages to configure the VM and install the software I want. For more details, please see below the jump.

Mouse doesn’t move at FileVault login screen in VMware Fusion macOS Mojave VMs

As part of working with FileVault on macOS Mojave, I’ve been using VMs running in VMware Fusion 11.x for testing. As part of that, I’ve seen a problem where the mouse doesn’t move when the VM has booted to the FileVault login screen. The keyboard responds and arrow keys can be used to select users, but the mouse itself is immovable and does not respond.

After some research, I ran across someone who had the same issue and found a workaround. For more details, please see below the jump.

Building macOS installer disk images for virtual machines with create_macos_vm_install_dmg

A while back, I wrote a couple of scripts which built installers for Mac virtual machines:

• create_os_x_vm_install_dmg
• create_macos_vm_install_dmg

However, Apple made some changes to the macOS installer starting in macOS Sierra 10.12.4 which broke the method I was using to build the installers. Recently though, I figured out that I could use Apple’s createinstallmedia tool to help me with building installers for Mac virtual machines again. After a substantial re-write, create_macos_vm_install_dmg is able to create bootable disk images for virtual machines running macOS Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave.

One change from the previous version of the create_macos_vm_install_dmg script is that the resulting installer no longer runs an automated installation. Instead, it will be necessary to follow the prompts to select the language and drive to install the OS onto. For more details, please see below the jump.

Upgrading from ESXi 6.5 to ESXi 6.7 via SSH and esxcli

Following VMware’s release of ESXi 6.7, I upgraded my ESXi 6.5 server to ESXi 6.7 using SSH and esxcli. For those interested, see below the jump for the details of the process I used.

Setting your Mac to receive macOS beta updates using seedutil

As part of a discussion of how to build test VMs, a colleague mentioned how they were using the seedutil tool to help configure Macs to access Apple’s beta updates. I hadn’t run across this tool before, so I decided to do some research and see if I could make it work for my own testing needs. For more details, see below the jump.

Resizing a macOS VM’s APFS boot drive to use all available disk space

A while back, I wrote a post on how to resize the boot drive of an existing virtual machine. However, that guidance only applies to a boot drive that uses HFS+ for its filesystem.

Now that Apple File System (APFS) is available and the default file system on macOS High Sierra, a different procedure must be used in order to resize the APFS-formatted boot drive of an existing virtual machine. For more details, see below the jump.

Setting a macOS VM to automatically boot to Recovery HD using VMware Fusion

When testing various security functions, like System Integrity Protection or High Sierra’s new kernel extension functionality, it’s often useful to be able to boot a macOS virtual machine (VM) into the Recovery environment. However, it can be challenging to select the VM and hold down Command+R in time to boot to the Recovery environment. This can result in having to try several or more times before you can successfully boot the VM to Recovery HD.

Fortunately, VMware has a setting that enables a forced boot to Recovery HD. For more details, please see below the jump.