OS X 10.5 Running in VMware Fusion

Now it's easy to install Mac OS X Server 10.5 on a virtual machine using VMware Fusion, but it's not quite so easy to do the same with the normal "Desktop" version. This is because of the licensing imposed by Apple. At least they are now open to allowing OS X Server to be virtualised and this is great news for those of us who want to test those environments. However, testing generally also requires the Desktop to be virtualised also, it just makes life so much easier (and cheaper of course) to setup, install, test and break down a virtual environment than it is to do the same in hardware.

So I've been hunting around for a while for the solution. Today I found the solution on another blog.
The blog illustrates how to install OS X 10.4 (Tiger) as a virtual machine. There was a mention in the comments that this would work for Leopard so I thought I'd give it a try. I was successful! There were a couple of modifications I had to make but other than that the instructions can be followed to the letter on 10.5 as well.

Rather than plagiarise my fellow bloggers hard work I'll just give you the link. Sven G's Post

Below are my updates to Sven G's post:

2. The mounted VM HD shows up on the Desktop as Macintosh HD which is of course the same name as the normal Macintosh HD (unless you renamed it of course). If this is the case then the OS will see the mounted drive as Macintosh HD 1.
3. You will need to show hidden files and folders to navigate to the OSInstall.mpkg. I used Path Finder to do this.
6. Remember to change the Macintosh HD to the drive name that shows up in the OS. You can find this by going to terminal and typing the following:

cd /Volumes
ls -al

You will then see a list of the mounted drives.

7. Same as step 6.

You can now install the VMware Tools as normal.
I am now testing the updates to 10.5.6.

Comments

[Othon]

I think You do a great job. Thanks
http://www.pdfqueen.com

[Paul]

Same here. I downloaded the 10.5.6 upüdate but the installer says the disk is not compatible.
Also getting issues with the mouse cursor dissapearing, restarting the VM seems to fix this but that's not great.
So stability is in question.

[Don]

Excellent find Paul, and thanks for the update.

All seems to have installed OK for me and is running find although it seems Software Update won't (!) and even downloading the combo updater or trying to install Safari 4 is not working. Is this the same on your build or am I doing something wrong?