Virtualizing OS X Tiger

Before we begin, I would like to preface this blog post: The steps and topics contained in this post are purely theoretical and are meant to appeal to academia only. The staff at VMHero assumes no liability for any infringement which may occur as a result of following any of the steps below. We do not encourage piracy, and publish this information only as a theoretical possibility.

Many of you will know that both Apple and VMware support virtualizing OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard Server for testing environments. Some of you will also know that there are ways of fooling Fusion into thinking that a VM running OS X Leopard client is really a Leopard server.

However, there is an issue with virtualizing OS X 10.4, Tiger. Installing the Tiger OS in the traditional sense of mounting an ISO or using the physical installation media will not work. In our tests, no matter what hacks or modifications we made to our virtual machine, we could not get the OS to install. At the time, we were testing for an issue whereby using a hacked ISO from the Internet was not an option.

That brings us to this post. After about two weeks of painstaking trial and error and research, we were able to come up with a process for creating a VM with Tiger installed from a physical machine running the same OS… a VMware Converter for Mac, of sorts.

If one were interested in virtualizing the Tiger Operating System, the following steps should produce a functioning machine. Again it bears stating that we do not endorse any activities or behaviors which would infringe on EULAs or copyright agreements.

Note: This guide assumes that the name of your physical Tiger machine’s hard drive name is Macintosh HD. Please adjust accordingly if it is different.

Step One: Create Tiger DMG Image

On the physical machine containing OS X 10.4 Tiger:

1. Install a (free) copy of Carbon Copy Cloner from http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
2. Launch Carbon Copy Cloner from the Applications folder
3. From the main window, under Source Disk, click the “Select a source” drop down and choose “Macintosh HD”. The source disk should change to Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD should be listed under the “Items to be copied list”.
4. Under Target Disk, click the “Select a target” drop down and choose “New disk image…”
5. In the New disk image window, enter a name for the backup image in the Save As box
6. Ensure that “Create a read-only disk image” is selected
7. Click OK
8. Ensure that “Backup everything” is selected under the Cloning options.
9. Click Clone.
10. Enter your password to authenticate and continue
11. Allow the process to complete. This may take several hours depending on how much data is stored on the hard drive.
12. Once the process is complete, you should end up with a .sparseimage file
13. Rename this to <filename>.dmg
14. Click the “Use .dmg” button at the warning screen.
15. You should now have a full system backup as a dmg file. Copy this file to an accessible location, if appropriate.

Step Two: Create the Virtual Machine

Once you have your dmg image, you need to create a virtual machine whose hard drive will be “restored” with the backed up dmg image. To create the new virtual machine, from within Fusion:

1. Click File-> New
2. On the “Create New Virtual Machine” screen, click the “Continue without disk” button
3. On the “Installation Media” screen, choose the “Create a custom virtual machine” option and click Continue.
4. On the “Choose Operating System” screen, choose “Apple Mac OS X” as the Operating System and “Mac OS X Server 10.5 (experimental)” as the Version. Note not to select the 64-bit version here. Click Continue.
5. On the “Finish” screen, ensure that all of the settings are correct. If you need to modify the amount of memory on the system, click the “Customize Settings” button. Otherwise, click “Finish.” Make sure that the virtual hard drive is as large as or larger than the backup image you created in the previous step!
6. Choose a name and location for the machine, and then click “Save.”
7. If the machine turns on, click the “Virtual Machine” menu and choose “Shut Down Guest.”

Step Three: Restore the Backup Image

1. In the main Fusion screen, right click your new Virtual Machine and choose “Show in Finder.”
2. When the Finder window appears, right click the machine’s file and choose “More -> Mount Virtual Disk -> <machineName>.vmdk”
3. You should now see a new disk appear on the Desktop called “Macintosh HD.” (This may take a minute or so).
4. Open Disk Utilities from Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utilities
5. On the left side of the window, click the “Macintosh HD” icon. Then click on the “Restore” tab.
6. Click the “Image” button next to the “Source” box. Browse to the dmg backup image that you made in Step One.
7. Drag the “Macintosh HD” icon to the box next to “Destination”
8. Click the “Restore” button.
9. You will need to authenticate using your administrative credentials.
10. This restoration process should take about 25 minutes, depending on the size of the backup.

Step Four: Inject Client Hacks

With the virtual machine’s hard drive still mounted:

1. Open Terminal
2. Enter sudo touch "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist" and press enter.
3. You will need to authenticate using your administrative credentials.
4. Enter sudo nano "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.automate.vmware.plist" and press enter.
5. In the nano window, enter the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">;
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.automate.vmware</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/bin/bash</string>
<string>-c</string>
<string>/bin/rm -f /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist; trap "/usr/bin/touch /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist; exit" SIGINT SIGTERM SIGHUP; sleep 999999 &amp; wait $!</string>
</array>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

1. Press Command + O, then Enter. You should see “Wrote 20 Lines” near the bottom of the Terminal window. This means that you have successfully saved the file. Press Command + X to close nano.
2. Type exit and press enter. This will close out any running Terminal processes. You should see “Process completed” at the bottom of the Terminal window.
3. Close Terminal
4. Right click the “Macintosh HD” icon and choose “Eject ‘Macintosh HD’”
5. You can now start up your new Tiger VM