macOS on VMware setup

Note: for some reason, the workflow below worked for Player but not Workstation (it installed on Workstation but then hung after installation when booted up, after over an hour of the progress bar inching forwards, so I reverted to Player)

After installing Mojave on the VirtualBox "push button installer", you'll get a working macOS VM. Go to the App Store and download the Mojave installer as described in this article. This will put Install macOS Mojave.app in the VM's /Applications/ folder.

Open the terminal and create an ISO image from the .app:

hdiutil create -o /tmp/Mojave -size 8500m -volname Mojave -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
hdiutil attach /tmp/Mojave.dmg -noverify -mountpoint /Volumes/Mojave
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Mojave --nointeraction
hdiutil detach /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Mojave
hdiutil convert /tmp/Mojave.dmg -format UDTO -o ~/Desktop/Mojave.cdr
mv ~/Desktop/Mojave.cdr ~/Desktop/Mojave.iso

As a final step you can then compress it as a zip file.

To get the ISO out of the VM, creating a shared folder didn't work for me so I resorted to using USB passthrough as a storage device (I don't recommend zipping it as the resulting file ended up incompatible for me)

Following this guide either Player or Workstation will work

• To uninstall VMWare Player, run sudo vmware-installer -u vmware-player or change -player to -workstation for the alternative. You can switch between the two easily but note that Workstation involves a 30 day free trial mechanism.

There's no option to install OS X unless you use this unlocker (unclear why this is necessary since VirtualBox lets you use macOS and does not claim to break the licensing agreement?)

• Use 10.14 (Mojave), save as macOS

As well as adding the line smc.version = "0" to macOS.vmx (in ~/vmware/macOS/)

Erase the virtual disk "VMware Virtual SATA Hard Drive Media" (re-enter this name, leave format as default: journaled macOS format) and then close [red button top left] the Utilities tool and click on Install macOS at the main menu.

• I suggest at least 70GB total for the VM hard drive (other guides suggest 40GB but if you update to Big Sur it needs a spare 20GB and the default Mojave setup takes 22GB...), a few hundred GB to be on the safe side if possible (it's not as easy to change this later as I expected).
  • You can also choose a few more cores than the suggested minimum of 2
• I also suggest changing from the default of multiple files to storing the VM as a single file (better performance, worse portability, but I don't personally need to move my VMs so I prefer one virtual disk file)

Also provision at least 4GB (4096MB) for the RAM

You should also install the tools for Linux which aren't shipped any more, they're open source (don't expect perfection...)

sudo apt install open-vm-tools

Source

As announced in the previous release notes, new features will not be made available for tar installer and OSPs starting VMware Tools 11.0.0. Separate Linux tar package is available starting VMware Tools 10.3.20 release line. For newer Linux releases (RHEL7, SLE12, Ubuntu 14.04, CentOS7, Debian 7, OEL7, Fedora 19 and OpenSuSE 11 and later), it is recommended that the users use the open-vm-tools bundled with some Linux operating systems.

Upon connecting an Apple iPad (or iPhone presumably) to the USB...

• Again commenting out the udev rules for usbmuxd and libgphoto to prevent the host Linux OS from responding to the device falling back to the host

• You may again want to stop all the services which "hold on" to the iPad on the host [treating it as other than just a storage device, causing trouble in the VM]

  pkill -f gphoto2
  systemctl --user stop gvfs-afc-volume-monitor.service gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor.service gvfs-mtp-volume-monitor.service

...there will be a popup to download a software update,

A software update is required to connect to iPad...

Unplug the iPad USB and then click Install.

After downloading the iPad can be recognised, so plug it in again. The iPad interface will request you to "trust" the computer (i.e. the VM).

Next, search "Software Update" in the macOS search bar to update any security updates, restart, after which you'll be given the option to update to Big Sur (needed for the latest XCode from the App Store to run).