Hiya! I'm trying to generate a Vagrant box for macOS 10.13 High Sierra using the VMware Fusion hypervisor provider with packer. I actually managed to automate macOS installation entirely by PC-compatible keyboard input! So the entire macOS installation is scripted and reproducible, but unfortunately the resulting boot never completes. Sometimes it boot loops forever on the black Apple loading screen. But mostly it just gets about 1/3rd done during the final macOS black installation boot loading screen, interrupting with the complaint:
An error occurred installing macOS. To use Apple Diagnostics to check your Mac hardware, shut down, press the power button, and immediately hold the 'D' key until diagnostics begins.
Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again.
Restart
Screenshot:
https://i.imgur.com/4UpW4lc.png
As far as my system specs, I'm aiming for a macOS 10.13 High Sierra guest VM, on VMware Fusion 10, in packer 1.1.2-dev, installed with Go 1.9, on a macOS 10.13 High Sierra host, on a mid-2013 13" MacBook Air.
And finally, here's my work in progress packer configuration for generating the virtual machine, in a "macos" branch of my packer templates repository:
https://github.com/mcandre/packer-templates/tree/macos
If anyone else has experience getting macOS to boot in VMware, let me know how the VMX configuration can be improved, or if some kind of SMC toggling intervention is necessary to get the thing to boot better. I've already tossed so many hacks and workarounds into the mix that I'm starting to run out of ideas :P
I originally planned to use VirtualBox as the hypervisor provider, but unfortunately packer currently scrambles the Apple keyboard input to VirtualBox, as packer assumes an IBM / Linux keyboard. So I'm tinkering with macOS guests in VMware instead, which unfortunately has far fewer online examples to pull from compared to macOS guests in VirtualBox. The systemctl launch command for VoiceOver wouldn't have been necessary either, if packer supported sending the Command modifier key to VM's. Fortunately, this particular service can be turned on via launchctl from Terminal.app, so even though packer is hamstrung for Command-based hotkeys, we can still perform the target volume selection purely by (PC-compatible) keyboard signals. Now just to get the darn thing booting successfully after SetupAssistant finishes :/
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