vfuse

This script takes a never-booted DMG and converts it to a VMware Fusion VM.

The germ of this idea came about, as all good ideas, and germs, do: while drinking beer. Specifically, I was tossing back drinks and tossing around ideas with Gilbert Wilson, and he mentioned that he uses the VMware CLI tools to convert DMGs to VMDKs based on a blog post he'd read. Intrigued, I asked Gil to email me the specifics. After seeing how potentially cool this was, I wrapped it up in this here terribly illegible, queasingly unpythonic script.

My thanks to Rich Trouton for testing this script for me and providing feedback. He is a saint among humans.

Requirements

• VMware Fusion 7.x Professional
• OS X 10.9.5+ (compatible with 10.10)
• A never-booted image created with your favorite image creation tool.
• (optional) Packer 0.7.2 (or above) for building a vagrant box.
• (optional) vserv for monitoring virtual machines.

Usage

usage: vfuse [-h] [-i INPUT] [-o OUTPUT] [-n NAME] [-w HW_VERSION]
             [-m MEM_SIZE] [-t TEMPLATE] [-e] [-p PACKER] [--start [START]]
             [--stop STOP] [--reset RESET]

Create and monitor VM from source DMG.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INPUT, --input INPUT
                        /path/to/dmg
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        /path/to/output/dir
  -n NAME, --name NAME  Use a custom name
  -w HW_VERSION, --hw-version HW_VERSION
                        VMware hardware version
  -m MEM_SIZE, --mem-size MEM_SIZE
                        Memory Size in MB
  -t TEMPLATE, --template TEMPLATE
                        Use a template
  -e, --esx             Create pre-allocated ESX-type VMDK
  -p PACKER, --packer PACKER
                        Populate a packer template
  --start [START]       Start monitoring of VM
  --stop STOP           Stop monitoring of VM
  --reset RESET         Reset monitored VM

Creating a VM

Running vfuse does not necessarily require sudo rights, but if you don't want to be prompted in the GUI for an admin password, run it with sudo. Escalated privileges is required to run the vmware-vdiskmanager binary, which vfuse uses.

The only required argument is -i aka --input. Run thusly, it will create a vm called osx-vm.vmwarevm in the current working directory:

vfuse -i /path/to/dmg

See the wiki for more on how to use vfuse.

Caveats

vfuse is meant to be used with never-booted disk images created, for example, by AutoDMG. That said, you should be able to use vfuse with a dmg created with Disk Utility. Be aware, however, that testing has shown that it is best if you use the "Disk Image from Folder" method rather than "Disk Image from (Select a Device)" in Disk Utility, as the latter may result in errors when converting the disk to a vmdk.

License

Copyright 2015 Joseph Chilcote

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.