Installing Leopard 10.5.x on VMware

SUPPORT APPLE: Buy a license for Leopard if you are going to use this!

EDUCATIONAL ONLY: This is for educational purposes ONLY. Not to be used in a productive or commercial environment.

Unlike Tiger hackintosh installations, installing Leopard need some tricks to make it work.
First of all, you need VMware version 6.5 or above. I will show installation process for AMD system, I guess on Intel systems it is about the same.
So, you need to get Leopard AMD patched image or CD, at least 20 Gb of hard drive space and not less then 1Gb of RAM.

Create a new Leopard VM
Go to File >> New Virtual Machine and create a new VM (you should be familiar with this if you installed Tiger on VMware)

• Choose Custom and not typical
• Set the Hardware Compatibility to Workstation 6 and click Next
• Set the guest OS to "Other" and set the Version to "FreeBSD 64-bit"
• Give the virtual machine a name, and preferrably store it in a different partition from the one you are running Windows from, click Next
• Set the number of processors to 1 (you can use 2 as well, but there is no visible speed increase) and click Next
• Set the amount of memory at least 768 Mb for better results.
  
• Now go to the VM >> Settings menu and click and Remove the Floppy Drive and the USB Controller

Save configuration, and then open .vmx file with notepad and replace setting with this:

.encoding = "windows-1251"
bios.bootDelay = "5000"
checkpoint.vmState = ""
checkpoint.vmState.readOnly = "FALSE"
config.version = "8"
deploymentPlatform = "windows"
displayName = "Leopard"
ehci.pciSlotNumber = "33"
ehci.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:7b:c7:78"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "32"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
extendedConfigFile = "leopard.vmxf"
floppy0.autodetect = "TRUE"
floppy0.fileName = "A:"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
guestOS = "freebsd-64"
ide0:0.fileName = "AiTKOS-0.vmdk"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.redo = ""
ide1:0.autodetect = "FALSE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ide1:0.exclusive = "FALSE"
ide1:0.fileName = "G:"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
memsize = "768"
mks.keyboardFilter = "allow"
;monitor = "debug"
nvram = "leopard.nvram"
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
sound.autodetect = "FALSE"
sound.fileName = "Speakers (Creative SB Audigy 2 "
sound.present = "TRUE"
svga.autodetect = "TRUE"
tools.remindInstall = "TRUE"
tools.upgrade.policy = "useGlobal"
usb.present = "TRUE"
uuid.action = "KEEP"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 50 97 29 7a 74 3f-a8 4a 39 81 24 7b c7 78"
uuid.location = "56 4d fa 48 48 51 f1 7c-4a 00 76 c3 fa 66 76 d6"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
virtualHW.version = "6"
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "134217728"
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"
debugStub.linuxOffsets = "0x0,0xffffffff,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0,0x0"
mks.enable3d = "TRUE"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "34"
usb.autoConnect.device0 = ""
usb.generic.allowHID = "FALSE"

After open VMware and replace paths to your hardfile and CD drive (also some custom things like sound cards)
Settings BIOS options
Note: To toggle between the guest OS and the host OS, press Ctrl + Alt

• Make sure that all other virtual machines are turned off
• Now boot your Leopard VM. Click inside the window immediately and tap F2
• In the main BIOS screen, choose the Legacy Diskette A and set it to Disabled
• Go to the Advanced tab >> I/O Device Configuration and disable all Parallel, Floppy, and Serial controllers
• Press F10 to save changes and reboot

Now select your Leopard distribution image in VMware CD device dialog or if you have it on disk - set the correct letter of you CD drive.
As used iDeneb Leopard compilation for AMD/Intel hackintosh , but you can use any other - I tested it work with AiTKOS as well.


Booting Leopard up for the first time

• You will eventually get to a boot: prompt
• Type -v at the boot prompt and hit Enter
• Watch the messages scroll by, leave it for 15-30 minutes until it boots
• Proceed to installiation process step by step as on usual Mac.
  
• If it does not boot, go back to the F8 boot prompt and type in -v -x -f cpus=1 and hit Enter to see if it works

After all you should see standard Leopard install process. Do it step by step - having in mind what components (eg kernels and kext) you need to install and continue.
If you do everything right, you will successfully finish installation and boot into Leopard !


Thanks goes to PCWiz and Ozlo for giving main idea and some useful tips!

p.s. Since Vmware use native video you maybe stuck into screen resolution change, to make in different do it manualy:

• With TextEdit, open the file: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
• Open the file, and add these two lines (right after the Yes line if you are on Tiger or line if you are on Leopard)

Graphics Mode
1280x1024x32

• Replace the 1280x1024x32 with the resolution you want
• Then, in go to File >> Save As..
• Save the file as com.apple.Boot.plist on the Desktop (make sure the .plist part is there!)
• Navigate the the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ folder
• Drag your com.apple.Boot.plist file on the Desktop into the folder window
• When a messages appears, click Authenticate and Replace and enter your password
• You're done! Reboot OS X to see the changes

Here is an example of what the com.Apple.boot.plist file looks like with Leopard:


<?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>kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280x1024x32</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Thats all!