macOS Unlocker V4 for VMware ESXi

Original repositories: DrDonk/esxi-unlocker

(c) 2011-2022 David Parsons

Download ESXi 8.0 (integrated Unlocker & OEM BIOS)

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• VMware ESXi 8.0U3 Unlocker standard & Custom Image
• VMware ESXi 8.0U3 Unlocker with driver
• VMware ESXi 8.0U2 Unlocker standard & Custom Image
• VMware ESXi 8.0U2 Unlocker with driver
• VMware ESXi 8.0U1 Unlocker standard & Custom Image
• VMware ESXi 8.0U1 Unlocker with driver
• VMware ESXi 8.0 Unlocker standard & Custom Image
• VMware ESXi 8.0 Unlocker with driver

Download ESXi 7.0 (integrated Unlocker & OEM BIOS)

• VMware ESXi 7.0U3 & Unlocker standard & Custom Image
• VMware ESXi 7.0U3 & Unlocker with driver
• VMware ESXi 7.0U2 & Unlocker standard & Custom Image
• VMware ESXi 7.0U2 & Unlocker with driver
• VMware ESXi 7.0U1 Unlocker standard & Custom Image
• VMware ESXi 7.0 Unlocker standard & Custom Image

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IMPORTANT PLEASE READ!

macOS Ventura Guests

There are a known issues that Ventura guests boot loop in VMware Workstation. The situation after extensive testing is:

1. Intel pre-Haswell CPUs dropped by Apple in Ventura - no way to patch need to look at OCLP
2. AMD CPUs n o longer work in Ventura possibly due to how CPUID leaf 4 is read - no way to patch need to look at OpenCore and other solutions
3. Intel Haswell+ CPUS, which are supported, make sure you set

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000e

to

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

DrDonk/unlocker#47

Please do not upgrade to Ventura at this time if you have AMD or Intel pre-Haswell CPUs.

VMware will stop supporting new macOS versions as guests starting with Fusion 13 and the next version of ESXi.

This is documented at the VMware KB for Fusion: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/88697

And for ESXi: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/88698

This will likely impact Workstation Pro/Player as well. Currently the exact details of what may change are not clear, but it is safe to say we should look for alternative approaches to the unlocker.

Upgrading ESXi 8

There is an issue with ESXi 8 which stops macOS from booting and is probably related to the news that VMware nolonger support macOS as host and guest for ESXi8. The workaround is to keep existing VMs as 7U2 variants and create new ones as ESXi 7 U2 VMs. This can be done in the dialogs when creating a new VM.

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1. Introduction

Unlocker 4 is designed for VMware ESXi 7.

The Unlocker enables certain flags and data tables that are required to see the macOS type when setting the guest OS type, and modify the implmentation of the virtual SMC controller device. These capabiltiites are normally exposed in Fusion and ESXi when running on Apple hardware.

The patch code carries out the following modifications dependent on the product being patched:

• Patch vmx and derivatives to allow macOS to boot
• Patch libvmkctl.so to allow vCenter to boot macOS guests

It is important to understand that the Unlocker cannot add any new capabilities to VMware ESXi but enables support for macOS that is disabled in the VMware products when run on non-Apple hardware.

The Unlocker cannot:

• add support for new versions of macOS
• add paravirtualized Apple GPU support
• add older (non-Ryzen) AMD CPU support

or any other features that are not already in the VMware compiled code.

2. Running the patcher

The ESXi unlocker will need to be run each time the ESXi Server is upgraded.

It is also best to switch ESXi to Maintanence mode and make sure you do not have any VMs running.

The code is written in Python and has no pre-requisites and should run directly from the release zip download.

• Download a binary release from https://github.com/DrDonk/esxi-unlocker/releases
• Unload the archive to a folder on the ESXi server datastore and extract the files
• Navigate to the folder with the extracted files

You will then need to run one of the following commands to patch or unpatch the ESXi software.

• unlock - apply patches to VMware ESXi
• relock - remove patches from VMware ESXi
• check - check the patch status of your VMware installation

3. FAQS

3.1 Remove older versions of ESXi unlocker

If you hve previously used an earlier version of the ESXi Unlocker please uninstall it by logging into the support console and running:

BootModuleConfig.sh --verbose --remove=unlocker.tgz

and then rebooting the ESXi server.

3.2 AMD CPUs

A patched macOS AMD kernel must be used to run on older AMD systems, but there is a workaround if you have a modern AMD Ryzen CPU. The unlocker cannot patch this but we can recommend settings for the VMX file that allows macOS to run on recent AMD CPUs. The tests are being recorded in this issue, and it would be useful if more can report success or failures in that issue.

DrDonk/unlocker#33

1. Read this KB article to learn how to edit a guest's VMX file safely https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2057902

2. Add the following lines were to the VMX file:

   cpuid.0.eax = "0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:1011"
   cpuid.0.ebx = "0111:0101:0110:1110:0110:0101:0100:0111"
   cpuid.0.ecx = "0110:1100:0110:0101:0111:0100:0110:1110"
   cpuid.0.edx = "0100:1001:0110:0101:0110:1110:0110:1001"
   cpuid.1.eax = "0000:0000:0000:0001:0000:0110:0111:0001"
   cpuid.1.ebx = "0000:0010:0000:0001:0000:1000:0000:0000"
   cpuid.1.ecx = "1000:0010:1001:1000:0010:0010:0000:0011"
   cpuid.1.edx = "0000:0111:1000:1011:1111:1011:1111:1111"
   vhv.enable = "FALSE"
   vpmc.enable = "FALSE"

3. Make sure there are no duplicate lines in the VMX file or the guest will not start and a dictionary error will be displayed by VMware.

4. You can now install and run macOS as a guest.

4. Thanks

Thanks to Zenith432 for originally building the C++ Unlocker and Mac Son of Knife (MSoK) for all the testing and support.

Thanks also to Sam B for finding the solution for ESXi 6 and helping me with debugging expertise. Sam also wrote the code for patching ESXi ELF files and modified the Unlocker code to run on Python 3 in the ESXi 6.5 environment.

Thanks to lucaskamp for testing the new version 4 of ESXi Unlocker.

(c) 2011-2023 David Parsons