I have a macmini which came with Mountain Lion preinstalled as from factory. I need to create a virtual machine on this macmini (OSX host/OSX guest) with the same version for end-user deployment testing. I went to the apple store to get the installer, but I can only get mavericks, and I want to test deployment on 10.8. How can I get a ML installer so I can use vmware or virtualbox to install osx in the virtual image?
MacOS – How to get a OSX mountain lion installer for deployment testing
macosvirtualizationvmware
Related Solutions
What you need to do to re-download the Lion installer is to HOLD down the OPTION/ALT key whilst opening the App Store and keep holding it all the way through to the purchased tab, from here you should see the option to install. Just download that.
OK, having had a good play the following options are possible with Parallels:
- From the Recovery Partition on your machine, however this only works from the current one, not any other attached ones, so if you are booted into ML, you can only use the ML recovery partition - so no go for Lion
- From original Media, in this case an official USB stick as it was not available on DVD, I didn't have one, so no good for me (note that hand made ones will not work, neither will if you created a bootable partition
- From a Disk Image file. As with option 2. above, creating a bootable DVD/USB Stick/partition on an drive etc will not work if you have extracted the image file to create one. You need the actual DMG file. If you have the original App Store download, the easiest way to get this is is to rick click and
Show Package Contents, then find theInstallESD.dmgfile and make a copy of it.
Using the file from method 3. will allow you to use the new VM Wizard to create the Lion VM
Related Question
- MacOS – Computer should be restarted to connect internet (Mountain Lion on VMware 8)
- MacOS – How to install OS X Mavericks in VirtualBox
- MacOS – How to install OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) on VirtualBox 4.3
- MacOS – Incorrect keyboard mapping on OS X guest in vmware fusion
- MacOS – How to install OS X 10.7 and 10.8 in VMWare Fusion, on a 10.9 host
- Where to get Mavericks (or older) OS X installer apps to set up Virtual Machines
- How to invoke a UEFI Shell (v2.2) on a Fusion Player virtual machine with Big Sur installed
Best Answer
Developers registered with Apple's Mac Developer Program can download older editions of Mac OS X for development and testing purposes.
The screenshot below shows OS X Mountain Lion is still available to developers.