AutoLab on VMware Fusion

I have noticed that you can’t find much about installing the AutoLab on a Mac running VMware Fusion.  Here are some notes on getting it going.  The first thing I noticed about trying to get this setup was that we needed to utilize Nicholas Weaver’s UBER Network Fuser.  Why, you ask?  Well, one of the biggest limiting factors between VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion is the inability to create customized networks beyond the defaults.  This tool allows us to create up to 10 other networks beyond the two defaults.  Once you start this tool, you will want to create a network called VMnet3.  This network is one that is used by the AutoLab VMs.  If you read through the AutoLab documentation you will see that it will need to live on the 192.168.199.0/24 subnet…but wait…we can’t edit the subnet in UBER Network Fuser.  Well, here is the way to edit this:

1. Open up Terminal.
2. Do the following:  cd /Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion
3. You will want to edit the file called “networking”.  So:  vi networking
4. Find the IP that UBER Network Fuser has chosen in this file for VMnet3 and change it to reflect 192.168.199.0.
5. Save the file.

Are we done?  Nope…one more quick thing before I let you go.  I found that when bringing the AutoLab VMs into Fusion one will want to copy them to their Virtual Machines folder and then rename the VM’s folder to .vmwarevm.  This will allow UBER Network Fuser to see the VMs so you can adjust the custom networks as needed.  Now after this has been completed, you should be able to continue through the AutoLab documentation and start placing the content needed on the NAS VM.  if you have any questions then please feel free to ask in the comments.  I will continue to post more as needed as I get this configured on my MBP.