Why: Can boot from Lion install image, but not Snow Leopard Server

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DominikHoffmann

Junior Member
It is probably common knowledge that the App Store download of the Lion installer contains a disk image, which can be burned to a dual-layer DVD and used in a drive for doing a clean install on compatible hardware.

I installed a Lion VM from this disk image. Parallels boots from that disk image without incident, after which installation proceeds just as it would, if a DVD burned from that image were used on a physical Mac.

While I was able to install a Snow Leopard Server (SNL) VM from physical media, the procedure above doesn't work. In the SNL case the disk image was generated in Disk Utility from the physical media. When I select that image file as the installation source, the VM first reboots, but then I am greeted by an alert that states:
There is no operating system installed in this virtual machine. Please insert an operating system installation CD into the optical drive of your Mac and restart the virtual machine.
Click to expand...
There is nothing to the effect that it is an unsupported guest OS, which I have proven not to be the case (see above). Rather, this appears to indicate that there are different disk image formats, ones that can be booted by a virtual machine and ones that can't. If this hypothesis is true, it begs the question of how to make a disk image from installation media that will allow being booted from by a Parallels VM.

I have tried making a .cdr (or .iso) disk image form the SNL installation DVD, but the behavior is identical.

Any ideas?
 
I downloaded a 10.6 Server DVD image from the Apple Developer Connection (ADC, membership required). Parallels allowed me to install from that one.

This still doesn't, of course, answer, as to why a disk image generated by Disk Utility doesn't.
 
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