Run Vanilla OS X El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra or Mojave in VirtualBox 5.x.x on a Windows Host

[STLVNUB]

You can use Ozmosis inside VM using the "refind" method...

Just create a "refind" iso

Edited October 22, 2018 by STLVNUB

[siriusfox]

Any possible hints for a system that won't boot past the EFI shell once the installation is over?

 

I had no problem following the guide for High Sierra all the way through the core installation process, but after the installation the system dumps me to an EFI shell, and I can't figure out how to get the system to actually boot the installed OS at that point.

[Badruzeus]

1 minute ago, siriusfox said:

Any possible hints for a system that won't boot past the EFI shell once the installation is over?

 

I had no problem following the guide for High Sierra all the way through the core installation process, but after the installation the system dumps me to an EFI shell, and I can't figure out how to get the system to actually boot the installed OS at that point.

Press "F12" key on VBox boot - locate your CLOVERX64.efi from EFI Partition:

Boot Maintenance Manager - Boot from File 

\\or with Boot Manager - EFI Hard Drive.

[siriusfox]

28 minutes ago, Badruzeus said:

Press "F12" key on VBox boot - locate your CLOVERX64.efi from EFI Partition:

Boot Maintenance Manager - Boot from File 

\\or with Boot Manager - EFI Hard Drive.

 No luck unfortunately. The guide does not currently say to install Clover. Clover looks to be a tool like refind, but even booting Refind from an ISO doesn't actually show the Mac installation. As far as I can tell the installer given the guide isn't setting up the EFI partition properly or something similar.

 

Exiting from the EFI shell regardless dumps me to the boot manager, but the two relevant boot options ("Mac OS X" and "Mac Boot") both dump me back to the EFI shell once I try to start them.

 

[Badruzeus]

7 minutes ago, siriusfox said:

 No luck unfortunately. The guide does not currently say to install Clover. Clover looks to be a tool like refind, but even booting Refind from an ISO doesn't actually show the Mac installation. As far as I can tell the installer given the guide isn't setting up the EFI partition properly or something similar.

 

Exiting from the EFI shell regardless dumps me to the boot manager, but the two relevant boot options ("Mac OS X" and "Mac Boot") both dump me back to the EFI shell once I try to start them.

 

Did you "Enable EFI" and is your guest macOS using GUID Partition Scheme?

Boot with Clover ISO then install Clover to your EFI Partition, I guess.

[siriusfox]

34 minutes ago, Badruzeus said:

Did you "Enable EFI" and is your guest macOS using GUID Partition Scheme? 

Boot with Clover ISO then install Clover to your EFI Partition, I guess. 

 

I did install with EFI enabled, and I can boot Clover and Refind post install. Unfortunately, neither system sees the installed OS.

[Badruzeus]

37 minutes ago, siriusfox said:

 

I did install with EFI enabled, and I can boot Clover and Refind post install. Unfortunately, neither system sees the installed OS.

Have you placed "ApfsDriverLoader-64.efi" and or VBoxHfs-64.efi on /EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI ?

Edited November 5, 2018 by Badruzeus

[Badruzeus]

OK, crashing issue about CoreAudio for macOS Guest has been fixed with VirtualBox 5.2.22-126460 release.

On my case:

- VoodooHDA v2.9.1 installed on /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other
- AppleHDA on SLE was moved (we could use HDADisabler alternatively)
- VM Settings: Audio Enabled, Core Audio, Intel HD Audio Controller, Enable Audio Out

Here's the changelog: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

Edited November 10, 2018 by Badruzeus

[siriusfox]

On 11/4/2018 at 8:40 PM, Badruzeus said:

Have you placed "ApfsDriverLoader-64.efi" and or VBoxHfs-64.efi on /EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI ?

I had not. Thank you! Pulling the clover release for VMware rather than the upstream release from Sourceforge fixed that problem. Things are booting and setup appears to be working.

 

The big question in my mind is now how do I get it to boot reliably in the future. The guides are currently a bit scattered, so knowing where to read from here to stabilize the system a bit would be quite helpful.

[lahzeakhar245]

tnq for your good article 

[AntonH1]

Install hanging on "Creating RAM Disk":

 

I am trying to get a VM running Mojave 10.14.3 on Virtualbox 5.2.22 r126460 on Windows 10.

 

I followed the instructions and got as far as step 3 after removing the macOS.iso, reboot now from the virtual hard drive, Clover runs, choose the first option (Boot macOS Install Prebooter from Preboot), it starts running through scripts and then hangs when creating RAM disks, it never gets to the MacOS install GUI. I have tried to leaving it there for over an hour, VM CPU usage drops to zero and nothing happens. I have tried a few times and oddly each time it stops in a slightly different place but always appears to be when creating one of the RAM disks.

 

Any ideas please?

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: It seems there may be something wrong with the ISO file. When running the installer with a new vmdk file, it looks like it crashes before the end and doesn't finish writing all the OS files, so when it reboots it then hangs because it can't find some file it expects. I'll try recreating the iso from my Mac.

 

Edited March 3, 2019 by AntonH1

[jpz4085]

I have the macOS Catalina Beta running on the latest version of Virtual Box (6.0.8), with working sound and restart, using rEFInd in the EFI partition for APFS boot support. I’ve attached an archive with the files needed to setup the virtual machine for anyone who wants to try. Details listed below:

• The boot and installation process is mostly automated. rEFInd will start automatically and load the Catalina ISO. After the user begins the install the VM will restart and boot to the hard drive to finish the installation process without the need to eject the ISO.
• The virtual machine must be created and configured using the included batch file. The system definition is iMac14,2 and the script should be edited to include unique serial numbers or use a different product depending on the host system hardware.
• The VBoxAudioFix disk image contains the AppleHDA.kext from 10.13.1 which was the last to support native audio in Virtual Box. It also contains a text file with instructions on replacing the original audio extension on High Sierra and Mojave which is also relevant to Catalina. However, the read only system partition must be remounted with write access using sudo mount -uw / first. I found this solution described here.
• Verbose screen output is disabled for a more Apple like experience but can be selected from the rEFInd boot options menu by pressing Insert, Tab or F2. 
• Machine settings: screen resolution is 1440x900, 4GB RAM and usb mouse setting is used (without mouse integration) due to issues with dragging not functioning when using usb tablet.

Setup the Catalina VM by editing the script with system and serial number information from Clover Configurator then double click to run it with the hard disk file in the same folder. Open Virtual Box and attach the ISO file then start the "macOS Catalina" entry and proceed with the installation.

VBoxCatalina.zip

[PippoX0]

I give it a try

[fusion71au]

On 7/2/2019 at 1:49 PM, jpz4085 said:

I have the macOS Catalina Beta running on the latest version of Virtual Box (6.0.8), with working sound and restart, using rEFInd in the EFI partition for APFS boot support. I’ve attached an archive with the files needed to setup the virtual machine for anyone who wants to try. Details listed below:

• The boot and installation process is mostly automated. rEFInd will start automatically and load the Catalina ISO. After the user begins the install the VM will restart and boot to the hard drive to finish the installation process without the need to eject the ISO.
• The virtual machine must be created and configured using the included batch file. The system definition is iMac14,2 and the script should be edited to include unique serial numbers or use a different product depending on the host system hardware.
• The VBoxAudioFix disk image contains the AppleHDA.kext from 10.13.1 which was the last to support native audio in Virtual Box. It also contains a text file with instructions on replacing the original audio extension on High Sierra and Mojave which is also relevant to Catalina. However, the read only system partition must be remounted with write access using sudo mount -uw / first. I found this solution described here.
• Verbose screen output is disabled for a more Apple like experience but can be selected from the rEFInd boot options menu by pressing Insert, Tab or F2. 
• Machine settings: screen resolution is 1440x900, 4GB RAM and usb mouse setting is used (without mouse integration) due to issues with dragging not functioning when using usb tablet.

Setup the Catalina VM by editing the script with system and serial number information from Clover Configurator then double click to run it with the hard disk file in the same folder. Open Virtual Box and attach the ISO file then start the "macOS Catalina" entry and proceed with the installation.

VBoxCatalina.zip

 

Kudos man, it works and makes the process much easier . 

 

New defaults are needed in order to install Catalina (iMac14,2 in @jpz4085's batch file is supported by 10.15 while the iMac11,3 SMBIOS in the first post no longer is).  You can use the attached macOS_iso_creator.tool.zip to create the bootable Catalina ISO after downloading the installer app into /Applications. 

 

Procedure to prepare the Catalina ISO
1.  On your Mac or Hack with SIP disabled, download/copy "Install macOS Catalina Beta.app" into your Applications folder. 

The app can be obtained from the App Store by enrolling in Apple's Public Beta program or directly from the software catalog with @crazybirdy's installScript_fullapp.zip.

 

Note:  You can verify the installer app by checking the SHA1 of InstallESD.dmg and BaseSystem.dmg (inside the /Install macOS Catalina Beta.app/Contents/SharedSupport folder) with the correct ones at this website.

 

2.  Download and unzip macOS_iso_creator.tool.zip into your ~/Downloads folder.  Note: you will need approx 18GB of free space on your hard disk for the script to complete.
3.  Open terminal, then run the following commands to execute the script:

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x macOS_iso_creator.tool
./macOS_iso_creator.tool

4.  At the end of the process, you will have a macOS.iso on your desktop that you can attach to your Catalina VM.

 

Some screenshots...

 

Spoiler

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by fusion71au
Added updated macOS_iso_creator.tool

[arsradu]

Hi guys!

 

@fusion71au thank you very much for this thread!

 

I know this is probably a bit off-topic, since the tutorial is meant to be used on a Windows host, but I was only wondering, is there any way to do this on a MacOS/Hackintosh host? Yeah, I know you could simply install it on a spare partition, but I was just wondering if you could test for example Catalina or Mojave, or ElCapitan for the nostalgics, in VirtualBox, on MacOS, while running something else. Cause I tried...and failed lol. So I'm guessing I'm probably missing something or doing something wrong.

[fusion71au]

Hi @arsradu, good to hear from you!

 

It is indeed possible to run a macOS guest with VirtualBox on a macOS host (real Mac or Hack).

 

You can use the same basic settings as described in the first post for El Capitan (with more memory + USB3 enabled for newer macOS versions), but since DMI and SMC settings on the host are made "Mac like" by Clover, there is no need to patch the vbox configuration file with the "VBoxManage setextradata" for DMI and SMC keys.

 

After creating a new macOS guest (with 10.13 setting) in VirtualBox 5.2.2 running on a High Sierra 10.13.6 Host/Hack, I simply attached a Mojave vmdk disk image copied from one my Windows macOS VMs...

 

Spoiler

(cheated a bit rather than clean install from ISO to save time ).

 

Since VirtualBox has no apfs support, you need Clover or Refind with ApfsDriverLoader-64.efi to boot High Sierra/Mojave/Catalina on apfs drives.

 

Good Luck!

 

Edited July 8, 2019 by fusion71au
formatting

[arsradu]

Thank you very much!

 

Yesterday, after trying step by step the tutorial on the first page (thought I'd just try to adapt it to a MacOS host, so the path to VBoxManage would be different in this case), I got stuck here. It wouldn't even start the machine.

 

 

 

Today, I thought: let's try to uninstall and reinstall VirtualBox. Maybe some config got messed up. And since I don't need to patch anything, I'll just do the basic settings inside VirtualBox UI and give it a try.

 

Well, what do you know? Booted right off! And yes, from the iso I've created with your (in this case El Capitan) script.

 

 

Aaand installed!

 

 

Many, many thanks for the tips. You're awesome!  

 

Update: works with both VirtualBox 5.2.30 and 6.0.8.

 

Edited July 9, 2019 by arsradu

[tarasis]

On 7/4/2019 at 10:02 AM, fusion71au said:

 

Kudos man, it works and makes the process much easier . 

 

New defaults are needed in order to install Catalina (iMac14,2 in @jpz4085's batch file is supported by 10.15 while the iMac11,3 SMBIOS in the first post no longer is).  You can use the attached macOS_iso_creator.tool.zip to create the bootable Catalina ISO after downloading the installer app into /Applications. 

 

 

Thank you both for this post and the files. I knew I should have checked this forum first. Just finished using a guide on Wikigain, mostly so I could make the Catalina iso.

 

I was going to use the guide on https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-10-15-catalina-on-virtualbox-on-windows-pc/  to install Catalina in the morning, but their guide has you setting the VM info to use iMac11,3 rather than 14,2 so thank you for that heads up.

 

I will give the posts from here a go in the morning. Thank you again for the effort

[tbsf]

There's an issue in the Mojave macOS_iso_creator.tool it uses "OS X" instead of "macOS" in part of it. I ran the steps manually and was successful, though I eventually used VMWare 15.1 instead

[BrannonS]

If this is in the wrong place please tell me where it should go and I will post it there. I installed MAC OS Mountain Lion on VB Box. Got through the entire process and what should have been the reboot into the OS I got a black screen that I am assuming is the command prompt. 

 

I have attached the logs if that helps.

 

Thanks in advance.

Mountain Lion-2020-03-03-22-44-05.log