Mac Big Sur Freezing Less than a Minute Remaining

Discussions about using Mac OS X guests (on Apple hardware) in VirtualBox.
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Mashimaro7
Posts: 4
Joined: 4. Aug 2021, 11:42

Mac Big Sur Freezing Less than a Minute Remaining

Post by Mashimaro7 »

I'm trying to install Big Sur, I got up to the introduction screen, after formatting the drive, I click install, and even after waiting about 2 hours, it still says "Less than a minute remaining" and the bar is at about 1/3. There's no way I'm not allocating enough resources, I gave it 120gb HDD, 8gb RAM, 6 cores. I've installed Catalina and High Sierra in the past, but I need Big Sur to install Xcode from the app store(cant seem to unpack the 12.4 file I downloaded manually)

Is this a common issue? Is there a way to just install Catalina and upgrade it? The upgrade seems to fail whenever I tried, I assumed it was just an issue with Virtual Box being unable to update the OS or something.

Thanks
granada29
Volunteer
Posts: 690
Joined: 3. Mar 2015, 07:27
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: Linux, macOS, Windows

Re: Mac Big Sur Freezing Less than a Minute Remaining

Post by granada29 »

This is a macOS guest issue rather then a problem with your host installation of VirtualBox. A mod will no doubt move the thread to the MacOS X Guests forum.

Please confirm that you have the VirtualBox Extensions Pack installed, and a USB 3.0 controller enabled in your VM settings.

I think you just have to wait it out. My experiences installing a Big Sur guest have been similar to yours. It eventually completed and the guest runs much as expected, although very sluggish. Similarly when you come to do your Xcode install - it *will* take a long time to complete and you just have to wait it out.

I suspect the culprit in all this is the speed of the disk. My Big Sur VM lives on my iMac's fusion drive, but that is still very slow. I suspect Big Sur is wanting to use an SSD - preferably super fast like the internal SSD on an M1 Mac, although of course the M1 machines cannot run a VirtualBox VM
scottgus1
Site Moderator
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Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Mac Big Sur Freezing Less than a Minute Remaining

Post by scottgus1 »

Moved to Mac Guests.

If you're running a spinning platter drive and Apple makes it permissible to switch to an SSD, do it. There's nothing better to breathe life into a computer like giving it an SSD.
Mashimaro7
Posts: 4
Joined: 4. Aug 2021, 11:42

Re: Mac Big Sur Freezing Less than a Minute Remaining

Post by Mashimaro7 »

granada29 wrote:I suspect the culprit in all this is the speed of the disk. My Big Sur VM lives on my iMac's fusion drive, but that is still very slow. I suspect Big Sur is wanting to use an SSD - preferably super fast like the internal SSD on an M1 Mac, although of course the M1 machines cannot run a VirtualBox VM
Sorry, I don't know what "guest" and "host" mean. lol

I guess that makes sense, I have a very cheap 1TB drive I bought in Vietnam here. I would switch to my SSD but it's low on space :(
But it's weird, I installed Catalina to the same drive and it took an hour, tops.

I'll try just waiting longer. Thanks
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