virtualbox.org

Hi all,

Thanks for reading my question.

I'm a new Virtualbox user. My experience so far is that yesterday I successfully installed Window 10 as a guest inside a MacOSX Yosemite host. Install went perfectly the first time, so thanks to the team for that.

I now want to install OSX Snow Leopard OSX 10.6.8 as a guest within OSX Yosemite as host. I have Snow Leopard installed on a couple drives, but no longer have an installer. I can buy a Snow Leopard installer on Amazon if needed.

QUESTIONS:

1) Do I need to get a Snow Leopard installer and then convert it to an ISO file? If yes, could you please share a link to the simplest instructions for accomplishing this? I'm pretty much clueless in terminal, but will dive in if that's the only way.

2) Are there any obstacles, problems, limitations etc I should be aware of? From my reading so far I'm getting the impression that running OSX within OSX may not be as simple as running Windows within OSX. True?

My goal is to create easy fast access to Snow Leopard (on my main machine) so I can quickly work with a cherished old app that never got updated past that operating system.

Thanks for any advice, much appreciated.

PS: I have VirtualBox installed on the following machine.

iMac 27 inch - 2011
2.7 Ghz
16 GB RAM

Snow Leopard guest

VB vs OSX Snow Leopard

[Howto] Create OSX ISO from the OSX Install app

Thank you for the speedy reply.

My first impression theory from reading various threads on the forum is that it may be wiser for me to skip trying to virtualize Snow Leopard. Installing Windows as a guest went very smoothly so I assumed Snow Leopard would as well, but it appears that may not be the case.

I already have Snow Leopard installed in a partition on my main machine, and on a 2nd machine. All I'm going to accomplish by using Virtual Box for Snow Leopard is saving myself booting up those installs.

Should I just be happy with what I've already got and skip all the arcane details and various complex issues discussed in these other threads you've linked to? Is all that really worth it? Am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Thanks again!

This forum ( VirtualBox on Mac OS X Hosts ) is for issues running VirtualBox on a OS X (macOS) host, not installing OS X as a guest, not running OS X as a guest.

1. You have to acquire the Snow Leopard DVD installer. Your comments imply that you have this. Use Disk Utility to create a DVD/CD master, .cdr/.iso, version of the disc. Careful NOT to do just a partition.
2. Create .iso of disc, not a partition on the disc. There are no paying customers running OS X and OS X is not a priority.

The SL disc was created oddly by Apple in that the installation data is not in a single partition.

edited: identified "this forum" and correct ".cdr"

ChipMcK gave you pretty much all the answers, and I will move this to the "OSX guests" from "OSX hosts" as per his suggestion.

I only wanted to address one thing:

Tanny wrote: already have Snow Leopard installed in a partition on my main machine, and on a 2nd machine. All I'm going to accomplish by using Virtual Box for Snow Leopard is saving myself booting up those installs.

Tanny wrote:Should I just be happy with what I've already got and skip all the arcane details and various complex issues discussed in these other threads you've linked to? Is all that really worth it?

Whether it's worth it or not rebooting your computer and having a dual boot situation is entirely up to you and your workflow. However keep in mind that this solution has a time-limit on it as your host(s) get older. Newer Apple systems cannot boot from a 10.6.x hard disk. I just learned this in an unpleasant way...

ChipMcK wrote:You have to acquire the Snow Leopard DVD installer. Your comments imply that you have this. Use Disk Utility to create a .cmr/.iso version of the disc. Careful NOT to do just a partition.
[*]Create .iso of disc, not a partition on the disc. There are no paying customers running OS X and OS X is not a priority.

I don't have an installer, just drives with Snow Leopard installed. But I can get an installer on Amazon. It will come on a USB stick. Unless you say otherwise, I'll assume this works as well as a DVD.

Thank you for informing me that Disk Utility can create the ISO file. That sounds easy enough. Well, almost. For my future reference and the benefit of other readers, here's an article about creating ISO files on various platforms, including MacOS.

https://www.howtogeek.com/228886/how-to ... and-linux/

It looks like Terminal is still involved, but the commands seem pretty simple.

Whether it's worth it or not rebooting your computer and having a dual boot situation is entirely up to you and your workflow.

Basically I'm trying to determine whether setting up Snow Leopard as a guest will go _about_ as smoothly as the Windows guest install, or whether it's more of an iffy, maybe, problem plagued situation with no certain outcome. Some of the linked threads give the impression that VirtualBox and Snow Leopard may not play well together.

I can see I'll have to create my own ISO file, but that seems doable and worth the trouble. I guess I'll do that and and attempt an install and see what happens.

Thanks for the assistance!

For instance, I see this in one of the linked threads...

We're successfully running OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard guests on MacPro hosts (Late 2013) running 10.11.6 El Capitan and using VirtualBox version 5.0.34-113845 with no double cursors. If I upgrade VB to anything above that, we get the double cursors.

I'm currently using VB 5.1.26, running Windows as a guest within MacOS Yosemite host.

So if I want to install Snow Leopard as a guest should I be planning on scrapping my existing VB and starting over from scratch with the earlier VB version 5.0.34?

And if I did that can I confidently expect it will work, or is it still a roll of the dice with unpredictable outcomes?

Tanny wrote: Basically I'm trying to determine whether setting up Snow Leopard as a guest will go _about_ as smoothly as the Windows guest install, or whether it's more of an iffy, maybe, problem plagued situation with no certain outcome. Some of the linked threads give the impression that VirtualBox and Snow Leopard may not play well together.

You did not notice that the users have new machines and are on the 'bleeding edge', sierra and/or high sierra, for the OS versions.
You stated your machine is a 2011 model.

Tanny wrote:So if I want to install Snow Leopard as a guest should I be planning on scrapping my existing VB and starting over from scratch with the earlier VB version 5.0.34?

You do not have to scrap anything. You just uninstall your current version and install 5.0.40 (not .34, you got to keep reading the whole thread). Your current VMs are going to be untouched.

ChipMcK wrote:You did not notice that the users have new machines and are on the 'bleeding edge', sierra and/or high sierra, for the OS versions.

I'm afraid that the OSX version has absolutely nothing to do with running 10.6 as a guest. Having a new processor, does. And you need to modify the VM with the "--cpu-profile" to make it work with newer processors. Which is a one-time change.

So it's the "new machines", not the "Sierra"/"High Sierra" that makes it a tad more convoluted.