Best setup for 32 bit apps in Catalina

[michelcolman]

Hello,

I just bought a new MacBook Pro that can only run Catalina, but still have a bunch of old 32-bit apps I don't want to lose (office apps and a few games), so I decided to try virtualbox.

I figured older versions of MacOS should work best for this purpose, so I took the oldest I could donwload for free: Mavericks.

I installed the host additions and the guest additions, and they all seemed to be installed fine but don't actually do much, at least not as far as I can tell.

- The screen can only be set to 1024x768
- No 3D acceleration as far as I can tell (sluggish UI, and games complain about not being able to create an OpenGL context) even though the 3D acceleration checkbox has been selected.
- Drag and Drop doesn't work (checkbox selected, but nothing happens when I drag a file from the host Finder onto a guest Finder window)
- Shared folders don't work (doesn't show up on the guest OS, I tried different mount points like "/Users/michel/Shared_folder" or "/Volumes/Shared_folder" to no avail.
- Copy/Paste does work (which at least shows the additions are active)

The only ways I've found of transfering data between host and guest are via networking (host can't connect to guest but guest can connect to host) or via read-only ISO files (host to guest only). I don't really feel comfortable enabling file sharing on the host when I'm on an untrusted network, so other simpler ways of transfering files would be preferable.

Is there something wrong with my guest/host additions, should I try a different guest OS, or is it just normal that the two OSes don't work together well?

I did try Mojave, but guest additions wouldn't even install on that one, which is normal as it's not officially supported. Something in between, perhaps? High Sierra? El Capitan? Which works best?

Thanks for any help you might have,

Michel

[mpack]

The MacOS guest additions are minimal. If you look at the user manual (which you should) you will see that they are not even mentioned, for good reason.

If RTFM is a bit of a stretch, then at least read the relevant sticky in this forum: OSX GAs (VBoxDarwinAdditions.pkg): what is working.

[michelcolman]

OK, I'm new here, but thank you for explaining that, if the manual doesn't mention something, that doesn't mean the manual is out of date but rather that it's a deliberate choice not to write about a feature that has only been implemented in a minimal way and one shouldn't ask questions about it. Should have been obvious, I suppose.

I did see the sticky, but the relevant posts were pretty old (March and older) so I was hoping some things might have been updated in the mean time, or someone might have more recent info or suggestions on the subject. Sorry for asking.

[paulmc]

Hi Michel,

In terms of your first itemised point, I just wanted to add (in case you haven't already come across the relevant info in the VBox Manual) that you can set a macOS guest VM's display dimensions by explicitly specifying an EFI video mode for it via the 'VBoxManage' command-line tool in the host, as currently detailed in the VBox Manual, Chapter 3, § '3.14.1. Video Modes in EFI'. {That method works well to set display dimensions of 1680x1050 for all of my own VBox [Mac] OS X & macOS guest VMs, from Mac OS X 10.6.8 'Snow Leopard' through macOS 10.13.6 'High Sierra', hosted in VBox 6.1.12 on an older Mac Pro 2012 tower (itself running under High Sierra).}

As to the most appropriate guest macOS version (pre-10.15) for 32-bit support, that might depend on personal factors such as whether you prefer an earlier lighter-weight OS versus a later more-secure OS, etc. {However, if audio support is also important to you, note that many of us are unable to obtain audio output in High Sierra & later guests, at least with the standard configurations (further details & tentative workarounds are available in various other threads in this forum).}

Kind regards,
—Paul