Booting Ubuntu 18.04 or 16.04 fails on Mac OS 10.7.5

[mshoestrng]

Hi,

we have an old iMac (2006) which no longer receives MacOS updates and also many common apps (firefox, dropbox etc.) can't be upgraded or don't work at all any more.

To be able to continue using the iMac, I installed Virtualbox 4.3.40 (latest compatible version) and now tried to install Ubuntu 18.04.2 as a guest. However, the startup process aborts after a few seconds with a critical error. Afterwards I tried booting Ubuntu 16.04.6 which also failed with which I believe is the same critical error.

This might be related to: search for topic "Ubuntu 17.10 dead in VB after todays update (#17436)" in this forum as I'm not allowed to post links.

However, my question is how I can install some compatible version of Virtualbox on our Mac OS 10.7.5 and then install some compatible version of Ubuntu as a guest and which versions this would be.

If you have any advice or hints how I can solve the above issue and successfully install Ubuntu it would be much appreciated.

Please find logs attached.

Thanks!

[mshoestrng]

Hi,

I would like to install Virtualbox on my old IMac (late 2006), which runs Mac OS 10.7.5 (Lion) as the latest supported Mac OS version. The latest officially supported Virtualbox version is 4.3 which I did manage to install.

However, I would now like to install a current Ubuntu/Lubuntu (18.04 LTS) as a guest. But when I boot the Ubuntu image it always fails with a critical error which seems to be related to #17436 which seems to have been fixed only in 5.1.x.

My question: is there any way I can get the current Ubuntu/Lubuntu ISOs to work in Virtualbox on my Mac OS 10.7.5 host? Or would it maybe be possible to release an update for Virtualbox 4.3 which includes the fix from #17436?

Your help is much appreciated!

[socratis]

I merged your two threads, one from "Linux Guests" and one from "OSX Hosts". According to the forum rules, duplicate posts are not allowed.

would it maybe be possible to release an update for Virtualbox 4.3 which includes the fix from #17436?

Now, before we begin; 4.3.x is unsupported, which means if it works, fine. If it doesn't work, nobody is going to provide a fix. There's not going to be an official release for the 4.3.x series. Or the 5.0.x or the 5.1.x. That's what unsupported means.

Have you tried anything more than 4.3.x? Let's say 5.x.x, or even 6.0.x? Actually you might want to forget the last one, that's too far. Because I have a 10.9.5 MBP next to me which is only supposed to run up to 5.1.x, and let me tell you that it runs fine everything after that (5.2.x, 6.0.x), including the daily/weekly development builds. Not supported doesn't mean not working; as I said if it breaks, they won't try to fix it. But they won't try to purposely break it either.

So, give it a shot with the 5.x.x series. I'd start with 5.2.32 and see if there's an error. If not, you're a happy customer...