macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Discussions about using Mac OS X guests (on Apple hardware) in VirtualBox.
Post Reply
SchroedersKater
Posts: 23
Joined: 15. Mar 2019, 18:14

macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by SchroedersKater »

VBox.log.zip
(31.09 KiB) Downloaded 87 times
Hi all,

I transfered a macOS Mojave 10.14.3 VM from Parallels 13 to VirtualBox. VB is the latest version 6.0.4 running on an iMac with the same OS.

When I boot the EFI loads an show the message "Press esc in 5 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue". There is also a short message appearing that says something like "Boot error" or similar. But that's too short to recognise. I can type exit to enter the BIOS, but I have no idea what to do. Does someone have an idea? BTW, I transferred a Windows 10 VM from Parallels 13 the same way and it's working fine. Trying to install a new Mojave VM results in the same state.

I attach the log file for those who can read it ;-)

Thank you very much!
Thomas
andyp73
Volunteer
Posts: 1631
Joined: 25. May 2010, 23:48
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Assorted Linux, Windows Server 2012, DOS, Windows 10, BIOS/UEFI emulation

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by andyp73 »

My guess would be that the .hdd virtual disk image from Parallels uses the APFS file system which the UEFI implementation in VirtualBox can't currently boot from. Booting High Sierra would work if you didn't set the virtual disk image type as SSD as that would still use HFS+ but that is no longer true with Mojave.

-Andy.
My crystal ball is currently broken. If you want assistance you are going to have to give me all of the necessary information.
Please don't ask me to do your homework for you, I have more than enough of my own things to do.
SchroedersKater
Posts: 23
Joined: 15. Mar 2019, 18:14

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by SchroedersKater »

Thanks Andy,

No, it's definitely not APFS.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by socratis »

SchroedersKater wrote:No, it's definitely not APFS.
Yes, it's definitely APFS. And we're both talking about the filesystem of the guest, not the host, right? 10.14 will not install on anything else, no matter what I've tried...

VirtualBox doesn't support 10.14.x yet.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
SchroedersKater
Posts: 23
Joined: 15. Mar 2019, 18:14

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by SchroedersKater »

Well it's not, because I changed it to HFS+ under Parallels.

Anyway, I found this (not working very well) solution:

1. Installed Mojave as described here.
2. Cloned this machine.
3. Replaced the HD with the HD from Parallels.
4. Run the installer from the ISO again.

It takes a while, but I finally got a running system. But this is almost unusable.
- Mouse pointer stucks very often and never moves continuously.
- The guest is pretty slow, even on my iMac with 4 cores, 24 GB RAM and 3.1 GHz.
- It also is not very reliable. After sleeping my iMac or MacBook Pro the VM most of the time does not respond to any mouse or keyboard input.
- Saving the VM state and restarting leads to the same result.
I think I'll stay with Parallels because it's running without any problems, fast and reliable. Even if it costs on 2 machines.

Let me know if you need more information.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by socratis »

SchroedersKater wrote:1. Installed Mojave as described here.
You're using Clover, not the VirtualBox EFI bootloader. You can, but it's not supported. You're on your own...
SchroedersKater wrote:Well it's not, because I changed it to HFS+ under Parallels.
I'm not quite familiar with the process. Does Parallels offer a tool to convert an APFS drive to HFS+?
  1. Why?
  2. What does that do to the OSX installed system...
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
SchroedersKater
Posts: 23
Joined: 15. Mar 2019, 18:14

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by SchroedersKater »

1. Because zeroing empty space does not work very well with APFS.

2. No. I used SuperDuper to backup the disk and restored it onto a HFS+ formatted disk. This works very well with CCC, too. BTW, this procedure works with VM as well.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by socratis »

SchroedersKater wrote:1. Because zeroing empty space does not work very well with APFS.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. APFS is quite new and complete feature support by anyone other than Apple, is expected to be at its infancy. ;)
SchroedersKater wrote:and restored it onto a HFS+ formatted disk
That worked? OSX didn't complain? Didn't care? At all??? :shock:
SchroedersKater wrote:BTW, this procedure works with VM as well.
I assume that you mean you went with the CloverEFI and then restored a 10.14 with APFS onto a VDI formatted as HFS. I wonder what would happen if you could replace the CloverEFI then with the VirtualBox one after that...
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
SchroedersKater
Posts: 23
Joined: 15. Mar 2019, 18:14

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by SchroedersKater »

I wonder what would happen if you could replace the CloverEFI then with the VirtualBox one after that...
I can try if you are interested, but I don't know how to do it the easiest way. I removed the Clover ISO from the CD drive after finishing all my experiments and it's still working. I did this only for the HFS+ system. Concluding I assume it's working with the VB EFI, but don't know how to find out. On the APFS system it only seems to work if I put the Clover stuff once the HD.

HTH
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by socratis »

SchroedersKater wrote:I removed the Clover ISO from the CD drive after finishing all my experiments and it's still working
That should be enough I think. It merely shows once again that it's not the 10.14 part, it's the APFS part in the VirtualBox EFI that's not working for Mojave.
SchroedersKater wrote:Concluding I assume it's working with the VB EFI, but don't know how to find out
Compare the two VBox.logs, I believe it should be easy to detect. If you want, you can upload a complete run from the VM while booting with the Clover one, and one without. ZIPPED please... ;)
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
SchroedersKater
Posts: 23
Joined: 15. Mar 2019, 18:14

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by SchroedersKater »

Here are the two logs. I'm excited to see your analysis.
Attachments
Archiv.zip
(66.12 KiB) Downloaded 43 times
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: macOS Mojave 10.14.3 does not boot

Post by socratis »

Thank you for the logs! There's nothing exciting really, just a side-by-side comparison of the two logs. The trick is to finding a good text editor to do that. I use TextWrangler (discontinued) and not even the latest version 5.5.2, but the 4.5.12 one. It really helps to isolate the differences visually much better... ;)

Besides the fact that in the APFS one you had a DVD, the interesting part comes in the EFI boot. Both of them use the VirtualBox EFI actually, which makes sense if you think about it. But when the "where do I boot from" time comes in, here's where it gets interesting...

The boot order is different, since the APFS has to boot from the DVD, that's expected. But what I haven't seen before is what Clover does:
00:00:03.741173 EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 '.efi' 0xdbd58000 LB 0x55e0
00:00:03.741518 EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 '.efi' 0xdbd56000 LB 0x1c40
00:00:03.741831 EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 '.efi' 0xdad93000 LB 0x1180
00:00:03.742286 EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 '.efi' 0xdad8b000 LB 0x7380
00:00:03.743808 EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 'apfs.efi.m.efi' 0xdacf8000 LB 0x927e0
00:00:03.874425 EFI: Adding variable 7c436110-ab2a-4bbb-a880-fe41995c9f82::'fakesmc-key-#KEY-ui32' fAttrib=0x7 cbValue=0x4
00:00:03.875102 EFI: Adding variable 7c436110-ab2a-4bbb-a880-fe41995c9f82::'fakesmc-key-$Adr-ui32' fAttrib=0x7 cbValue=0x4
00:00:03.875698 EFI: Adding variable 7c436110-ab2a-4bbb-a880-fe41995c9f82::'fakesmc-key-$Num-ui8' fAttrib=0x7 cbValue=0x1
00:00:03.876313 EFI: Adding variable 7c436110-ab2a-4bbb-a880-fe41995c9f82::'fakesmc-key-RMde-char' fAttrib=0x7 cbValue=0x1
The two key things that I see in there are:
  1. CloverEFI jumps from reading the base EFI loader, to their reverse-engineered APFS reader.
  2. CloverEFI inserts the FakeSMC keys required to emulate a Mac.
Impressive! 8)
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
Post Reply