Stuck creating MacOS 10.13 VM

[SueF]

I loaded the ISO, and now have a screen's worth of commands that ends in
Start RandomSeed
End RandomSeed
and nothing else happens. VirtualBox does not appear to like me very much.

[granada29]

Well, you're making progress

In your VM settings you should adjust some of the defaults

1. RAM - 4GB minimum - more if you have it free
2. CPU - at least 2 but 1 less than the number of physical CPU's in your machine - e.g. on my iMac I configure 3 CPUs
3. VideoRAM - set to max 128M
4. USB - choose USB 3 (xhci). You will need to install the VirtualBox Extensions if you haven't done so already.

[SueF]

OK I removed the VM I had built because that is the only way I could find to change some of the settings.

I had already set the RAM at 4GB (now changed to 6GB).
I did not have CPUs set but now have set to 3.
I set the VideoRAM to max.
I had already set USB3. Virtual Extensions were installed at the beginning.

Started it again and it is stuck at the same place.

[paulmc]

Hmm again, from a quick search on 'RandomSeed' in this Mac OS X Guests forum, there's one other person who ran into this issue. However, from the attached log, that was an unsuppported case of trying to run a High Sierra guest on an Arch Linux / AMD PC host, and so not relevant here.

OTOH, over in the Mac OS X Hosts forum, from another similar quick search, there's one seemingly relevant matching thread: 'Mojave Guest boot hangs early (Catalina host, VirtualBox 6.1.4)', involving a Mojave guest on a 2020 MacBook Air host. The workaround found there was to set the VM's template to the generic 'Mac OS X (64-bit)' one {in its Settings > General > Basic > 'Version: ' menu}.

According to information gleaned in this forum, among other things apparently this generic template does not pass through your host's CPU to the guest but rather internally sets an older CPU. So, this could be another instance of Apple's longstanding issue with running older macOS versions, even in guest VMs, on host Macs with newer CPUs that don't support those OSs, since your CPU is usually passed through as-is to guest VMs.

Another more technical way to accomplish the same thing would be to retain the better 'macOS 10.13 High Sierra (64-bit)' template, but then run a VBoxManage command in Terminal to modify your CPU profile, e.g., as per a recent thread in this forum: '[RESOLVED] Meditation Guru error from Yosemite ISO boot'. You might need to experiment with different CPU profiles to find one that works for your setup.

Hopefully this workaround will be successful for you.

[SueF]

Progress report:

I tried the Terminal command VBoxManage modifyvm “HighSierra” --cpu-profile "Intel Core i7-5600U" and got
VBoxManage: error: Could not find a registered machine named '“HighSierra”'

So I changed the template to the generic Mac OS X. That got it to start!

The Install macOS High Sierra process got to the point where it says "Select the disk where you want to install macOS" with the Install arrow button. But no choose list comes up, it just sits there. It seems like it doesn't see a disk to install it on. I looked in Settings -> Storage and the VDI virtual size is 400GB with dynamic allocation.

This whole process reminds me of my college days back in the early 80s, when I had a job doing the statistical analysis of a drug study. I had to run it on a mainframe using C. I would write a bunch of code and submit to the Mainframe God, it would run for a mess of lines and then kick back an error at line 1280 or something and I'd have to debug. It was exhilarating when I could make progress of hundreds of lines at a time! Problem is, that knowledge base is long gone and I have no clue what I am doing now. But I am very grateful for all of you helping this old rookie out!

[paulmc]

Okay, the finish line is somewhere in sight now …

Regarding the error with the VBoxManage command (I assume on your Catalina iMac host), double check that the supplied VM name (the "HighSierra" in your example) is indeed the actual case-sensitive name of your created guest VM, including any spaces or other special chars {the quotation marks are there to protect any such chars from misinterpretation by the shell}.

As to the apparent issue in the guest VM of no disk showing up to install on, that's due to the OS Installer expecting to see a target disk that's at least formatted, not completely blank; the solution is covered in Step 3 (from that originally-mentioned thread).

As of now, there are just Steps 3, 4 (first part) & 9 remaining. I'll just paste the gist of them inline here for you {I've taken the liberty of adjusting the original wording of former moderator socratis, for hopefully more clarity in some parts, etc.}:

• {Step "0" (Creating the OS Installer ISO) and Steps 1 & 2 (Creating the blank VM, and attaching the ISO & starting the VM) are already completed.}
• {Step 3:} After selecting the language, open 'Disk Utility' (DU) from the main "actions" window (or if you'd already selected 'Install macOS' and are at the disk-selection stage, choose DU via the 'Utilities' menu). In DU, you should see your blank virtual hard-disk device ('VBOX HARDDISK Medium' or similar) in the list of devices/partitions at left {otherwise, click the toolbar's 'View' drop-down button-menu at top-left (or click the 'View' menu), and choose 'Show All Devices'}. Select that virtual hard-disk device and then click the toolbar's 'Erase' button (or choose 'Erase…' from the 'Edit' menu). Leave the defaults {e.g., Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format and GUID partition-scheme}, except maybe the name, choose anything you like. Quit DU once done.
• {Step 4 (first part):} Select 'Install macOS' (or if you'd run DU from the disk-selection stage then you'd already be right back where you were), and then select your now-formatted virtual disk. Continue and agree to the license. This will start a phase where the actual installer is copied to "somewhere" that Apple decides (e.g., a special folder named 'macOS Install Data' in the main partition) on the hard disk that you selected. That part is rather quick, lasting less than a couple of minutes on an SSD drive. After that your VM reboots, to do the bulk of the installation.
• {Just skip Steps 5 - 8.}
• {Step 9:} That second part of the installation is where 10.13 actually gets installed. This is going to take substantially more time, about 20-30 min with the VM consuming every available CPU cycle. The VM will reboot a couple of times but you should be all set.

Again, best of luck!

[BTW, I can empathise with your feelings here, as I too did lots of programming on both mainframes & desktops in college during the mid-to-late 80s, in various languages including PL/I, Pascal and C. The many cyclical iterations of designing, coding & debugging did tend to grudgingly become second nature.

With this VM setup process though, as with most things once you get the first one under your belt, creating any future ones should be much easier. E.g., if audio (even for alert beeps, etc.) is important to you, I should mention that many of us never got sound to work in our High Sierra guests; in that case, you could create another VM with macOS 10.12 'Sierra' or earlier (the audio in those is still not great, and might get glitchy or drop out altogether, but at least it's something).]

[SueF]

Well I feel stupid for not going back to look at that original list but . . . I have High Sierra running on the VM now! Yay!

Couple questions, I tried the user manual but that is mostly over my head . . .
1) Somehow the full menu bar in VirtualBox is no longer there. The only menu choice I have now is Machine. How do I get the rest of the menus back?

2) Before I lost that menu I found a window size modifier so I put it at the max (300%) but that understandably lowered the resolution. How do I make the VM window bigger without losing resolution?

[granada29]

1) Somehow the full menu bar in VirtualBox is no longer there. The only menu choice I have now is Machine. How do I get the rest of the menus back?

2) Before I lost that menu I found a window size modifier so I put it at the max (300%) but that understandably lowered the resolution. How do I make the VM window bigger without losing resolution?

1. This happened to me one time as well. Solution is to open the VM Settings while the VM is shutdown and select the 'User Interface' tab. Then highlight (select) the menubar items you wish to see when your VM is running. It's a non-intuitive interface, but seems to do the job.

2. To increase the VM display size, you need to issue a command from the Terminal while the VM is shutdown. It's fully explained on the user manual at https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#efividmode

e.g. for my High Sierra VM I used
VBoxManage setextradata "High Sierra" VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution 1920x1080

[paulmc]

Ah, sweet success.

Whew! Okay, just to add to what @granada29 said:

Unfortunately, dynamic display resizing isn't yet available for Mac guest VMs via the usual VBox Guest Additions (GAs) mechanism; hence the need to set a specific EFI video mode.

Recently though, some limited GAs providing a few other non–display-related extended features were introduced for Mac guests. There's no mention of these Mac GAs yet in the VBox User Manual, Chapter 4. Guest Additions, but they're discussed in this forum's sticky thread 'OSX GAs (VBoxDarwinAdditions.pkg): what is working.'.

Even though the Mac GAs don't yet provide many of the typical extended features {i.e., graphics acceleration, dynamic display resizing, host/guest Drag'n'Drop, Shared Folders, etc.}, they do implement the very useful Shared Clipboard (host/guest copy & paste) in the desired direction(s), which must also be activated via the VM's Settings > General > Advanced => 'Shared Clipboard:' pop-up menu.

Also, instead of VBox Shared Folders it's quite easy to set up regular Mac File Sharing on the host or guest {depending on the type(s) of any virtual Network adapter(s) configured in the VM's Settings}, or to use VBox's new File Manager (FM) interface since the Mac GAs do also implement Guest Control {on which FM depends}.

Anyway, a multi-platform GAs Install disc is included in your VBox host installation, and can be mounted from within any running guest VM by choosing 'Insert Guest Additions CD Image…' from the 'Devices' menu. In a Mac guest, the mounted disc's window might need to be manually opened. Then, you'd double-click the installer-package file 'VBoxDarwinAdditions.pkg' {i.e., not the similarly appearing 'VBoxSolarisAdditions.pkg' meant for Solaris guests}, and click your way through the Mac's standard Installer steps.

[Oh, and just a reminder to be cautious about applying either of the recent potentially-problematic Security Updates 2020-005 or 2020-006 for High Sierra, from within your running guest VM. Make sure to always have current backups of your VMs' associated config/data folders {usually in '<your home ƒ>/VirtualBox VMs/'}, via any suitable means. Not everyone may encounter issues with these particular updates, but as mentioned earlier if needed a workaround is described in the recent thread 'macOS 10.13.6 'High Sierra' guest VM versus Security Update 2020-005'. Oh well, there probably won't be any more Security Updates released for High Sierra now that it's more than two versions behind the current macOS.]

[SueF]

1) Somehow the full menu bar in VirtualBox is no longer there. The only menu choice I have now is Machine. How do I get the rest of the menus back?

2) Before I lost that menu I found a window size modifier so I put it at the max (300%) but that understandably lowered the resolution. How do I make the VM window bigger without losing resolution?

1. This happened to me one time as well. Solution is to open the VM Settings while the VM is shutdown and select the 'User Interface' tab. Then highlight (select) the menubar items you wish to see when your VM is running. It's a non-intuitive interface, but seems to do the job.

2. To increase the VM display size, you need to issue a command from the Terminal while the VM is shutdown. It's fully explained on the user manual at https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#efividmode

e.g. for my High Sierra VM I used
VBoxManage setextradata "High Sierra" VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution 1920x1080

I don't see a 'User Interface' anywhere. Where do I find that?

Also, whenever I try to issue a Terminal command, I get an error message. For example:

VBoxManage setextradata “High Sierra” VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution 1920x1080
gets
VBoxManage: error: Could not find a registered machine named '“High'
VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001), component VirtualBoxWrap, interface IVirtualBox, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "FindMachine(Bstr(a->argv[0]).raw(), machine.asOutParam())" at line 935 of file VBoxManageMisc.cpp

The name of the VM is exactly High Sierra - it's not an incorrect name but somehow it's seeing it as one.

[granada29]

I don't see a 'User Interface' anywhere. Where do I find that?

Also, whenever I try to issue a Terminal command, I get an error message. For example:

VBoxManage setextradata “High Sierra” VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution 1920x1080
gets
VBoxManage: error: Could not find a registered machine named '“High'

Hmmmm - that's odd. When I open the settings for any of my VMs I see an item at the right hand end of the Toolbar labeled 'User Interface'. I am not sure why it's not there for you.

I think the quotes around "High Sierra" have been munged to one of the other weird character sets that software likes to use. Try pasting the command again, then back up and overwrite the quotation marks with the quote key on your keyboard.

[SueF]

OK, thank you for the head-smack, I found the User Interface on the toolbar.
And fixing the quotes also worked. Lesson learned on the punctuation oddities in Terminal.

Things are starting to come together now. I have the resolution and scaling set thanks to your help, and have learned how to transfer files thanks to @paulmc. I now need to learn how to set up my printers and the wifi network with the VM, which I hope to do with the help of the manual and appropriate topics on the user forums.

Thank you!!!!