M1/M2 install not working

[multiOS]

Klaus,

Thanks for that information. Gives me a useful start point for continuing x86 VM testing. Is there any point in attempting native (Linux) ARM VM installations yet?

[klaus]

Of course there's a point testing native Linux/ARM VMs... should work quite nicely. Of course not all Linux/ARM kernels are built in a way which has a chance of running with the parameters defined by Apple, but we're doing unattended installs of Debian 11 (dunno why not 12, maybe we started just a bit too early) and Oracle Linux 9 in the AArch64 incarnations.

[granada29]

I can report some success with the current development snapshot on an M1 running Sonoma 14.5(beta).

1. Linux-x86_64. I copied a working VM from my intel Mac to an M1. I modified the network adaptor to suit the M1 but no other changes. The VM booted but would not load the graphical login screen. I was able to ssh into it and verified that it was mostly working. I noticed that CPU utilization was quite high compared to the intel platform, but not unexpected because of the emulation.

2. Linux-arm64 (debian) - I did a clean install into a new VM and all is working well. My initial attempt was to try the unattended installation - this hung during the installation but surprisingly was still still usable after a forced reboot (power-off). I scrubbed that VM and did a complete installation into a new VM, skipping 'unattended' and installing a KDE Plasma desktop. Everything installed and I was able to login and run a web-browser.

3. Windows-10-x86_64 - again I copied an existing VM to the machine but I lost patience while waiting for it to boot.

Overall I am really impressed and look forward to trying newer versions when they become available.

[multiOS]

@granada29,

I think I am mirroring your findings:

Managed to set up an M2 Max with the most recent VBox Development Build currently available (VirtualBox-7.0.97-162578-macOSArm64 04 April 2024)

Some advances are apparent with Windows x86 emulation, but , for me, acceptable performance still halts with Windows XP (32-bit) running "office type" applications. I did manage to get the past the Windows 7 (x64) and Windows 10 (x64) Login Screens (eventually, whilst making and drinking several cups of coffee during rest periods!) but it wasn't possible to do anything other than shutdown the VMs, although they did seem to be running, just very, very slowly, so I would say there has been definite progress but usability is still some way off. All of my Windows tests so far have been limited to the use of VMs originally installed (and activated) on Intel systems, so I haven't tested any new Windows (x86 or ARM) installations on an 'M' system yet.

I've also tested two existing Linux VMs (64-bit), i.e. Linux Mint (Debian Edition) and MX Linux. Mint managed to get past the log in screen after a lengthy wait, but Desktop not very responsive although I did eventually manage to launch LibreOffice Writer and Calc. MX Linux 'seemed' to halt on a black screen without ever getting to its login screen, but the VBox log didn't show any obvious problems, so I suspect it was still working, just grindingly slow. After a bit of research (on 'another' virtualisation software User Forum) and a quick review of which distributions have ARM versions available which are compatible with Macs, I have downloaded the Debian 12.5 ISO, which I know has been tested and works on other virtualisation software options, and I will (hopefully) test installation on VirtualBox sometime this weekend and see how far I get.

[klaus]

Hope no one expects 3D to work Thanks for confirming that x86-on-arm is improving (in some benchmark it's half as hopelessly slow as it was some months ago ).

[IRM_7]

Good afternoon, I have tried with a centos7 and centos 8 and is as you say it takes a long time to boot but finally starts, thank you very much is a breakthrough before not even worked now we are seeing the light, a question this will go to more and will work better every day ????
And another thing I want to comment there are problems with network interfaces and the cpu puts it almost always at 100% and goes slow you can not interact with the centos or applications, any advice?

in advance thank you very much for the work

[klaus]

It would be unrealistic to promise literally daily improvements, but we have people working on this continuously. Some improvements every week or two are more realistic.

The completely busy CPU is highlighting that there is still a way to go. It indicates that the timer interrupt delivery is chewing up a lot of CPU time still...

Could you go for ARM based variants of CentOS? Both CentOS 7 and 8 are available in AArch64 variants...

[IRM_7]

Good night,
I need centos 7, centos 8.5 and redhat 8.5 of x64 architecture for small projects that I have and I have not migrated to other architectures so I will be waiting and also we will give you feedback if you want I'm doing a report as I work in testing and we all could use a lot of information especially linux operating systems.

Anyway thank you very much for the work you do.

[IRM_7]

Alguna novedad!!!!

[111andre111]

Thanks a lot for these efforts, Klaus.
I just like to confirm some of these ongoing efforts:

Edit: The developer snapshots are the only thing worth looking at.

From that I tried to look at these release: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbui ... _snapshots
I can confirm your comment that for me on an Silicon Macbook it's working at the moment with VirtualBox-7.0.97-163779-macOSArm64.dmg. It's a pity that historical earlier Developer releases somehow I can't download any more.

Like I said the release 7.0.97-163779 offers for me both ARM and Intel Architectures if I execute

VBoxManage list ostypes

So now I tried to install the most recent developer release VirtualBox-7.1.0_BETA1-164292-macOSArm64.dmg which is the logical continuation of 7.0.97-163779 and the Intel + ARM architectures are gone. I still only see now ARM architecture.
However in one of the Beta posts I found it can be enabled with this command:

VBoxManage setextradata global "VBoxInternal2/EnableX86OnArm" 1

The functionality is back then back to run Intel based Processor VMs on a Silicon based Mac and working even without any restarts.

Edit: Windows 10/11 (the x86/x64 versions!) work well if you have a enough patience

ALL virtual machines that I had running on my former Intel machine are running on my Silicon Mac. So far so good. And the performance is not really so bad that I could not work on the machine. For labs it's far enough from a performance perspective.

Edit: Recent Linux installs also should be working quite well.

Confirming that as well. Both work, Intel Linux OSes as well as ARM Linux OSes. Great!

Edit: no one expects 3D to work

I tried and yes it seems 3D doesn't work.


Thanks a lot.

[multiOS]

@111andre111

See The VirtualBox 7.1.0 BETA release announcement and discussions threads viewforum.php?f=15

[111andre111]

Thanks a lot, I will post the specific experience there about 3d.