VBox VM using EFI on Mac running OCLP

[Nap]

[Macbook Pro Retina 15" mid-2014 (11.3), Ventura 13.3.1, OCLP 0.6.7]

Disclaimer In order to extend the useful life of my Macbook, I decided to make use of OpenCore Legacy Patcher (OCLP). With OCLP, I am able to run Ventura and I'm satisfied with it overall. Having said that, I'm not sure if my Virtual Box issues have anything to do with OCLP but I just wanted to make this disclaimer just in case.

I'm having problems running guest VMs with Virtual Box 7.0.x. None of the machines I used to use with VBox 6.1.22 (when I was running Catalina 10.15.6) run any more under 7.0.x and because I'm worried that I might corrupt these old machines I stopped trying after a few initial fails. After trying VBox 7.0.8 and having problems, I decided to try v7.0.2 and that's what I'm working with now. In each case I have installed the Extension Pack for the VBox version.

When preparing to make this post I figured I should get my ducks lined up. Thus I tried installing Ubuntu 22.04.1-Desktop LTS without EFI and it worked fine. I then tried to install Debian 12 machine using the debian-12.0.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso but it would not work no matter what I tried. I first tried using the unattended install; it crashed almost immediately with EFI but it got to a point where it flashed the blue option screen without EFI but then crashed. I then tried skipping the unattended install and used all default options except I changed the n/w to bridged. With EFI it crashed immediately after starting the VM. When I tried again without EFI, the machine did boot and showed me the install options menu. I gave up trying to install Debian 12 after unsuccessfully trying the Graphical Install and normal Install options. So no Debian for me for now.

Though I've been using Virtual Box on and off for over a decade, the reason for doing all this right now is that I need to be able to demonstrate Home Assistant (HA) running in a VM to my students, and HA is based on Debian and, according to the HA installation instructions, requires EFI.

So, my question is, what could be the issue I'm having with EFI? I have attached the VBox generated logfile of my HA machine's execution from startup with this post. There are a few things in it that I see which could be of interest, but not being across the low level execution details, I don't know which of them is significant.

Any help would be appreciated.

[mpack]

VirtualBox v7.x is known to have problems running under OCLP+Ventura.

To be precise, VirtualBox v7.x needs the Apple Hypervisor to be available to run under Ventura, and the Apple Hypervisor apparantly does not work properly under OCLP.

Executive summary: only official host OS's are tested and supported. An install of Ventura hacked to run with the wrong hardware I'm afraid does not count.

[marcoslaredo]

I was reading at apple Hypervisor docs that it need to have full access to Extended Page Tables and Unrestricted Mode, so I went to my OCLP -> settings -> Security and marked the ALLOW_UNRESTRICTED_DTRACE and ALLOW_UNRESTRICTED_NVRAM options and builded and reinstalled the OCLP.
Now I have VirtualBox 7.0 running well on my "vintage" Mac Mini 2012, running Sonoma 14.1.2

[scottgus1]

Thanks, marcoslaredo, for the information! If this is reproducible, I'm sure a lot of old-Mac-new-OS users will rejoice.