Lion as VB guest on Mac hardware?

[Sasquatch]

Which setting am I missing? The processor on this MacBook is 64-bit, the kernel will not run in 64-bit...

Since Lion is 64 bit, you're missing the 64 bit capabilities. You didn't select 64 bit as Mac or made the necessary VM settings to allow 64 bit to be exposed to the VM. See the User Manual.

[mdurisseau]

64bit as Mac?

Which setting am I missing? The processor on this MacBook is 64-bit, the kernel will not run in 64-bit...

Since Lion is 64 bit, you're missing the 64 bit capabilities. You didn't select 64 bit as Mac or made the necessary VM settings to allow 64 bit to be exposed to the VM. See the User Manual.

[Sasquatch]

By default, yes. Check the hardware requirements for Lion. AFAIK, only systems that have a 64 bit CPU are qualified for Lion.

[mdurisseau]

Doesn't make total sense...if I didn't have a 64-bit system, Lion would not install natively, no? But it does install natively...Vbox won't run it right now, that's all, and I have the newest (4.1) version. I have a Macbook 4,1 version.

[Sasquatch]

Maybe it checks the CPU and adjusts accordingly to 64 bit mode. Who knows. All I know is that Lion is not supported as Guest atm. It's not a high prio thing, since none of the paying customers asked for it.

[mdurisseau]

Paying customers?

[stefan.becker]

Have you not realized that you can use VBOX in companies and get support from sun/oracle?

Without paying customers you are missing many products on the market.

[Sasquatch]

Paying customers?

Yes, paying customers, like companies. Without them, we wouldn't have VB.

[mdurisseau]

Sorry, I did not realize that...

[neffs]

I just had a look at the issue.

It seems that Lion is verifying the board product name in the smbios/dmi tables. Virtualbox currently does not set this (does not matter if run on a real mac or not).
I had some success by creating a small patch for that and got past "This version of Mac OS X is not supported on this platform" but ran into another issue.

Lion now depends on variables in nvram which it sets during the installation process. (at least install-product-url)
Virtualbox doesn't have a persistent nvram implementation so these variables are cleared after reboot and the installation fails.

-> Not trivial to fix

[vii]

As the Apple Lion license allows to virtualize Lion and Lion Server, I'd appreciate very much to see at least basic support for Lion guests. (http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9388)

I fail with the message "This version of Mac OS X is not supported on this platform! Reason: ".

Thanks!

[Sasquatch]

That's because Lion performs some additional checks like DMI information and sets some BIOS value or something that doesn't work with VB. Like I said, it's not a high priority to make it work. OSX support is a community request.

[djtomr941]

That post is old.

It's now allowed. See below, this is for OSX, not just OSX Server.

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx107.pdf

Top of the 2nd page or section B. iii.

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within
virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already
running the Apple Software

OSX Server is here.

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/ ... ver107.pdf

I can get my dmg to boot into Vbox (converted to an ISO first) but the EFI loader does not recognize the hardware code as a valid one (i.e. does not recognize it as Apple hardware). Would be nice if Vbox picked up the Apple hardware code and passed it through to the VM.

[Sasquatch]

Which is exactly what I just explained . Thanks for reaffirming that.

[thomasafine]

I just had a look at the issue.

It seems that Lion is verifying the board product name in the smbios/dmi tables. Virtualbox currently does not set this (does not matter if run on a real mac or not).
I had some success by creating a small patch for that and got past "This version of Mac OS X is not supported on this platform" but ran into another issue.

Lion now depends on variables in nvram which it sets during the installation process. (at least install-product-url)
Virtualbox doesn't have a persistent nvram implementation so these variables are cleared after reboot and the installation fails.

-> Not trivial to fix

But you're so close. Are you sure it isn't trivial? Do you actually have to implement persistent nvram? Or can you just hardcode install-product-url in the existing NVRAM implementation? It's value should look like this:
x-osproduct://AAAABBBB-CCCC-DDDD-EEEE-FFFF00001111/Mac%20OS%20X%20Install%20Data
where the AAAABBBB stuff is the Volume UID.

And does this install-product-url need to always be there, or only during the install process? i.e. maybe there's a different way to bootstrap it?

tom