kernel panics: OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on Apple hardware

[paulbeard]

I have read all the dire warnings about OS X licensing and installing as a guest but I don't think those apply in this case.

What I have is a Snow Leopard installation running on Apple hardware, installed from my own retail DVD onto an external drive, and then written to a dvi file. I'm not installing it in the VBox environment, I'm looking to use a virtualized instance of a working, licensed installation. I have had varying degrees of success getting to a boot screen but never have gotten it to boot. I decided to start over with a clean slate as there seem to be so many conflicting or misdirected threads on this, with far too many of them working in legally questionable territory.

Here is how I eventually ended up capturing it to a vdi:

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dd if=/dev/disk1s2 | VBoxManage convertfromraw stdin SL.vdi 30005821440 --format VDI
Converting from raw image file="stdin" to file="SL.vdi"

This takes just the Snow Leopard partition from a gpt-managed disk, so if the VBox management interface is looking for a boot record, that may be where the problem is. I was getting the "No bootable medium present" error but now I am getting a kernel panic that seems to be triggered by choosing ICH9 vs PIIX3 as the chipset. ICH9 gives a panic, PIIX3 fails to read the boot media. Obviously, using ICH9 accesses the disk image but chokes on it somewhere.

Screen shot of the kernel panic

Screen Shot 2013-06-13 at 2.46.55 PM.PNG (54.07 KiB) Viewed 4064 times

I am going to make a .vmdk file of this later (it locks the vdi file, making it unusable, in addition to taking a long time, so I have scheduled it for a time when I not need the vdi file) and try that. Update: it doesn't work either.

I'm pretty confident of the legality and technical possibility of this. After all, it's no different from partitioning the drive and running Snow Leopard there or running it from an external drive. If those are legal uses of a purchased retail product, then the only obstacles are technical. So I'd like to focus on those, rather than wrangle over legal issues.

I have made as few changes as possible, relying on the VBox UI. Here's what VBoxManage showvminfo "SnowLeopard" displays:

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Name:            SnowLeopard
Groups:          /
Guest OS:        Mac OS X (64 bit)
UUID:            1613d391-dab8-4ed1-aa78-74df76a908fc
Config file:     /Users/paul/VirtualBox VMs/SnowLeopard/SnowLeopard.vbox
Snapshot folder: /Users/paul/VirtualBox VMs/SnowLeopard/Snapshots
Log folder:      /Users/paul/VirtualBox VMs/SnowLeopard/Logs
Hardware UUID:   1613d391-dab8-4ed1-aa78-74df76a908fc
Memory size:     2048MB
Page Fusion:     off
VRAM size:       5MB
CPU exec cap:    100%
HPET:            on
Chipset:         ich9
Firmware:        EFI
Number of CPUs:  2
Synthetic Cpu:   off
CPUID overrides: None
Boot menu mode:  message and menu
Boot Device (1): HardDisk
Boot Device (2): DVD
Boot Device (3): Not Assigned
Boot Device (4): Not Assigned
ACPI:            on
IOAPIC:          on
PAE:             on
Time offset:     0ms
RTC:             local time
Hardw. virt.ext: on
Hardw. virt.ext exclusive: off
Nested Paging:   on
Large Pages:     on
VT-x VPID:       on
State:           powered off (since 2013-06-13T17:37:39.707000000)
Monitor count:   1
3D Acceleration: off
2D Video Acceleration: off
Teleporter Enabled: off
Teleporter Port: 0
Teleporter Address: 
Teleporter Password: 
Tracing Enabled: off
Allow Tracing to Access VM: off
Tracing Configuration: 
Autostart Enabled: off
Autostart Delay: 0
Storage Controller Name (0):            IDE
Storage Controller Type (0):            ICH6
Storage Controller Instance Number (0): 0
Storage Controller Max Port Count (0):  2
Storage Controller Port Count (0):      2
Storage Controller Bootable (0):        on
Storage Controller Name (1):            SATA
Storage Controller Type (1):            IntelAhci
Storage Controller Instance Number (1): 0
Storage Controller Max Port Count (1):  30
Storage Controller Port Count (1):      1
Storage Controller Bootable (1):        on
IDE (1, 0): Empty
SATA (0, 0): /Users/paul/VirtualBox VMs/SnowLeopard/SL.vdi (UUID: 5c52fa07-cfa1-4f63-9e5c-3c42e1a3aeb5)
NIC 1:           MAC: 08002732C6E6, Attachment: NAT, Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: 82543GC, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Promisc Policy: deny, Bandwidth group: none
NIC 1 Settings:  MTU: 0, Socket (send: 64, receive: 64), TCP Window (send:64, receive: 64)
NIC 2:           disabled
NIC 3:           disabled
NIC 4:           disabled
NIC 5:           disabled
NIC 6:           disabled
NIC 7:           disabled
NIC 8:           disabled
NIC 9:           disabled
NIC 10:           disabled
NIC 11:           disabled
NIC 12:           disabled
NIC 13:           disabled
NIC 14:           disabled
NIC 15:           disabled
NIC 16:           disabled
NIC 17:           disabled
NIC 18:           disabled
NIC 19:           disabled
NIC 20:           disabled
NIC 21:           disabled
NIC 22:           disabled
NIC 23:           disabled
NIC 24:           disabled
NIC 25:           disabled
NIC 26:           disabled
NIC 27:           disabled
NIC 28:           disabled
NIC 29:           disabled
NIC 30:           disabled
NIC 31:           disabled
NIC 32:           disabled
NIC 33:           disabled
NIC 34:           disabled
NIC 35:           disabled
NIC 36:           disabled
Pointing Device: USB Tablet
Keyboard Device: USB Keyboard
UART 1:          disabled
UART 2:          disabled
LPT 1:           disabled
LPT 2:           disabled
Audio:           enabled (Driver: CoreAudio, Controller: HDA)
Clipboard Mode:  disabled
Drag'n'drop Mode:  disabled
VRDE:            disabled
USB:             enabled
EHCI:            disabled

USB Device Filters:

<none>

Available remote USB devices:

<none>

Currently Attached USB Devices:

<none>

Bandwidth groups:  <none>

Shared folders:  <none>

VRDE Connection:    not active
Clients so far:     0

Guest:

Configured memory balloon size:      0 MB

Did I miss something obvious?

[paulbeard]

Looks like the solution is to drop back to 4.1.26. It offers OS X Server (32 and 64 bit), rather than plain OS X, but it seems to be installing just fine with a retail DVD.

Once it's installed and working, I'll see if it can be run under 4.2.x but I'm OK with this if it works. Maybe the complaint that Apple keeps breaking VirtualBox isn't entirely accurate.