Installing OS X guest under OS X host

[waldorfm]

I’m running Mac OS X 10.9.2 on a MacPro 4,1 (early 2009) and have VirtualBox 4.2.24 installed. I would like to install 10.6.8 in a guest virtual machine. I would like to test some OS downgrading options.

I have a Mac OS X 10.6.3 iso disk image, which version is sufficient to boot the machine (10.5.6 required), but when I use it to start the guest machine I receive a kernel panic (opcode) when loading the kernel image. Would anyone know please what configurations or OS X guest systems are supported? Thanks!

[waldorfm]

FWIW, I manged to get it further after selecting 1 instead of 4 CPU's in the VM guest settings.

However, not it's stuck again, showing "Kernel extensions in backtrack: com.apple.driver.AppleEFINVRAM(1.3.0)...."

Btw, using OSX Server 10.6 disk image makes no difference, same error.

[rpmurray]

You may want to update VirtualBox to 4.3.10. The 4.3.x releases work better with OS X although some of the earlier 4.3 releases had a couple of bugs.

Also make sure to choose the 64-bit option for the OS X guest.

[waldorfm]

I used 4.3 before, but downgraded back to 4.2. Performance was much slower than in 4.2 and even my host system would crash, plus and a number of new things in 4.3 only annoyed me. I guess the VirtualBox developers are running out of useful ideas. I don't think I will use 4.3 anytime soon unless there is anything I really need. Regarding 64-bit, yes, that's the template I've been using. There is no 64-bit option, but I have EFI and IO APIC enabled, which seems to be required. I have VT-x enabled, which requires 64-bit anyway. I played around with a number of settings, producing different errors in the startup process, but so far nothing worked successfully. Reading a couple of similar threads perhaps a further downgrade of VritualBox would be the solution, but that would mess up all the other machines I have. I'm disappointed about the VirtualBox development - it looked more promising a couple of years ago, at least on the Mac platform. I don't use Windows at home and never will.

[loukingjr]

I used 4.3 before, but downgraded back to 4.2. Performance was much slower than in 4.2 and even my host system would crash,...

That's interesting. I find 4.3.10 faster and more stable with certain guests than previous versions. Granted I don't run OSX guests so only Windows and Linux guests are faster for me. Perhaps OSX guests are an exception but I can't see how.

edit: I forgot to mention I have never had VirtualBox crash one of my Macs in the 5 years I've been using it.

[rpmurray]

I could never get any of my existing OS X guests to work under the VB 4.2.x releases I tried. They'd always hang somewhere during startup. I was able to get them to run using 4.0.x or 4.1.x (although there's quite a few hoops you have to jump through to install OS X), and my brief (so far) experiments with 4.3.6 had the existing ones working on it, although I haven't yet successfully installed any OS X from scratch on that version and haven't yet had time to try 4.3.10.

Socratis, who replies to questions on these forums, claims to have 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9 running under VB 4.3.x, here.

Edit: I had originally posted that I had OS X working as guests on 4.3.8, but it was actually 4.3.6.

[waldorfm]

I did not see that one. Thanks for the link and your response!

[waldorfm]

I used 4.3 before, but downgraded back to 4.2. Performance was much slower than in 4.2 and even my host system would crash,...

That's interesting. I find 4.3.10 faster and more stable with certain guests than previous versions. Granted I don't run OSX guests so only Windows and Linux guests are faster for me. Perhaps OSX guests are an exception but I can't see how.

edit: I forgot to mention I have never had VirtualBox crash one of my Macs in the 5 years I've been using it.

My slow 4.3 experience and crashes were not with a Mac OS X guest, but Oracle Linux. From what I can gather, the slowness and host crashes happened when the guest machine was generating a lot of network traffic. For some reason download performance, e.g. yum update, was very sporadic and would constantly pause for several unusual minutes. In some cases even the host system would loose the network. I also had a few host crashes, but sorry, I don't remember the details. I think it was probably due to a combination of Mac OSX 10.9.2 and using the Bridged network virtio-net adapter. Since I have simply too many virtual machines to check and modify, I decided to downgrade.

Just for the record, I have an 8 core Mac Pro 4,1 (early 2009), with an ATI HD 5870 graphics adapter, Apple RAID card, 24 GB of RAM And 6 TB of disk space. From what I can tell, and I'm mostly testing stuff using Linux guests, performance under 4.2 or Mac OS X 10.6 was overall better. Unfortunately I upgraded from 10.6.8 to 10.9.2 and also VirtualBox 4.2.18(?) to 4.3.2 and later tried 4.3.4, before I decided to finally switch back.

I don't know what you have been doing with VirtualBox during the past year 5 years, but I remember numerous problems and host kernel panics with VB 4.1.10 under 10.6.8, for instance. I seems VirtualBox under Mac OS X is sort of working in particular environments, but my guess is that Mac OS X and related hardware is not really in the focus of the VirtualBox developers.

[waldorfm]

Btw, I am a big fan of VirtualBox though. I also tried VMware and Parallels, but found VirtualBox simply provided more useful options, such as cloning a snapshot, which no other software did when I checked a few years ago. I might have chosen Parallels at some point and I bought a license, but it was getting on my nerves with its aggressive marketing and host integration stuff. Perhaps it's time again to see what VMware Fusion is up to.

[loukingjr]

I haven't used 10.6 for nearly 3 years but I did have some issues with guests that used Compiz crashing at the time. I think it was an issue with VB and ATI graphics. I switched to 10.7 mid-2011 which is also when I bought a new iMac. I switched that to 10.8 mid 2012. I bought another iMac late 2012 but didn't receive it until 3/13 because of production delays. I switched to 10.9 mid 2013 when it was released. My experience with VirtualBox on Macs seems to be a bit different than others. I would read many posts about some issue or another people were having and wonder why mine never had those issues. My experience with guests seems to be somewhat different than others as well. Mine work.

As far as Desktop and Fusion, I've purchased both in the past, one of them twice. I demanded a refund all three times.

[waldorfm]

Although Macs provide a fairly predictable hardware and software environment, there are fundamental differences between various models. Also, there are differences to the extend how VirtualBox is used and virtual machines are configured. For instance, I have about 60 virtual machines with different OS's and different networking options. Some of them may have the guest additions up to date, some not. I also run about 5 or more virtual machines at a time.

Since I've upgraded to 10.9 Mavericks I have been experiencing virtual machine performance issues with VirtualBox 4.3, but also under 4.2. Perhaps the issue is the new OS. I'm actually considering to move back to Mac OS X 10.6 since Mavericks has removed useful OS features that I rely on and has brought no reasonable alternatives, and certainly nothing new that I find worthwhile or not annoying. That's actually the reason for me to install 10.6 under VirtualBox, so I can test the downgrade procedure of Apple mail. 10.7 was actually the first time that I was not happy with an Apple OS upgrade. 10.8 was more reasonable and I falsely thought 10.9 was better, well it was only free.

[loukingjr]

well, you beat me. I've only reached 50 VMs at a time on occasion. I really don't remember 10.6 very well and I don't remember feeling I wish I hadn't updated from one version to another. but everyone has their own demands.

edit: for what it's worth, 4.3.12 seems a bit faster to me.

[waldorfm]

Actually I think 10.4 Tiger was the best Mac OS X release ever, so far.

Ok, I will give 4.3 another chance and try 4.3.12. Let's see.

[loukingjr]

Actually I think 10.4 Tiger was the best Mac OS X release ever, so far.

geez, why not use OS 9? or hmmm OS 6 or let's go back to Mac OS

[waldorfm]

There are certainly things I miss about Mac OS Classic too, like proper labeling of files including icons, the system extensions manager, and last not least Resedit. I was doing quite some Apple Worldscript development back then and it was simply amazing how easy it was to fool around with many aspects of the system and applications. No other system would allow you to do that. I can handle OS X very well, including the development environment, but it seems after 10.6 Apple 's focus has turned to beginners who have no clue and no desire to customize their computers, leaving professionals behind. But like the saying goes, "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

Regarding the installation of OS X guest. I upgraded to 4.3.12 and installed 10.6.3 (client) using the Snow Leopard 64-bit template. It worked fine when specifying just 1 CPU, but this may not necessarily be an issue of Virtualbox but the OS X kernel. My only problem was that using the mouse and keyboard in the installer was nearly impossible, perhaps due to some resource starvation maxing out the CPU under Virtualbox. I updated to 10.6.8 though without problems and using the system after the installation seems fine.

Regarding VB 4.3.12. A lot has been fixed since the early 4.3 releases, and as far as I could tell using it for a couple of hours it seems ok. I do however not like the auto-highlight of items when moving the mouse in the machine list. Do the VirtualBox developers care about human interface guidelines?

Btw, turns out downgrading Apple mail from 10.9 to 10.6 is not a big issue. Simply export the appropriate mailbox (crtl-click) and then import the MBOX file in 10.6 mail. There are many discussions about this process and people having issues, but it actually works like a charm. I copied the files between the host and guest using scp.

I guess that's it for now. Thanks for the responses!