virtualbox.org

SOLVED NOW.

FWIW the solution was to use rpmurray's command in Terminal, before starting the install

VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --cpuidset 00000001 000006fb 00000800 80000209 078bfbff

Which I did in Virtual Box 4.3.12. (Don't know if it still works in 4.3.18, didn't try)

Oh - and it's actually 10.6.3 that I was installing, when I checked on the DVD.

Thanks everyone for your help!

ORIGINAL QUESTION

I'm trying to install Snow Leopard on Virtual Box.

I have Virtual Box running on the 11 inch Macbook Air (the 2013 version) with Mavericks as the operating system. So hardware is all Apple.

I've already installed Lion successfully on a virtual machine - and it is working just fine, so is no problem with my Virtual Box installation.

With Snow Leopard, I tried both the hardware DVD and also converted it to an .iso file with Disk Utility. Both have the same error.

Crash happens just after the virtual machine shows the line:

Loading system\LibraryCaches\com.apple.kext.caches\Startup\Extensions.mkext .......................................... (lots of dots)
It says "A critical error has occurred".
I have tried various permutations of the machine settings etc, nothing seems to fix it.

VBLog attached. Anyone got any solutions - or things to try out?

Thanks!

Can you zip and post the .vbox file for the guest? You can find it by right-clicking on the VM and selecting "Show in Finder". Oh, and since you're at it, post the (zipped) log file as well...

Okay thanks, is this what you need?

The only times I've seen people using EmpireEFI to install OS X as a guest was when they were trying to do that on non-Mac hardware. VirtualBox already has an EFI that will run OS X guests on Mac hardware.

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:00.597153 Host RAM: 4096MB total, 1000MB available
...
00:00:00.751615 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000080000000 (2 147 483 648, 2 048 MB)
...
00:00:00.752119 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000008000000 (134 217 728, 128 MB)

Memory overcommitment (bigtime).

Oh okay, thanks.

I just closed all the other programs, it now says 2515 MB available, still getting the same error. Do you want another log?

rpmurray wrote:The only times I've seen people using EmpireEFI to install OS X as a guest was when they were trying to do that on non-Mac hardware. VirtualBox already has an EFI that will run OS X guests on Mac hardware.

Okay - I did try that as a work around in case it helped resolve it, but it didn't work - you might find it in one of the logs. Didn't boot at all.

Tried iBoot loader also - with a different virtual machine - and the loader booted okay but when I tried to get the loader to boot up from the Mac iso, it crashed with a kernel panic.

Just part of trying all the things I could think of, didn't really expect them to work.

So, apart from those experiments of course, for all the other runs, I'm using VirtualBox's own EFI with my Mac Hardware.

The other idea I had was to try to somehow make use of my Lion virtual machine that I already have on the Mac.

So - first of all tried just cloning it - and then I set it to boot from the iso - my hope was that somehow by using a Mac virtual machine and then installing over that, it would help. But just got the same error.

The other idea I've tried is to try to run Snow Leopard inside Virtual Box inside Mountain Lion inside Virtual Box inside Mavericks on my Mac.

So - to try that I installed Virtual Box inside of Mountain Lion - that worked just fine - and made a virtual machine there. But when I tried to start the machine - got an error message about VT-x. I tried setting it to a 32 bit version of Snow Leopard but it didn't help. So it didn't 'get as far as trying to run the iso, never even bothered to attached it since it wasn't running at all.

It's for debugging my program for earlier versions of the Mac so I don't mind if the virtual machine is slow, main thing is just to run it at all. Actually an advantage if it is a bit slow, can sometimes help to duplicate bugs if they only happen on an earlier Mac

(I'm actually a Windows developer, porting my programs to a Mac and want to run Wineskins inside of this virtual machine when it is finally done, which is working just great inside the Mountain Lion virtual machine).

FYI, VirtualBox does not support nested paging. The reason you get the VT-x error is because it is in use by the first guest.

loukingjr wrote:FYI, VirtualBox does not support nested paging. The reason you get the VT-x error is because it is in use by the first guest.

I think you mean VirtualBox doesn't support nested VMs, that is, you can't run a VM inside of another VM. Nested Paging does work and you need it turned on in VirtualBox for some versions of OS X guests.

loukingjr wrote:FYI, VirtualBox does not support nested paging. The reason you get the VT-x error is because it is in use by the first guest.

Yes I realized that after googling the error. But what I didn't understand, do you know the answer - why does it use it when I choose Snow Leopard (32 bit)?

Is it impossible to nest a non VT-x virtual machine inside of VT-x?

Also - a new thought - Lion can be installed as a 32 bit machine can't it? So - what if I install 32 bit Lion without VT-x and then install 32 bit Snow Leopard inside that? Would that work? Or at least - worth a try as an outside chance?

I don't mind if it is a bit slow, or even very slow, for purposes of testing on snow leopard, and attempts to duplicate bugs in my software reported by users on Snow Leopard. Indeed the main bug reported so far was a freeze (now hopefully fixed) so a slow computer so much the better.

rpmurray wrote:

loukingjr wrote:FYI, VirtualBox does not support nested paging. The reason you get the VT-x error is because it is in use by the first guest.

I think you mean VirtualBox doesn't support nested VMs, that is, you can't run a VM inside of another VM. Nested Paging does work and you need it turned on in VirtualBox for some versions of OS X guests.

As I understood it, after googling the error, it supports nested VMs but not if they also have VT-x enabled. There are examples of users with nested VMs on the net.

Whether it's 32bit or 64bit, if I remember correctly most of not all versions of OSX require VT-x. It's been a long time since I've used any of the older versions so I could be remembering that incorrectly.

I have run nested Linux guests. The first one 64bit with VT-x enabled, the second 32bit. The second is REALLY slow. But as I said above, OSX requires VT-X I believe.

Have you read Status of OSX on OSX? We discussed installing various versions of OS X as guests there.

loukingjr wrote:Whether it's 32bit or 64bit, if I remember correctly most of not all versions of OSX require VT-x. It's been a long time since I've used any of the older versions so I could be remembering that incorrectly.

You are right. Just tried installing Lion with VT-x disabled, but got an error message warning that it is disabled and saying "Certain guests require this feature" and it went no futher.