host: xserve / guest: mavericks / no-boot

[Robert_M_Muench]

Hi, I really don't know what I'm doing wrong. My setup: xserve with Mavericks 10.9.5, VB 4.3.18

I created a Mavericks.iso and selected it on booting my VM. Than the screen goes big, small and big again and than nothing happens. I don't see a EFI boot loader run or anything. Looking into the VM information there are 0 bytes read/write from disk and ISO. It just hangs...

Any idea what I can x-check now? I'm really stucked...

[loukingjr]

What is it you are trying to do?

See Minimum information needed for assistance.

[Robert_M_Muench]

Well, I thought it's clear, sorry.

I want to install OSX Mavericks in the VM running on my xserve Mavericks. Goal is to run several instances of such VM OSX Servers.

[socratis]

a) How exactly did you create the Mavericks.iso?
b) Please post the "recipe" of a guest, i.e. the <VM>.vbox. Right-click on the VM, Show in Finder.

[loukingjr]

Well, I thought it's clear, sorry.

I want to install OSX Mavericks in the VM running on my xserve Mavericks. Goal is to run several instances of such VM OSX Servers.

No need to be sorry. I don't use xserve so I wasn't sure. I would just mention it violates Apple's SLA to run more than two VMs of the same version of OSX on one Mac.

[Robert_M_Muench]

(I can't post complete links at the moment, need to wait a couple of hours until it is allowed... very stupid rule)

ISO: I followed this procedure: http://sqar.blogspot.de/2014/10/install ... albox.html

Recipe: Not sure what you mean by this, but here is the vbox.log file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44753367/VBox.log

From line 1065 on are some errors, whatever these mean.
From line 1099 to 33879 are messages of the form "Write to extended register 256 fallen back to generic code"

Hope this provides some more information.

And thanks so far taking a look.

[socratis]

The configuration file (recipe) that I am looking for should be (unless you did something out of the ordinary):

/Users/administrator/VirtualBox VMs/osx-mavericks/osx-mavericks.vbox

By the way, your log doesn't show any weird things, up to the point that it tries to finish loading the EFI and switching video modes. Oh, and you should be attaching files locally. Notice the "Upload attachment" at the end of the reply form.

[Robert_M_Muench]

The log file was to big to upload here. There is a 2MB limit.

Please find the .vbox file attached

[loukingjr]

The log file was to big to upload here. There is a 2MB limit.

Please find the .vbox file attached

The size limit for an attachment is 128K not 2MB. I've never seen a 2MB vbox.log. If a fie is over 128k you can compress it. You didn't actually attach your .vbox file.

[Robert_M_Muench]

Sorry. The message that .vbox is not allowed, show on the top, not where one uploads the file.

Edited my last post to include the file.

[socratis]

Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Could you try just a couple of things that might make a difference (highly doubt it):
- Lower your RAM to 2048.
- Increase your VRAM to 64.

If that gets you nowhere, then you may have discovered an incompatibility with your specific CPU and the EFI implementation of VirtualBox. You could try to "fool" the guest OS into thinking that you're running a different CPU. If you search for "mac cpuidset site:forums.virtualbox.org" you'll find several posts that change the apparent CPU that is presented to the guest. The topmost authority on the subject would be rpmurray, so look carefully at his posts.

[Robert_M_Muench]

You made my day!!

It's working now. So, I think it's the video RAM most likely, because more RAM should be no problem, but to few VRAM of course.

[Robert_M_Muench]

Interesting, it's not working with 4096 MB of RAM... any idea why this makes a problem?

3072 MB works again.

So, are VMs limited to a specific size of RAM?

[socratis]

Yes, there have been reports about that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends on the host version, the host model, even the phase of the moon. If it works, it works.

In any event, your host has 12 GB of RAM. If you want to run multiple VMs with 4 GB each, that means a maximum of 2 guests, and even then your host will have less RAM compared to the guests. Not a good idea.