virtualbox.org

I have been successfully running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5 as a guest inside of VirtualBox 5.0.4 for several weeks now on an iMac (24-inch, Early 2009), with a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, that runs El Capitan 10.11 final.

This setup is used primarily to run SheepShaver, so that I can run my old Mac Classic BBS, and an old FTP server. It is a very light setup. Other than SheepShaver, I only have the following installed:

• TunTap kernal extensions
• MultiBeast 5.5.5/Chameleon EFI
• WindowMizer
• Bwanadik

Everything was fine until yesterday. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, every time I start the Mountain Lion VM, and within about two minutes time after I log in -- even before I launch SheepShaver -- Mountain Lion totally freezes up. This occurs when I am doing absolutely nothing in the guest. I just log in to ML, and then it freezes up about two minutes later.

The fact that the freeze-up occurs so quickly is frustrating to say the least, because it leaves me a very small window of time to even try to figure out what is wrong.

As far as I can tell, the problem is not VirtualBox itself. It seems to start up, run and load VM's just fine. The issue seems to be within Mountain Lion itself.

So, being as the two-minute freeze-up prevents me from analyzing anything, I thought that the easiest solution would be to try to reinstall OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 on top of the current ML installation that is already in the VM, using the Mountain Lion install DVD, which I in fact made when I first installed Mountain Lion in VirtualBox.

The problem is that I don't know how to accomplish this, or in fact if it is even possible to do so.

I discovered that if I let the Mountain Lion VM load to the login screen, and then hold down the option key and click on the "Restart" button that is located on the lower portion of the login screen window -- as we would do on a physical Mac -- that doesn't work. The VM just shuts down, and it shows in the VM list as having been aborted.

So, basically, what I am asking is this: Is there a way to start my Mountain Lion VM from the Mountain Lion install DVD, so that I can re-install Mountain Lion on top of the current ML installation, and thus hopefully fix whatever is causing the freeze-ups?

Likewise, is there a way that I can run Disk Utility from the Mountain Lion install DVD, in order to determine if it can find anything wrong with the current Mountain Lion installation that is in the VM?

If this is not possible, then I have an even bigger problem, because the ONLY place where my SheepShaver startup hard disk .dmg file is located, is in the "SheepShaver" folder, in "Applications", in my Mountain Lion VM setup.

So, unless I can fix my current Mountain Lion VM, or somehow extract the entire "SheepShaver" folder from the "Applications" folder in the actual Mountain Lion .vdi image, it is a totally lost cause.

BTW, just today, a day after all of this began, I upgraded to VirtualBox 5.0.6, but it has not helped.

Also, the 5.0.6 update did not show up when I used the "Check for Updates" feature. I found a notice for the update online at an aggregated software website.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

For example, is there a way to convert a .vdi image to a mountable .dmg image, so that I can at least save my "SheepShaver" folder?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

You could create another Mountain Lion guest and then attach the vdi of the original as a secondary drive and copy off whatever you want to save. Then before you do anything else save those files to the host. It's kind of stupid not to have a backup if these are important to you.

To have people on this forum help diagnose the problem with the original guest you might consider posting a compressed (zipped) copy of the VB log of one of these guest freezes.

rpmurray wrote:You could create another Mountain Lion guest and then attach the vdi of the original as a secondary drive and copy off whatever you want to save.

Actually, hours ago, I tried to create a brand new Mountain Lion guest. However, for some reason, even though I gave the new VM a slightly different name, the ML installer gets as far as the screen where I am asked to select the destination for the new OS. The problem is that it is not giving me any volume options, and the "Next" arrow is grayed out at that point.

In the back of my mind, I seem to recall having encountered this same problem the very first time that I installed Mountain Lion in the original VM. In that case, I think I hit the back arrow a few times, and then moved forward again, and it worked. This time, however, that trick is not working. Otherwise, I would already have a second ML guest by now.

Then before you do anything else save those files to the host.

An excellent plan . . . if I can get the second ML guest installed properly.

It's kind of stupid not to have a backup if these are important to you.

My friend, please don't be so quick to jump the gun. I in fact perform a scheduled full hard drive backup of my El Capitan host machine every single night in the early morning hours, without fail. The problem is that this quirky behavior must have started earlier than I realized. As a result, when the scheduled backup occurred, the troublesome VM overwrote the previous good VM on the backup volume. In fact, I used to keep TWO full backups on two external USB drives. However, one went down the drain a few months back, and I have been short on cash to replace it since then. Thus, only one backup volume for the moment.

To have people on this forum help diagnose the problem with the original guest you might consider posting a compressed (zipped) copy of the VB log of one of these guest freezes.

I actually considered doing that, and I did look at the various logs. However, I decided to wait to see if the info I provided in my original message was enough to find a solution here. Obviously not.

On a side note, I did find a gem of a program which very easily mounts VDI images -- just as easily as DMG images -- on the OS X host, meaning in El Capitan. It is called "Paragon VMDK Mounter". Looking at its history on the web, I think it used to be owned by VMWare, and may have even been a part of Fusion. At least that is the impression I got from a very cursory web search.

At any rate, the only problem is that VMDK Mounter mounted the VDI, and then shut down and unmounted the image from my desktop barely two minutes after I first opened it, so that I wasn't even able to do anything with with the opened VDI image.

Now, after that first attempt, each time that I try to mount the same VDI image again with VMDK Mounter, the app immediately throws me an on-screen error message, and unmounts the VDI image within a second or two of mounting it.

The German developer -- Paragon -- offers it on their website as a free app, but you do have to register with them and get a product key and serial number via email. I thought that perhaps they merged it into one of their commercial products, and thus crippled this free version, so that you barely get a taste of what it can do. Oddly enough, they do not list VMDK Mounter as one of their products on their main pages. I actually found it by Googling. However, apparently, they did recently update VMDK Mounter for El Capitan, so who knows.

Anyway, I wrote to Paragon to see what they say. This app does exactly what I want, if it would only keep the VDI image mounted. At least that way I can extract a copy of my SheepShaver folder, and keep it in a safe place, besides in a VDI image.

UPDATE #!: I just made an interesting discovery on the web. The error message I am getting when I mount the VDI -- "Disk Not Ejected Properly. Eject "disk name here" before disconnecting or turning it off." -- is apparently not being generated by VMDK Mounter. It is being generated by El Capitan itself, according to other unrelated posts that I just glanced at.

So I wonder if this is OS X registering its disapproval for mounted VDI image files?

FWIW, Paragon VMDK Mounter 2.4 works for me on OSX 10.11. At least with ntfs and hfs+ based vdi's and vmdk's. Still waiting on a OSX 10.11 compatible version of ExtFS so I can mount Linux based vdi's etc.

loukingjr wrote:FWIW, Paragon VMDK Mounter 2.4 works for me on OSX 10.11. At least with ntfs and hfs+ based vdi's and vmdk's. Still waiting on a OSX 10.11 compatible version of ExtFS so I can mount Linux based vdi's etc.

Interesting. I wonder why I am having this issue then. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the vdi's that VirtualBox creates for OS X installations hfs+ by default?

Thanks!

Yes, they are hfs+. One possibility is because I am running OSX 10.11.1 betas but Paragon says it's 10.11 compatible. There are still teething issues with OSX 10.11 so it could be many reasons.

As I noted earlier, the odd thing is, the vdi image did mount the very first time that I launch Paragon VMDK Mounter, and I was able to double-click the desktop image, open it, and view the actual contents of the vdi file. However, as I said, after about two minutes, VMDK Mounter shut down, the image unmounted from my desktop, and that was it. Since then, the image still mounts, and then unmounts immediately with the aforementioned OS X error message. Being as this is a free app, even Paragon notes on their website that it could take forever before they ever respond to my query, being as paying customers come first in the queue.

We should stop talking about Paragon since we're not a support site for them.

As far as your ML guest, I don't do OSX guests in VirtualBox so I can't help. I just happened to have a 10.6.8 guest still laying around from a couple years ago that I could test.

There is actually an interesting reason regarding why I run Mountain Lion as a guest in VirtualBox, on an iMac which runs El Capitan. I explain it on my Armageddon BBS home page. Here is a short excerpt:

----- Begin Quote -----

In short, this modern technological "miracle" of running an old school Macintosh-based PC-ANSI BBS looks like this:

iMac --> El Capitan --> VirtualBox --> Mountain Lion --> SheepShaver --> Mac OS 9.0.4 --> BBS

By running my BBS in this layered fashion, no matter how often Apple chooses to update Mac OS X, and even if they kill 32-bit apps running on OS X in the not-too-distant future, I will STILL be able to keep running my BBS, which is 68k/PPC software. Pretty cool, eh?

----- End Quote -----

So, I actually use VirtualBox to keep alive the history of BBSing on the Macintosh platform, both for "old timers" who are a bit nostalgic for the old BBSing days, as well as for the younger generation, so that they can see and experience what pre-WWW days were like on the Macintosh. In fact, I may possibly be the very last telnet-accessible Hermes II BBS.

WordWeaver wrote:Suddenly, for no apparent reason

No. Things just don't "happen". Either an update of the host or the guest or a 3rd party software must have triggered this. Or (in the worst case scenario), something "bad"™ is happening on your host system (HD dying for example).

WordWeaver wrote:I only have the following installed: ... MultiBeast 5.5.5/Chameleon EFI ...

Would you mind explaining this? Briefly if you don't mind...

WordWeaver wrote:Is there a way to start my Mountain Lion VM from the Mountain Lion install DVD

Absolutely, that's the idea. But I believe you already did that.

WordWeaver wrote:is there a way that I can run Disk Utility from the Mountain Lion install DVD, in order to determine if it can find anything wrong with the current Mountain Lion installation that is in the VM?

I'm afraid that Disk Utility won't help you in this case. It's a low-level utility for checking the basic structure (and sanity) of the filesystem, not to recover any files.

WordWeaver wrote:the ML installer gets as far as the screen where I am asked to select the destination for the new OS. The problem is that it is not giving me any volume options, and the "Next" arrow is grayed out at that point.

That's because you assigned a virtual HD to your VM, but it is un-initialized. Which means that you have to run Disk Utility (from within the installation process) and partition the virtual HD (it's got to be GUID partition). Then, it will be available for you to install the OS.

WordWeaver wrote:You could create another Mountain Lion guest and then attach the vdi of the original as a secondary drive and copy off whatever you want to save.

That's the best advice so far. With one parameter missing; create a backup of the VDI in case something goes wrong.

WordWeaver wrote:To have people on this forum help diagnose the problem with the original guest you might consider posting a compressed (zipped) copy of the VB log of one of these guest freezes.

Actually, THIS is the best advice. And before we continue this discussion, and since you're new here, and since there is a question in red that you need to answer, I really need to see this log file.

Hello again Socratis,

Thank you for your ideas and suggestions. I appreciate your feedback.

I don't know if you have read my previous comments yet or not. However, being as you have taken an interest in my situation, I did want to give you -- and others who have commented here -- an update.

I have some good news!

After having experienced a great deal of frustration over the past few days, plus an untold number of VM freeze-ups, system reboots, application relaunches, scratching my head countless times -- see the bald spot now? -- etc., I am happy to report that I have been completely successful, and the problem has been eradicated.

Not only was I able to totally restore the original Mountain Lion VM without any loss of data whatsoever, but I also made a backup .vdi image which is identical to the original. Furthermore, both of these .vdi images will be backed up daily to my external USB drive. In short, I will have four complete copies of my VirtualBox setup. Two will contain all of the latest data, and the other two will be "virgin" copies of my Mountain Lion VM, which includes both my Hermes II BBS data and my Hotline server data, up until today. So, I am now well-protected from future problems, and have something to fall back on, even more than before, when I just had one backup copy.

So after all of that, what was the problem?

Well, as I said early, I only have a few apps installed in my Mountain Lion VM, besides my BBS and my Hotline server; and the freeze-ups always occurred between one and two minutes after I first logged in to my admin account.

So something was apparently happening during those first two minutes which was bringing everything to a halt.

As it turns out, it was one of my favorite little, practical apps called "Bwanadik". This app shows me my local IP address, my external IP address and other information in the menubar.

I have used this app for a considerable amount of time in my El Capitan installation. Furthermore, I have used it without a problem ever since I first set up my Mountain Lion VM weeks ago. So why it should suddenly start acting up and bring everything crashing down is beyond me.

At any rate, the minute I quit Bwanadik, and trashed it along with its associated system files, my original Mountain Lion VM returned to its normal, functioning state.

Obviously, I am very happy about this victory.