**VIDEO GUIDE** How to Install MacOS Mojave or High Sierra as a VM

[PiercedB]

Hi. Sorry if this is in the wrong spot, but not that many threads for Mac VM's here

 

I've had Sierra running for quite some time on my server and want to extend a big thank you to Gridrunner for the great videos. They helped tremendously in making the installation process and upgrade to 10.12.4 super easy  (and yes, a visual guide is just a lot easier to understand then reading a manual. Still I have a lot of respect for everyone who helps make MacOS VM'ing so easy to do )

 

However, my server is my test bench when it comes to VMs. And for my upcomming upgrade of my gaming/general usage rig (as it runs a 3770K, that annoyingly has no virtualization support), I'm having my sights on the comming X299 platform, as well as the Ryzen Thredripper chips.This mainly to have "several computers in one box" so to speak. While gaming/VR capable.

 

Does anyone have any experience running MacOS VMs on a Ryzen build?
A Mac VM is sort of the make or break point for me with regards to choice of hardware, though I would prefer going with the cheaper of the two if possible, without having to tinker the hell out of it to make it work 

[planetwilson]

Anyone got any idea how to get iMessage working? On previous VMs I did it just worked but on my latest one done via VMWare Fusion it isn't working. I suspect I need to follow the advice in this guide possibly:-

 

Reddit Hackintosh getting iMessage working

 

However given it involves using Clover to generate some new IDs I am concerned I will break my existing VM as I don't *really* know what settings are unRAID/KVM sensitive....

 

[SpaceInvaderOne]

2 hours ago, planetwilson said:

Anyone got any idea how to get iMessage working? On previous VMs I did it just worked but on my latest one done via VMWare Fusion it isn't working. I suspect I need to follow the advice in this guide possibly:-

 

Reddit Hackintosh getting iMessage working

 

However given it involves using Clover to generate some new IDs I am concerned I will break my existing VM as I don't *really* know what settings are unRAID/KVM sensitive....

 

I have never used imessage myself, but i looked through that guide quickly. There is nothing there that will break the vm. I would leave the model as imac 14,2 though then just generate serial etc.

I will go through and try the tutorial when i have more time if it doesnt work.

Please report back  

[planetwilson]

Yes I have it all working now following that guide   It takes a lot of faffing through clearing everything out. Also if you get a few things in OSX trying to access your Apple ID all at once and you have 2FA enabled it all trips up over itself, Apple decides someone is trying to brute force their way in, locks the account and you end up going through a process to unlock your password. I'd turn off other devices like iPads etc and just have your iPhone handy if you have one and are using 2FA. Then sign into iCloud services one at a time slowly.

[SpaceInvaderOne]

17 hours ago, planetwilson said:

Yes I have it all working now following that guide   It takes a lot of faffing through clearing everything out. Also if you get a few things in OSX trying to access your Apple ID all at once and you have 2FA enabled it all trips up over itself, Apple decides someone is trying to brute force their way in, locks the account and you end up going through a process to unlock your password. I'd turn off other devices like iPads etc and just have your iPhone handy if you have one and are using 2FA. Then sign into iCloud services one at a time slowly.

@planetwilson great thats good you got it working. Thanks for reporting back with your findings 

[lionceau]

I'm curious has anybody managed to get Filevault working in a unRAID Sierra VM? It seems like it's working on regular Hackintoshes that support UEFI.

 

I think it would be really nice to have the disk image encrypted since unRAID itself does not focus on security and might be prone to getting hacked.

[limetech]

2 hours ago, lionceau said:

unRAID itself does not focus on security and might be prone to getting hacked

 

If you find security issues or want to make suggestions, please post in the Security board.  BTW encryption is not necessarily going to guard against being hacked.

[planetwilson]

Anyone know of any issues upgrading to 10.12.5?

 

[mgworek]

Trying to get this method working with 10.12.5 and the clover EFI won't install. Tried the latest version that they are testing with High Sierra and still won't install. Any thoughts?

 

Thanks.

[Modna]

I am having similar issues. Haven't been able to find anything googling around yet. 

 

EDIT I attempted this again with the newest version of Clover (R 4077) and got the same results. Failed install.

Edited June 8, 2017 by Modna

[DarkHorse]

I have a macOS 10.12.5  VM working, but it not via an upgrade, it was the version I created the VM with.  Just followed SpaceInvader's video, and made sure I installed the fakesmc kext and removed the OSK key from the XML.

 

Quick question for those with a working macOS VM:  Do you use Splashtop?  When I connect via splashtop, the streamer and windowServer processes on the macOS VM begin to consume a huge amount of CPU.  So, instead, I went into System Preferences and enabled Screen Sharing and use that instead.  I would prefer Splashtop because of the audio capabilities, but not when it is saturating 2 CPU cores.  Anyone else see this issue?

 

 

[1812]

Splashtop and teamviewer use lots of cpu. It's how it goes.

 

[lionceau]

somebody (helgrind over at insanelymac) seems to have found a way around the clover patch, does anybody know how to convert this to unraid compatible XML?
 

I think I've found a way to avoid the ugly Clover patch:
-cpu Penryn,vendor=GenuineIntel,kvm=on,+invtsc,vmware-cpuid-freq=on
vmware-cpuid-freq requires kvm to be exposed and invtsc enabled, hence the kvm=on,+invtsc
Tested on qemu 2.9.0.

 

[1812]

5 hours ago, lionceau said:

somebody (helgrind over at insanelymac) seems to have found a way around the clover patch, does anybody know how to convert this to unraid compatible XML?
 

I think I've found a way to avoid the ugly Clover patch:
-cpu Penryn,vendor=GenuineIntel,kvm=on,+invtsc,vmware-cpuid-freq=on
vmware-cpuid-freq requires kvm to be exposed and invtsc enabled, hence the kvm=on,+invtsc
Tested on qemu 2.9.0.

 

 

Link to thread?

[SpaceInvaderOne]

22 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

I have a macOS 10.12.5  VM working, but it not via an upgrade, it was the version I created the VM with.  Just followed SpaceInvader's video, and made sure I installed the fakesmc kext and removed the OSK key from the XML.

 

Quick question for those with a working macOS VM:  Do you use Splashtop?  When I connect via splashtop, the streamer and windowServer processes on the macOS VM begin to consume a huge amount of CPU.  So, instead, I went into System Preferences and enabled Screen Sharing and use that instead.  I would prefer Splashtop because of the audio capabilities, but not when it is saturating 2 CPU cores.  Anyone else see this issue?

 

 

Give no machine a go a great remote desktop solution https://www.nomachine.com/ 

[DarkHorse]

Ah... that is so much better!  NoMachine appears to be much more CPU friendly and performs pretty well.  Thanks!!

[1812]

On 6/16/2017 at 4:06 PM, gridrunner said:

Give no machine a go a great remote desktop solution https://www.nomachine.com/ 

 

This is a great find. Performs much better for me than teamviewer or splashtop.

[SpaceInvaderOne]

8 hours ago, 1812 said:

 

This is a great find. Performs much better for me than teamviewer or splashtop.

Yeah its an awesome bit of software. Also great as it is cross platform for mac,windows and linux.

[CHBMB]

I'll have to try this...

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

[Modna]

On 6/7/2017 at 4:12 AM, mgworek said:

Trying to get this method working with 10.12.5 and the clover EFI won't install. Tried the latest version that they are testing with High Sierra and still won't install. Any thoughts?

 

Thanks.

 

 

Hey! so I was having the same issue. i went back and tried again with newer versions, no luck. I then went and rewatched the tutorial video and realized that when installing, you have to click "custom" or whatever, and choose what features to do. When you do that and selects what the tutorial shows, it installs just fine!

[Modna]

Has anyone been successful with making a macOS VM with intel iGPU passthrough? The xml that the tutorial shows copying over before booting forces the VM back to using VNC. I have been trying to parse through and it and make it work but no luck so far

[mgworek]

13 hours ago, Modna said:

 

 

Hey! so I was having the same issue. i went back and tried again with newer versions, no luck. I then went and rewatched the tutorial video and realized that when installing, you have to click "custom" or whatever, and choose what features to do. When you do that and selects what the tutorial shows, it installs just fine!

 

OMG!!!!! How did I miss that??? THANK YOU!!!!

 

[Jorgen]

Hi all, I've shot myself in the foot and was hoping someone on this thread could help me out.

I have a 10.12.5 VM that was created with the clover method and was running fine, but during troubleshooting of an unrelated problem I set my Ethernet interface to "inactive" via the network preference pane. Face palm! I lost connection to the VM of course, because it has no means of communicating with the outside world anymore. And now I can't connect to it to restore the network preference.

I had splashtop and apple's screen sharing working, but can't connect to either anymore (not surprisingly)

NoVNC and other VNC clients can connect while the VM boots up, but as soon as the apple logo appears I lose mouse/keyboard functionality. I can still see the boot progressing up until the login screen, but that's as far as it gets. Without any input method I can't login.

My CPU doesn't support vt-d, so I don't think I can pass a physical mouse/keyboard to the VM?

 

I'm open for any suggestions at this point. Here are some options I've considered or tried:

 

1. Mount the HFS+ partition of the vdisk image and manually edit/remove the network plists. I've only managed to mount it read only so far, but I'm also a bit worried about these fits as I'm not at all confident that I'm doing the right thing.

 

2. Add another virtual network interface in the XML. Maybe there's a way to trick OS X to think I have a wifi or other interface that can give me network access. I have no idea where to start on this though, or if it's even possible.

 

3. Create a new VM and restore my user account from the latest time machine backup. This will take hours and I won't learn anything new, so it's my last resort. Also, I had problems restoring from time machine when I first created the now broken VM.

 

4. Buy a vt-d capable CPU and pass through physical mouse, keyboard and GPU. This is actually my preferred solution but will take me some time to get the funds together and then waiting for the order to ship. Not sure I can live without the VM for that long.

 

Sorry for the long post. If anyone have any ideas on best way to proceed please share.

I'm posting here because there aren't many Mac-VM-on-unRAID threads around. Happy to start a new thread if more appropriate.

 

And thanks to gridrunner for making all this possible in the first place! 

[SpaceInvaderOne]

56 minutes ago, Jorgen said:

Hi all, I've shot myself in the foot and was hoping someone on this thread could help me out.

I have a 10.12.5 VM that was created with the clover method and was running fine, but during troubleshooting of an unrelated problem I set my Ethernet interface to "inactive" via the network preference pane. Face palm! I lost connection to the VM of course, because it has no means of communicating with the outside world anymore. And now I can't connect to it to restore the network preference.

I had splashtop and apple's screen sharing working, but can't connect to either anymore (not surprisingly)

NoVNC and other VNC clients can connect while the VM boots up, but as soon as the apple logo appears I lose mouse/keyboard functionality. I can still see the boot progressing up until the login screen, but that's as far as it gets. Without any input method I can't login.

My CPU doesn't support vt-d, so I don't think I can pass a physical mouse/keyboard to the VM?

 

I'm open for any suggestions at this point. Here are some options I've considered or tried:

 

1. Mount the HFS+ partition of the vdisk image and manually edit/remove the network plists. I've only managed to mount it read only so far, but I'm also a bit worried about these fits as I'm not at all confident that I'm doing the right thing.

 

2. Add another virtual network interface in the XML. Maybe there's a way to trick OS X to think I have a wifi or other interface that can give me network access. I have no idea where to start on this though, or if it's even possible.

 

3. Create a new VM and restore my user account from the latest time machine backup. This will take hours and I won't learn anything new, so it's my last resort. Also, I had problems restoring from time machine when I first created the now broken VM.

 

4. Buy a vt-d capable CPU and pass through physical mouse, keyboard and GPU. This is actually my preferred solution but will take me some time to get the funds together and then waiting for the order to ship. Not sure I can live without the VM for that long.

 

Sorry for the long post. If anyone have any ideas on best way to proceed please share.

I'm posting here because there aren't many Mac-VM-on-unRAID threads around. Happy to start a new thread if more appropriate.

 

And thanks to gridrunner for making all this possible in the first place! 

 

Luckily you can pass the keyboard/mouse on a machine without vt-d so just add a keyboard! You only need vt-d for pci passthrough.

 

Also try adding this below the xml for the  disabled nic, if above fails

    <interface type='bridge'>
      <mac address='52:54:00:35:d1:d2'/>
      <source bridge='br0'/>
      <model type='e1000-82545em'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x03' slot='0x03' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>

This will add a second nic

 

best of luck !

[Jorgen]

6 hours ago, gridrunner said:

 

Luckily you can pass the keyboard/mouse on a machine without vt-d so just add a keyboard! You only need vt-d for pci passthrough.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I tried adding a mouse and keyboard earlier but couldn't get it to work. I incorrectly assumed this was because of vt-d missing, but your post prompted me to have another crack at it.  For some reason I had selected "USB Mode = 3.0 XHCI" when I first created the VM. Once I spotted that in the XML and changed it back to "2.0 EHCI" things started working again.

 

Thanks again for your help, and for all the awesome guides your are producing!