9 replies to this topic

[Aghaster]

I found this article yesterday, dating from February 12th, so it's very recent:

How To Install Snow Leopard in VirtualBox

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is actually the first serious hackint0sh guide for VirtualBox. I followed the first steps but in my case I get a kernel panic, but it allowed me to go a little further than where I was previously able to. The only thing annoying about the article is that the guy provides modified VirtualBox binaries for Windows in order to make the retail Snow Leopard installation work, not really giving a hint on how they've been modified. I use Linux and I'm not going to give it a try on Windows, but someone here using Windows could give it a try and put feedback here to say if it worked.

I found this article out of nowhere, not so long after finding out that my HP ProBook 4510s is a nice hackint0sh candidate. I've been able to use SnowOSX Universal v3.6 to successfully install Snow Leopard easily on it. Everything works except ethernet and wifi. That looks really bad but it isn't, really, as I just went to futureshop to find the cheapest usb wireless adapter that would have a compatible chipset. I got lucky with a "GXT VGR12USB" wireless n adapter that has a ralink 2870 chipset in it, for 40$. It's compatible with Windows / Linux / Mac OS X. With that, I have a working Snow Leopard installation with wireless working, which is enough for tinkering and development purposes. However, there are some glitches I'd like to fix, such as the keyboard and mouse working 50% of the time I boot OSX. Normally, with a retail installation, they shouldn't be working at all, but SnowOSX Universal 3.6 comes with the VoodooPS2Controller driver. Now I'm looking into making my own retail installation of Snow Leopard on my laptop, but making the minimum modifications required to an untouched Snow Leopard install DVD and using Chameleon. The biggest advantage of a retail installation is that it can be updated way more easily, as you've built it yourself and you know what you need to repair or fix. Oh and, it's running super fast, with video acceleration and everything.

[lattera]

Way freaking cool. That's a way nice find. I'm gonna try it this weekend on an OpenSolaris host with VirtualBox 3.1.4.

[phr34kc0der]

I was looking into hackintosh stuff last summer. Nice find, i'd like to try this out if I get a chance. I installed mac os on an old laptop but, like you, no wifi or ethernet and it was pretty slow but virtualbox would be pretty sweet.

[R4p1d]

This will be great, a few zero days are being released for OSX and I'll have a virtrual box to test them out in! hahaha!

[systems_glitch]

Has anyone had success with this? Having tried various Hackintosh distributions, I can't get past the Apple logo screen and/or pinwheel. Verbose mode shows it's halting after Darwin loads USB support. I'm using VirtualBox PUEL 3.1.6 under Arch Linux.

EDIT: Nevermind -- apparently there's a known bug with VB 3.1.4 in which VirtualBox deletes the extra XML line that makes booting OS X possible. Having intially tried with 3.1.4, this line was deleted from my XML file. After upgrading to 3.1.6, I didn't check, but having added it back, OS X boots just fine:

 osxvbox.png   421.35K   6 downloads

System: Intel Xeon Quad 2.4 GHz, 4 GB DDR2, VirtualBox PUEL 3.1.6 r59338, Arch Linux with kernel 2.6.32

Edited by systems_glitch, 12 April 2010 - 11:35 PM.

[Aghaster]

Has anyone had success with this? Having tried various Hackintosh distributions, I can't get past the Apple logo screen and/or pinwheel. Verbose mode shows it's halting after Darwin loads USB support. I'm using VirtualBox PUEL 3.1.6 under Arch Linux.

EDIT: Nevermind -- apparently there's a known bug with VB 3.1.4 in which VirtualBox deletes the extra XML line that makes booting OS X possible. Having intially tried with 3.1.4, this line was deleted from my XML file. After upgrading to 3.1.6, I didn't check, but having added it back, OS X boots just fine:

 osxvbox.png   421.35K   6 downloads

System: Intel Xeon Quad 2.4 GHz, 4 GB DDR2, VirtualBox PUEL 3.1.6 r59338, Arch Linux with kernel 2.6.32

Awesome, I hadn't even tried it because the guide was using modified DLLs, and I'm using Linux too. Did you use a cracked distro or the retail install DVD? If you have success with a cracked distro but not the retail DVD, I suggest you simply install the cracked distro first, create a second virtual hard disk, and install the retail version from your booted working cracked OS X. That worked for me in vmware.

[systems_glitch]

I got it working with iPC, but I just converted the DMG for Snow Leopard to ISO, and...VirtualBox boots it without modification:

 snow.png   24.9K   5 downloads

It seems to get stuck there for now. I'm going to leave it running overnight and see what happens. Apparently VirtualBox's EFI implementation is good enough to at least boot!

[lattera]

VirtualBox 3.2.0 Beta 1 was released today. It officially supports running OSX as a guest OS.

[Aghaster]

VirtualBox 3.2.0 Beta 1 was released today. It officially supports running OSX as a guest OS.

At the moment of this writing, the latest version is now 3.2.4. VirtualBox officially supports the Mac OS X guest on Apple hardware only. However, all you really need to do on non-Apple hardware is to first disable VirtualBox's EFI emulation and use the EmpireEFI iso to boot your retail installation DVD or your Mac OS X installation.

http://www.sysprobs....-apple-intel-pc

I already installed 10.5, now I'm installing 10.6, but I haven't had the time to try installing the guest additions yet I'm expecting there is a way to get 3D acceleration working!

[Aghaster]

VirtualBox 3.2.0 Beta 1 was released today. It officially supports running OSX as a guest OS.

At the moment of this writing, the latest version is now 3.2.4. VirtualBox officially supports the Mac OS X guest on Apple hardware only. However, all you really need to do on non-Apple hardware is to first disable VirtualBox's EFI emulation and use the EmpireEFI iso to boot your retail installation DVD or your Mac OS X installation.

http://www.sysprobs....-apple-intel-pc

I already installed 10.5, now I'm installing 10.6, but I haven't had the time to try installing the guest additions yet I'm expecting there is a way to get 3D acceleration working!

I confirm that retail snow leopard works within VirtualBox when booted from EmpireEFI However, it appears that there are no guest additions yet for Mac OS X guests. Still, having the system work almost out of the box is a huge improvement. Ethernet works flawlessly, even with the bridged adapter One could easily set up VNC on it, hehe. I'm going to try myHack, which is a tool to help tweak retail installations. Video acceleration doesn't work out of the box (obviously) but if there's a way of making it work with myHack I'll let you know.