rico360z28/macos-guest-virtualbox

Push-button installer of macOS Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra guests in Virtualbox for Windows, Linux, and macOS

Push-button installer of macOS on VirtualBox

This is a Bash script that creates a VirtualBox guest macOS virtual machine by downloading unmodified macOS installation files directly from Apple servers.

The script requires very little user interaction. A default install only requires the user to sit patiently and, less than ten times, press enter when prompted. The script doesn't install any closed-source additions or extra bootloaders. Tested on Cygwin. Works on macOS and WSL, should work on most Linux distros.

macOS Catalina (10.15), Mojave (10.14), and High Sierra (10.13) currently supported

macOS Catalina 10.15.2 and 10.15.3 require VirtualBox version 6.1.4 or higher. A workaround for lower versions of VirtualBox which involves using earlier versions of boot.efi is described in issue 134.

Documentation

Documentation can be viewed by executing the command ./macos-guest-virtualbox.sh documentation

iCloud and iMessage connectivity and NVRAM

iCloud, iMessage, and other connected Apple services require a valid device name and serial number, board ID and serial number, and other genuine (or genuine-like) Apple parameters. These can be set in NVRAM by editing the script. See documentation for further information.

Storage size

The script by default assigns a target virtual disk storage size of 80GB, which is populated to about 20GB on the host on initial installation. After the installation is complete, the storage size may be increased. See documentation for further information.

Graphics controller

Selecting VBoxSVGA instead of VBoxVGA for the graphics controller may considerably increase graphics performance. VBoxVGA is assigned by default for compatibility reasons.

Unsupported features

Developing and maintaining VirtualBox or macOS features is beyond the scope of this script. Some features may behave unexpectedly, such as USB device support, audio support, FileVault boot password prompt support, and other features.

Performance

After successfully creating a working macOS virtual machine, consider importing it into QEMU/KVM so it can run with hardware passthrough at near-native performance. QEMU/KVM requires additional configuration that is beyond the scope of the script.

Audio

macOS may not support any built-in VirtualBox audio controllers. The bootloader OpenCore may be able to load open-source audio drivers in VirtualBox, providing the configuration for STAC9221 (Intel HD Audio) or SigmaTel STAC9700,83,84 (ICH AC97) is available.

FileVault

The VirtualBox EFI implementation does not properly load the FileVault full disk encryption password prompt upon boot. The bootloader OpenCore is able to load the password prompt with the parameter ProvideConsoleGop set to true. See minimal config.plist.

Dependencies

All the dependencies should be available through the package manager: bash coreutils gzip unzip wget xxd dmg2img virtualbox

• VirtualBox≥6.1.4 with Extension Pack, though versions as low as 5.2 may work.
• GNU Bash≥4.3, on Windows run through Cygwin or WSL.
• GNU coreutils≥8.22, GNU gzip≥1.5, Info-ZIP unzip≥v6.0, GNU wget≥1.14, xxd≥1.7
• dmg2img≥1.6.5, on Cygwin the package is not available through the package manager so the script downloads it automatically.