Thursday 3 February 2011

Guide

Prerequisites:
1) VirtualBox 4
2) iBoot and Multibeast.
3) An ISO of Snow Leopard retail version.
4) The DMG of the latest (10.6.6) combo updater.

Instructions:
1) Make a new OSX Server image in Virtualbox, call it "OSX", use all the defaults except make a bigger disk than 20GB - 40GB is a better number.
2) Go to settings and untick the "Enable EFI setting" in the System pane.
3) Mount iBoot.iso and boot from CD drive (you might have to press F12, then 'c').
4) Unmount iBoot, mount Snow Leopard ISO.
5) Press F5, then Enter. It will launch the SL installer.
6) Open Disk Utility. Partition your disk - GUID, Mac OS Journaled. Close Disk Utility. Select the new drive partition you made, and let the install continue.
7) After installation, mount iBoot.iso again and this time choose your new SL installation which will boot.
8) Run the 10.6.6 combo updater, do not allow it to reboot.
9) Run Multibeast, select EasyBeast and the System Utilities. Install it.
10) Unmount the iBoot iso in Virtualbox and reboot into Snow Leopard. iBoot is now no longer required.

Optional Virtualbox settings:
1) Raise the Video memory to 128MB and enable 3D acceleration.
2) Raise the main RAM to 2GB or more if you can spare it.
3) Install the Virtualbox Extension Pack to enable USB device support.

Known issues:
1) "About This Mac" will crash the Finder. System Profiler works properly when invoked directly.
2) Shut down/restart etc. will always kernel panic.
3) There is no choice of resolutions in the Display settings. Use the Virtualbox command line to do e.g. VBoxManage setextradata “OSX” “CustomVideoMode1″ “1600×960×32”
4) Shared Virtualbox folders can't be used due to there being no Virtualbox Guest Additions for Mac (yet?)
5) Sometimes fails to boot and sits on the Apple splash screen spinner forever. Just reset it.
6) Spotlight sometimes hangs, and sometimes has to do a full reindex for no apparent reason.

Links:

http://www.virtualbox.org
http://tonymacx86.com/
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A
http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1349