Installing Catalina OS in VirtualBox?

Question

I have a Macbook that runs Catalina OS, but I would like to have a VirtualBox version of it.

I was able to successfully download Catalina from the App Store, and followed a tutorial to convert it into an .iso image. The problem now is that whenever I try to launch it in VirtualBox all I see is the UEFI Interactive Shell v2.2

The shell displays a Mapping Table and it just hangs there waiting for a command.

Answer 1

The command you mention in your comments hdiutil create -o /tmp/Catalina -size 8500m -volname Catalina -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J appears to come from this tutorial which in full does this:

Note: I have increased the size of the /tmp/Catalina.dmg from 8500m to 9000m so it is big enough to fit 10.15.4 (previous versions worked fine). If the .dmg is too small the subsequent createinstallmedia command will fail with "Error erasing disk error number (22, 0)"

Note: I have increased the size of the /tmp/Catalina.dmg from 9000m to 9500m so it is big enough to fit 10.15.5.

hdiutil create -o /tmp/Catalina -size 9500m -volname Catalina -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
hdiutil attach /tmp/Catalina.dmg -noverify -mountpoint /Volumes/Catalina
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Catalina --nointeraction
hdiutil detach /volumes/Install\ macOS\ Catalina
hdiutil convert /tmp/Catalina.dmg -format UDTO -o ~/Desktop/Catalina.cdr
mv ~/Desktop/Catalina.cdr ~/Desktop/Catalina.iso

These steps work absolutely fine to create an ISO but you have 2 issues which are resolved in VirtualBox 6.1.4 - from the changelog

Virtualization core: Fixed macOS Catalina guests failing to boot after upgrading to 10.15.2 onwards (bug #19188)

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For versions of VirtualBox prior to 6.1.4 the following steps are required:

You must tell VirtualBox what to boot

The ISO produced will work fine with VirtualBox but will not run automatically as Apple have put boot.efi in a non-standard place. Unlike a real mac the firmware doesn't know where to look.

In the EFI shell, if you enter FS0:\System\Library\Coreservices\boot.efi (it may be FS1:, FS2: &c depending on the order of your virtual disks) it will run. This can be automated by putting the command in a startup.nsh script which in fact is contained in the VirtualBox Boot.vdmk mentioned in the tutorial.

If you would rather create your own than download from a random google drive you can do it like this:

hdiutil create -o /tmp/CatalinaBoot -size 50m -volname MACOS_BOOT -fs FAT32
hdiutil attach /tmp/CatalinaBoot.dmg -noverify -mountpoint /Volumes/CatalinaBoot
echo 'FS0:\System\Library\Coreservices\\boot.efi' > /Volumes/CatalinaBoot/startup.nsh
echo 'FS1:\System\Library\Coreservices\\boot.efi' >> /Volumes/CatalinaBoot/startup.nsh
echo 'FS2:\System\Library\Coreservices\\boot.efi' >> /Volumes/CatalinaBoot/startup.nsh
echo 'FS3:\System\Library\Coreservices\\boot.efi' >> /Volumes/CatalinaBoot/startup.nsh
echo 'FS4:\System\Library\Coreservices\\boot.efi' >> /Volumes/CatalinaBoot/startup.nsh
hdiutil detach /Volumes/CatalinaBoot
VBoxManage convertfromraw --format VDI /tmp/CatalinaBoot.dmg ~/Desktop/CatalinaBoot.vdi

Attach the created CatalinaBoot.vdi disk first in your VM and it will automatically run the boot.efi from the ISO created as they describe.

Note when I tested it on VirtualBox 6.1.2 the ISO generated by the tutorial would fail when using a SATA controller giving the error: "BdsDxe: loading Boot0001 “UEFI VBOX CD-ROM VB1-1a2b3c4d ”". When connected to an IDE controller it worked fine.

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VirtualBox 6.1.2 will not run Catalina 10.15.2 and later guests

Virtualbox 6.1.0 added support for booting APFS. Unfortunately there is a problem if you do not have 10.15.1 version of Install macOS Catalina.app.

There is a bug in VirtualBox which is exposed by 10.15.2 and later versions of boot.efi. See this VirtualBox forum thread Catalina 10.15.2 does not start. As mentioned in the relevant VirtualBox Ticket #19188

The source of the boot hangs has been identified, although fixing it correctly isn't entirely trivial. It's triggered by a very, very old problem in VirtualBox. <snip> At any rate it will be fixed for the next maintenance release.

If you want to run a macOS 10.15.2 or later guest (on any VirtualBox 6.0.2 host) you must use boot.efi from Catalina 10.15.1 or Mojave. You could do this yourself following the steps in the VirtualBox forum thread or use this script on GitHub macos-guest-virtualbox

As 10.15.1 is no longer available on Apple servers you may need to download and unpack Mojave to get boot.efi and then copy this first to unpacked Catalina installer and then afterwards to Catalina itself. As they say in their linked workaround

The real easy way to run Catalina is to use the script to install Mojave on VirtualBox and then run it in VMWare and upgrade it to Catalina.