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Sequoia as Virtual Machine on Intel (Fusion or Parallels).

G

gilby101

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 17, 2010
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Tasmania
What progress are others making to get Sequoia running as a VM?

I have a Sequoia supported Intel host (iMac 2019) running macOS 14.5 and VMware Fusion 13.5.2 (latest). But I am interested in Parallels as well.

I can create Sequoia ISO, create new VM (tell Fusion it macOS 14), boot from the ISO as a CD and install Sequoia. That all works (including networking with bridged connection) and I have installed VMware Tools which enables shared folders, etc.

Issues:

1. I am unable to get Apple Paravirtualisation video working. With a Sonoma VM, I can do this by adding two lines to the .vmx file:
svga.present="FALSE"
appleGPU0.present="TRUE"
But with my Sequoia VM, the VM gets stuck part way through booting.
I remember that macOS 14 beta 1 has the same issue, but this was fixed by beta 2. Hope for the same this year.

2. Yellow wallpaper. This will be due to the fancy wallpapers requiring Metal and the Fusion svga video driver not supporting Metal. Workaround: change to a simple wallpaper. Fix will be when the Apple Paravirtualisation is working.

3. Login to Apple fails with "unknown error". This is both in Feedback Assistant and System Preference > iCloud. Login via Safari works fine. This is (to me) a surprising issue.

4. Occasional 100% CPU hangs. I suspect (but have no evidence) that this is video related.

Any comments on those issues? Comparison with Parallels experience as well as Fusion progress.

What progress are any of your making with VMs on Intel hosts?
 
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kocoman said:
how to make the ISO for Sequoia for Vmware fusion?
Click to expand...
Usually I would say use MIST which will do the download and (if you choose it) build the ISO for you!! Download link is here. But it doesn't yet have the Sequoia beta in its list. So (assuming you have downloaded the install image):

% hdiutil create -o /tmp/Sequoia -size 18000m -volname Sequoia -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
created: /tmp/Sequoia.dmg
% hdiutil attach /tmp/Sequoia.dmg -noverify -mountpoint /Volumes/Sequoia
% sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ 15\ Beta/beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Sequoia --nointeraction
Erasing disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 100%
Copying essential files...
Copying the macOS RecoveryOS...
Making disk bootable...
Copying to disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 100%
Install media now available at "/Volumes/Install macOS 15 beta"
% sudo hdiutil detach /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ 15\ beta
% hdiutil convert /tmp/Sequoia.dmg -format UDTO -o /tmp/Sequoia.cdr
Reading Driver Descriptor Map (DDM : 0)…
Reading Apple (Apple_partition_map : 1)…
Reading (Apple_Free : 2)…
Reading disk image (Apple_HFS : 3)…
..............................................................................................................................................................................................................
Elapsed Time: 52.690s
Speed: 322.6MB/s
Savings: 0.0%
created: /tmp/Sequoia.cdr
% mv /tmp/Sequoia.cdr ~/Downloads/Sequoia.iso
% rm /tmp/Sequoia.dmg

Modify locations as needed. I have included the output for the longer commands.
Note that the 3rd command should be one line from the sudo to --nointeraction.
 
Last edited:
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I always find the easiest way in Parallels is make a Mac OS VM from the latest release. Then download the Mac beta installer, drop that in the VM and run it there and update. I have Sequoia running in Parallels with no issues.
 
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what is this mkisofs -allow-limited-size -l -J -r -iso-level 3 -V InstallAssistant -o InstallAssistant.iso path/to/InstallAssistant.pkg scripts/run_offline.sh
why is there the scripts/run_offline.sh at the end? can this run on osx or do I have to use linux?? thx

genisoimage osx
 
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I've tried Sequoia using both Parallels and Fusion on Intel. Could not get it to work on Fusion (didn't try that hard TBH) and Parallels Tools killed it. Unless your on a mission to prove a point regarding VM Sequoia I would suggest installing it on an external drive or in a new volume group. From other posters on this forum the volume group method for the current developer release 1 only if on Intel due to potential firmware conflicts on M hardware should you wish to downgrade!
 
kocoman said:
it mean fusion not support osx host with osx guest??
Click to expand...
macOS guests on Apple silicon hosts are not supported. Windows and Linus guests are. Use simpler apps like VirtualBuddy to do this. https://github.com/insidegui/VirtualBuddy. There are others, built on Apple's hypervisor.

macOS guests on Intel hosts are fine. That is what I use.

kocoman said:
what is this mkisofs -allow-limited-size -l -J -r -iso-level 3 -V InstallAssistant -o InstallAssistant.iso path/to/InstallAssistant.pkg scripts/run_offline.sh
why is there the scripts/run_offline.sh at the end? can this run on osx or do I have to use linux?? thx
Click to expand...
I have no idea what this refers to.
 
wonderings said:
I always find the easiest way in Parallels is make a Mac OS VM from the latest release. Then download the Mac beta installer, drop that in the VM and run it there and update. I have Sequoia running in Parallels with no issues.
Click to expand...
I will try the update method with Fusion and see if that is any different.
 
gilby101 said:
macOS guests on Apple silicon hosts are not supported. Windows and Linus guests are. Use simpler apps like VirtualBuddy to do this. https://github.com/insidegui/VirtualBuddy. There are others, built on Apple's hypervisor.

macOS guests on Intel hosts are fine. That is what I use.


I have no idea what this refers to.
Click to expand...
sorry.. on the main page..

Yes, we support offline macOS installations now - see this document 🎉


github.com

OSX-KVM/run_offline.md at master · kholia/OSX-KVM

Run macOS on QEMU/KVM. With OpenCore + Monterey + Ventura + Sonoma support now! Only commercial (paid) support is available now to avoid spammy issues. No Mac system is required. - kholia/OSX-KVM
github.com github.com

I only have intel mac, don't have m1.. the ios/iphone like security makes it obselete I don't want buy it

thx
 
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wonderings said:
If you have Sonoma loaded, you should just be able to update like you normally would with a new Mac OS release inside that VM.
Click to expand...
I know have Apple Paravirtualisation working. My steps were:
1) Create new VM with Beta 1 (as in my original post) with Paravirtualisation not working.
2) Update the VM to Beta 2, and now it is working as expected.
No doubt it would be working on a new VM with Beta 2.

This is just like last year where Sonoma Beta 2 was needed.

No iCloud login.
 
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I got parallels 20 to work to install osx guest.. but its sharedfolders (shared folders) doesn't work? any ideas thx
 
gilby101 said:
I know have Apple Paravirtualisation working. My steps were:
1) Create new VM with Beta 1 (as in my original post) with Paravirtualisation not working.
2) Update the VM to Beta 2, and now it is working as expected.
No doubt it would be working on a new VM with Beta 2.

This is just like last year where Sonoma Beta 2 was needed.

No iCloud login.
Click to expand...
I take it iCloud login is now dead in Sequoia on Intel VMs? I can't find anyway to make it work. All that happens is it tells you Invalid Username/Password. Which was super confusing and I wasted hours before I realized they made changes to Sequoia that seem to kneecap the ability to iCloud login using VMs on Intel machines.
 
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