Running Mac OS X as a QEMU/KVM Guest

Processor emulator using a portable dynamic translator. QEMU emulates a full system (usually a PC), including a processor and various peripherals. It can be used to launch a different Operating System without rebooting the PC or to debug system code. Working with ISO and IMG files in QEMU - Linux - Duration: 14:28. Kris Occhipinti 42,098 views. HOW TO RUN MAC OS SIERRA ON UBUNTU 17.04 / EASY 2017 WALKTHROUGH (WITH DOWNLOAD LINKS).

Gabriel L. Somlo

See the old version of this page here.FINAL UPDATE (2018-10-21):
I no longer have the cycles to work on this project. At this point QEMU and KVM are mostly capable of supporting OS X (up to Sierra), and the largest portion of the effort still required lies with edk2/ovmf (start with my fork on github as indicated below, and go from there).
Additionally, since Apple machines have become increasingly lockeddown and end-userunfriendly, I can't continue considering them for any upcoming hardware refresh (which is too bad, they used to make almost perfect Linux machines for the last 20 years!).
NOTE: Installer .iso images prepared based on Sierra 10.12.4 or later will hang during boot. However, guest images installed with 10.12.3 or earlier can successfully be upgraded, assuming the applesmc fix mentioned above is applied. The cause for this is as of yet unknown (to me, at least).

1. Prerequisites

You will need the following:

Tools: git, gcc[-c++], nasm, [auto]make, iasl, kernel-devel, etc.
Linux kernel ≥ 4.7
QEMU ≥ 2.6.0
Patched OVMF firmware, built from source

I currently use Fedora 26. Anything close to it in terms of 'freshness' should likely do just fine.To build the patched OVMF firmware blob, follow these instructions:The result of this process is a firmware blob named OVMF.fd, which will be copied to your home directory by the last command shown above. A binary OVMF blob built by applying my patches on top of the current edk2 master branch (as indicated by the abbreviated commit ID in the file name) is available to help speed things up, but you're strongly encouraged to build your own :)

2. Creating an OS X boot DVD iso image

SnowLeopard (10.6) was the last OS X version released in DVD format. Starting with Lion (10.7), an install DVD (.iso) image may be generated on an OS X machine by following the steps below (Thanks Dick Marinus for pointing out the Yosemite-specific updates!):First, create an empty hard drive image:Using the following command line, install OS X from the boot media created earlier (Thanks Jim Burns for the Penryn hint, which is needed instead of core2duo as of Sierra):In addition to the OVMF.fd firmware blob, the DVD image, and a blank hard drive image, you'll need to provide the value of OSK0 and OSK1, as a single concatenated 64-character string. If you own a Mac and run Linux on it natively (the license-compliant use case for the application of these instructions), you can retrieve them by compiling and running SmcDumpKey.c.Finally, to start your freshly installed guest, run:NOTE: If using qemu ≤ 2.8, substitute '-device usb-mouse' instead of '-device usb-tablet'. A patch to make the latter work with OS X (thanks to Phil Dennis-Jordan) only became available starting with version 2.9.0.

4. Is This Legal?

Let me start with the obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice!We know that OS X is supported on commercial virtualization solutions such as VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Reading through Apple's EULA (which states that '[..] you are granted a [..] license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-Branded computer at any one time'), it appears everything is OK as long as the underlying hardware is made by Apple.What if the hypervisor OS is different than OS X? (both Fusion and Parallels both use OS X as the hypervisor OS). Well, it appears VMWare ESXi allows running OS X guests (presumably only if the hardware is, once again, manufactured by Apple). This is clearly an example of OS X running as guest on top of a non-OS X hypervisor, on top of Apple-manufactured hardware.So, it is my belief that, as long as I'm running a Linux/KVM hypervisor on a genuine Mac computer (which I've personally been doing exclusively since cca. 2006, btw), the license does not forbid me from running OS X as a VM guest on top of it.In terms of advice, all I can say is: Check with the legal and/or moral authorities in your local jurisdiction before trying this at home! :)

5. Future Work

A few things still need work:

OS X High Sierra (10.13) doesn't boot at this time. No idea yet if (and how) the new Apple filesystem (APFS) plays into this.
None of QEMU's current audio devices appear to have native OS X driver support
Screen resolution / resizing doesn't work
Most importantly, the HFS+ EDK2 patches (and the OS X boot support ones which depend on HFS+) are rather far from being palatable to the upstream EDK2 project. A major refactoring of the HFS+ support is needed first; Then, cleaning up and upstreaming the OS X boot support work originally done by Reza Jelveh would be needed.
- Additional details on https://github.com/gsomlo/edk2 are needed for those interested. The repository contains three branches, stacked on top of each other: On top of the master branch (which tracks upstream, there's gls-hfsplus, containing the HFS+ driver in its current, fsw-based form. On top of that, there's gls-macboot containing Reza's hacks to get OS X to load, which will need to be cleaned up once we have a reliable upstream HFS+ filesystem. Finally, on top of everything, there's gls-miscopt, containing convenient hacks for everyday OSX use (e.g. forcing the default screen size to something a bit more useful). I (re)structured my clone of edk2 this way so that I can easily rebase things on top of upstream, while at the same time being able to bounce between filesystem driver development in gls-hfsplus and using OSX.

(Updated Dec 11, 2018)

I recently got an urge to revisit old computer media from the late 90s and early 2000s. Growing up around that time, I remember reading a lot of MacAddict and MacWorld to learn what I could do with a Mac. Building websites, graphic design, hacking the appearance of the UI, all these were explained in the pages of magazines.

These magazines are freely available on the Internet Archive, including their cover discs. I was curious to see what applications were around back then — what about emulating Classic Mac OS to see?

Creative variations in UI design

My first instinct was to reach for VirtualBox, but that is a no go as I need to emulate a Motorola 68K or IBM PowerPC architecture. I recalled that QEMU could emulate other architectures, surely someone has already tried to emulate Mac OS 9.

Yes, many people have already written about emulating Mac OS 9, but only recently (2018) did experimental audio support come out for QEMU. Here is a short guide on how I got it running with MacOS High Sierra as the Host OS.

Note that while QEMU is available in Homebrew, it does not have the experimental audio support (yet).

Internet Archive

Magazines can be browsed right on the archive site, or downloaded as archives or PDFs (or a torrent containing all formats). Cover discs can be downloaded directly as ISO files or a torrent for the ISO. Don’t worry about seedless torrents; these ones are backed with web seeding.

Requirements

DevTools: I already have homebrew and XCode installed; because of this I was not prompted for missing command line tools. If you don’t have them, you might be prompted (by MacOS) to install them.

Hardware: I am not sure about hardware requirements, as most modern Macs will probably eclipse the power needed to run the guest OS. However if you have a low-power CPU (e.g. MacBook) then there may be some struggling.

Windows/Linux: These instructions should probably work there too, although you will probably have to substitute something else for coreaudio in the configuration step.

Get QEMU “Screamer” Fork

These instructions are adapted from Cat_7 from the Emaculation forums

I started by creating a directory for all this emulation stuff.

Next clone the fork of QEMU with experimental audio support:

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Mac Os 10.3 Image File For Qemu