Running a VM Inside of a VM

[Stentorian]

Hello, 

 

So you've probably heard this question a lot and before you go putting "no" in the comments please read my whole post first because there are some things I want to specify beforehand. 

 

I am current running on a service called Shadow which is a virtual gaming PC hosted in a data center in France. My local machine, to which I run the Shadow client), is a dual core i3, 8GB RAM laptop from Acer. 

My Shadow PC is a server in a rank mount that is ran on a virtual machine through Qemu. 

 

I want to learn iOS app programming but I want to learn it through XCode. I do understand there are ways of coding an iOS app on Windows but they're complicated and the UI of XCode looks aesthetically pleasing and I want to give it a go. 

 

Now what I want to know is, is there any possible way of running a Macintosh Virtual Machine on my Shadow PC at all? 

If there is a way, please feel free to link me to any tutorials or guides and I will happily give it a go. 

 

Please don't be rude to me in the comments and call me dumb. I know it's not possible through the likes of VirtualBox or VMWare, I am just wondering if there is a way of doing it somehow. 

 

Many Thanks.

Ben

[JTPOTATO]

There is technically a way through virtualbox, but it certainly aint easy

 

You usually need a MAC first to create that actual install files... take a look at this: https://www.howtogeek.com/289594/how-to-install-macos-sierra-in-virtualbox-on-windows-10/

 

Might be easier to just buy an older mac mini or something to run it on?

[LtStaffel]

I would look up the latest hackintosh methods. If it's a full VM it should work exactly like a real computer and the process won't be any different than doing it on a real computer.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Why not just rent a osx virtual machine in the virtual machine in the first place?

[Jarno.]

Virtualbox actually does not support nested virtualization at this time (This is how its called to run a VM within a VM. You need either VMware of KVM.

[Stentorian]

1 hour ago, JTPOTATO said:

There is technically a way through virtualbox, but it certainly aint easy

 

You usually need a MAC first to create that actual install files... take a look at this: https://www.howtogeek.com/289594/how-to-install-macos-sierra-in-virtualbox-on-windows-10/

 

Might be easier to just buy an older mac mini or something to run it on?

Is there any place of getting the install files where they're locally hosted. If you have a mac, could you help please? Also I literally have no budget to buy an older mac.

 

1 hour ago, LtStaffel said:

I would look up the latest hackintosh methods. If it's a full VM it should work exactly like a real computer and the process won't be any different than doing it on a real computer.

Windows identifies it's a virtual machine and when I try to run a VM in VirtualBox it gives an error quoting "Virtualisation is not enabled". 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why not just rent a osx virtual machine in the virtual machine in the first place?

As mentioned above, I have no money to rent a Mac as well as my Shadow. My Shadow is more important because I do streaming occasionally and I enjoy a fast PC to just do things.

 

1 hour ago, Jarno. said:

Virtualbox actually does not support nested virtualization at this time (This is how its called to run a VM within a VM. You need either VMware of KVM.

Any suggested tutorials on how to use VMware or KVM please? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

19 minutes ago, Stentorian said:

Windows identifies it's a virtual machine and when I try to run a VM in VirtualBox it gives an error quoting "Virtualisation is not enabled". 

They they didn't enable nested virtualization, so you can't run a vm, you can try to emulate, but thats gonna be slow. Really just rent a mac vm or run the vm on your personal system or buy a used mac.

[Stentorian]

11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

They they didn't enable nested virtualization, so you can't run a vm, you can try to emulate, but thats gonna be slow. Really just rent a mac vm or run the vm on your personal system or buy a used mac.

My personal system has 2 cores and 4GB of RAM, it isn't going to handle a VM that well. 

Also I have no budget at all to buy a used mac or rent a virtual mac. 

[LtStaffel]

2 hours ago, Stentorian said:

Windows identifies it's a virtual machine and when I try to run a VM in VirtualBox it gives an error quoting "Virtualisation is not enabled".

https://www.howtogeek.com/213795/how-to-enable-intel-vt-x-in-your-computers-bios-or-uefi-firmware/

[Stentorian]

7 hours ago, LtStaffel said:

https://www.howtogeek.com/213795/how-to-enable-intel-vt-x-in-your-computers-bios-or-uefi-firmware/

As mentioned in the my original post, I am running on a Shadow which means I don't get access to the BIOS to change settings like that. 

[LogicalDrm]

10 hours ago, Stentorian said:

Is there any place of getting the install files where they're locally hosted. If you have a mac, could you help please?

While general discussion on Hackintoshes is allowed. Asking or giving advice on how to gain access to install files without buying or owning a Mac isn't. This falls into piracy ruling of our Community Standards:

Quote

•  Any discussion on how to engage in piracy is not allowed, including the discussion of hacking or cracking.
• Discussion of piracy in general is acceptable (e.g. "Game X becomes the most pirated game ever"). 
• Hackintosh discussion is permitted.
• Redistribution of copyrighted software, including links to third party hosting sites, is not permitted. 

 

[Stentorian]

7 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

While general discussion on Hackintoshes is allowed. Asking or giving advice on how to gain access to install files without buying or owning a Mac isn't. This falls into piracy ruling of our Community Standards:

 

OK apologies for asking. I've actually had a look and to be able to put an app on the app store you have to pay £75 to be enrolled which I think is ridiculous because they make money off in-app purchases off other apps and they basically are minted and don't need £75 a year just so people can make an app. 

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, Stentorian said:

OK apologies for asking. I've actually had a look and to be able to put an app on the app store you have to pay £75 to be enrolled which I think is ridiculous because they make money off in-app purchases off other apps and they basically are minted and don't need £75 a year just so people can make an app. 

The £75 is essentially a means to prevent spam, it's not really earning them any money (the review before an app is allowed onto the store probably costs them way more than that). Apple wants to prevent people from spamming the store with millions of "hello world" apps, so the £75 ensures a developer is at least somewhat serious about putting an app on the store.

 

You don't need a paid developer account to develop an app to put on your own device(s). If you're just getting started, getting an app onto the store shouldn't be your first concern (Deploying to a Device without an Apple Developer Account).

 

As others have said, a Mac really is the best means if you want to develop iOS apps. Otherwise you'll probably spend more time getting your Hackintosh to work and/or keeping it up to date than doing actual development.

[LtStaffel]

11 hours ago, Stentorian said:

As mentioned in the my original post, I am running on a Shadow which means I don't get access to the BIOS to change settings like that. 

Well if that's the issue and you can't access it then you can't run any VMs.

[Stentorian]

3 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

The £75 is essentially a means to prevent spam, it's not really earning them any money (the review before an app is allowed onto the store probably costs them way more than that). Apple wants to prevent people from spamming the store with millions of "hello world" apps, so the £75 ensures a developer is at least somewhat serious about putting an app on the store.

 

You don't need a paid developer account to develop an app to put on your own device(s). If you're just getting started, getting an app onto the store shouldn't be your first concern (Deploying to a Device without an Apple Developer Account).

 

As others have said, a Mac really is the best means if you want to develop iOS apps. Otherwise you'll probably spend more time getting your Hackintosh to work and/or keeping it up to date than doing actual development.

Is there any way that the link you sent will work with Ionic? That's the platform I use for developing iOS and Android apps. 

 

2 hours ago, LtStaffel said:

Well if that's the issue and you can't access it then you can't run any VMs.

I am aware that I can't run it the easy way but I was wondering if there was any way of running one without the need of the option in BIOS. 

[LtStaffel]

23 hours ago, Stentorian said:

I am aware that I can't run it the easy way but I was wondering if there was any way of running one without the need of the option in BIOS. 

Then your only option is emulation, which I don't think has been done. You can look up "macintosh emulator"s I suppose. I would just dev on Windows until you can afford one of the other, much better, options everyone else here has recommended. I've been where you are, without a lot of processing power and no budget, and that restricts your options a lot, especially when we're talking about Apple products. However, in your opening post here, you said a lot of it is aesthetics and simplicity. Those are often the first things traded in favor of lower prices or better performance. I think you will have to make the trade off right now and learn on Windows until you save up enough for a different solution. Just focus and getting started and learn the iOS dev part before you spend too much time or money or effort getting a Mac if you can do it on Windows now for free.

[Stentorian]

On 9/30/2019 at 9:29 PM, LtStaffel said:

Then your only option is emulation, which I don't think has been done. You can look up "macintosh emulator"s I suppose. I would just dev on Windows until you can afford one of the other, much better, options everyone else here has recommended. I've been where you are, without a lot of processing power and no budget, and that restricts your options a lot, especially when we're talking about Apple products. However, in your opening post here, you said a lot of it is aesthetics and simplicity. Those are often the first things traded in favor of lower prices or better performance. I think you will have to make the trade off right now and learn on Windows until you save up enough for a different solution. Just focus and getting started and learn the iOS dev part before you spend too much time or money or effort getting a Mac if you can do it on Windows now for free.

Yeah I get where you're coming from I just thought of looking to see whether there was any solutions. Appreciate the help!

[Eigenvektor]

On 9/29/2019 at 10:37 PM, Stentorian said:

Is there any way that the link you sent will work with Ionic? That's the platform I use for developing iOS and Android apps.

The article I linked to is tagged as "Ionic", is hosted on ionicframework.com and uses an Ionic app as an example... so I guess it doesn't? /s

 

Also, I just noticed this part at the bottom:

Quote

Hey PC users! All done with development and ready to roll your app out, but don’t have a Mac to package it into that precious, precious IPA file for submission to the Apple App Store? Not a problem. There are great services available that let you upload your Ionic project, then package your app for you. PhoneGap Build from Adobe is a long-standing favorite of the hybrid community.

 

Here at Ionic we offer Ionic Package, which makes the process as easy as creating a security profile in your Ionic account with the certificate and provisioning profile for your app, then running

 

ionic package build ios --profile <security_profile_name>

 

[Stentorian]

On 10/3/2019 at 4:22 PM, Eigenvektor said:

Also, I just noticed this part at the bottom:

Quote

Hey PC users! All done with development and ready to roll your app out, but don’t have a Mac to package it into that precious, precious IPA file for submission to the Apple App Store? Not a problem. There are great services available that let you upload your Ionic project, then package your app for you. PhoneGap Build from Adobe is a long-standing favorite of the hybrid community.

 

Here at Ionic we offer Ionic Package, which makes the process as easy as creating a security profile in your Ionic account with the certificate and provisioning profile for your app, then running

 

ionic package build ios --profile <security_profile_name>

 

I think you have to link a developer account in their online dashboard for that to work. 

[Stentorian]

On 10/3/2019 at 4:22 PM, Eigenvektor said:

The article I linked to is tagged as "Ionic", is hosted on ionicframework.com and uses an Ionic app as an example... so I guess it doesn't?

Also the link uses a Mac which is defeating the whole purpose of using Ionic to make an app on Windows. I guess I'll just have to keep an eye out for a cheap Mac Mini or something.