MacOS in a VM - Problems installing

burner_Late2525 · November 26, 2019

Hi. I'd like to create a VM in Virtualbox to run High Sierra 10.13, as it, as far as I know, doesn't support 10.14 and I definitely don't want 10.15 currently.

I have VMware Workstation, but don't want to install the required modifications to make it work, as it seems a little sketchy. I've opted for Oracle Virtualbox 5.xx instead.

My problem is that, I cannot continue my install as I get the following error when using an 10.13.2 ISO (this one is bootable). After following multiple guides, like this one (From the 'Creating VM' section and down): https://tobiwashere.de/2017/10/virtualbox-how-to-create-a-macos-high-sierra-vm-to-run-on-a-mac-host-system/

I get this error: The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged

This is an quite old ISO I've made. I have obtained the 10.13.6 files for the installer too a long time ago, but I can't seem to make this DMG/ISO bootable. It could from a little reseach seem that 10.13.2 might be broken in some way, but I can't seem to figure out how to make a new bootable ISO from the installer files...

Thanks for any help!

DrMacintosh · November 26, 2019

10.15 is really the only version of macOS somewhat designed to be in a VM. Outside of that you might be better off looking at another site to try and help you get this setup. You’re going to have a lot of issues and basically nothing will work out of the box.

What exactly is your goal in trying to VM macOS?

burner_Late2525 · November 26, 2019

19 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

10.15 is really the only version of macOS somewhat designed to be in a VM. Outside of that you might be better off looking at another site to try and help you get this setup. You’re going to have a lot of issues and basically nothing will work out of the box.

What exactly is your goal in trying to VM macOS?

I want to test some basic things and in general have a VM ready for some things to try in MacOS. I know performance will be really bad and so on, but my problem is in the actual install process. I suspect it might be my ISO that's broken (or rather, 10.13.2), so the thing I'm really searching for, is help making a bootable ISO for 10.13.6 with the files I have from a previous App Store download.

But thanks for taking the time to answer!