Running (vanilla) Snow Leopard in a virtualbox VM is now a piece of cake.
If for some reason this doesn’t work (like, you don’t have a compatible processor) you might try
instead.
What you’re going to need:
- An Empire EFI ISO image. Download it from Prasys’ blog.
- An ISO image of Snow Leopard. (NOT a .dmg). Take an image of a retail copy, available from your friendly retailer.
- VirtualBox 3.2.6, which you can get from the VirtualBox website.
We’re going to set up the virtual machine from the command line once again. You’ll only need a total of 10 commands to get your VM installed and booted.
I’m assuming that your VM will be called “osx“. The base folder will be /vbox, you’ll store your ISO images in /vbox/iso and you’ll create a hard drive image for your virtual machine called “disk01.vdi“. These items are color coded below so you can see where you need to change them to suit your setup.
Virtual Machine initialization:
VBoxManage createvm –name osx –ostype MacOS_64 –register –basefolder /vbox
VBoxManage modifyvm osx –memory 1536
VBoxManage modifyvm osx –accelerate3d on –vram 32
VBoxManage storagectl osx –add sata –controller IntelAHCI –name “SATA Controller”
VBoxManage storagectl osx –add ide –controller PIIX4 –name “IDE Controller”
VBoxManage storagectl osx –name “SATA Controller” –hostiocache on
VBoxManage storagectl osx –name “IDE Controller” –hostiocache on
VBoxManage createhd –filename /vbox/osx/disk01.vdi –size 40960 –variant Split2G –remember
VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “SATA Controller” –type hdd –port 0 –device 0 –medium /vbox/osx/disk01.vdi
VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “IDE Controller” –type dvddrive –port 0 –device 0 –medium /vbox/iso/empireEFI.iso
Snow Leopard installation:
At this point, you can power on your virtual machine:
VBoxManage startvm osx –type vrdp
Note: I use vrdp because I like to run my VMs on servers, You can omit the “–type vrdp” and the reguar GUI will pop up.
At this point, the system will boot from the EmpireEFI image. You’ll see the chameleon logo and an image of a CDROM. Now you need to attach your Snow Leopard ISO to the Virtualbox VM:
VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “IDE Controller” –port 0 –device 0 –type dvddrive –medium /vbox/iso/snowleopard.iso
Once you’ve done that, go back to the VM and hit the F5 key to rescan, Chameleon will pick up the Snow Leopard image. From here you can hit Enter and watch as the system boots into OSX.
At that point you can follow the regular OS X install procedure: Partition your drive, and let the installer run to completion.
Post OS Installation precedure:
Once the installer complete, you’ll see a message “Install Failed”. Don’t panic, it didn’t really. We just need to give it a helping hand.
Switch the EmpireEFI image back again:
VBoxManage storageattach osx –storagectl “IDE Controller” –port 0 –device 0 –type dvddrive –medium /vbox/iso/empireEFI.iso
Then reboot:
VBoxManage controlvm osx reset
Once this happens, you’ll see Chameleon come up with two choices to boot from. Use your arrow key to select the disk you just installed OSX onto, and then type “-v” and hit enter.
OS X should boot (in verbose mode). You’ll then be able to run through the account setup process, and eventually you’ll get your fresh, shiny OSX desktop.
Once you’re booted, you should run the “MyHack Installer”. You can find an earlier version on the EmpireEFI CD in the folder “Extra/post-installation”. Since your networking already works, (assuming your host machine has internet connectivity)…
From the Virtual Machine, browse to http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=242 and download the latest, custom version (ready for 10.6.4 upgrade). Install the package and reboot.