MacOS VM on qubes

Has anybody succeeded in installing a MacOS VM (or other) on qubes? What was your recipe?

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Tried the following:

  • Booting qube from different versions of Niresh ISO (Catalina, Mojave, Lion)
    RESULT: UNSUCCESSFUL
    SeaBIOS loaded correctly, but Qube halted before any GUI loaded.

  • Creating HVM from ready-made MacOS VMDK image
    RESULT: UNSUCCESSFUL
    SeaBIOS said no bootable device found.

  • Booting from Hackintosh Yosemite ISO
    RESULT: UNSUCCESSFUL
    GUI loaded correctly, but then kernel panic occurred.

  • Trying to create Xen file equivalent from Kholia’s OSX-KVM project
    RESULT: UNSUCCESSFUL
    Lack of sufficient knowledge about Xen. Still a work in progress.

MY MOTIVATION FOR DOING SO:
It would be nice to be able to have it alongside my Windows 10 qube that I keep around for:

  • when my family asks me for MacOS technical support. (GNU+Linux satisfied all my daily driver needs wonderfully)
  • development purposes
  • testing malware safely
  • showing people my single laptop running multiple OSes simultaneously

Legality issues aside (I was doing this on a MacBook Air 4,2, before anyone brings it up :stuck_out_tongue: ), I’m sure there would be enough demand out there for this. Especially now that Big Sur likes to ‘phone home’ almost as much as Windows…

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Do you get it to work?

I’m wondering if this script would translate to a Qubes standalone:

maybe no, since the “hardware” is different

Same here. I believe Kholia’s project to be the most promising approach. We need Qubes to use a UEFI firmware in the hackintosh HVM to boot, though.

edit: so, first step is to replace the hvmloader against OVMF_CODE.fd.

After placing OVMF_CODE.fd in dom0:/usr/libexec/xen/boot/ and changing hvmloader to OVMF_CODE.fd with

virt-manager (hvm-mac - overview - xml - change and apply)

I started the HVM with

qvm-start hvm-mac --cdrom=dispXXXX:/home/user/OpenCore.iso

HVM starts, but it looks like qvm-start reverts the change to hvmloader, so I’m back to SeaBIOS. :roll_eyes:

qvm-features hvm-mac uefi 1

(credits: Enabling UEFI boot in qube - #2 by kommuni )

qvm-start hvm-mac --hddisk=dispXXXX:/home/user/OpenCore.img

aaaand OpenCore works!

Hi there, I know this could be a huge waste of time, but it still might be fun and I couldn’t resist. As for all Hackintosh projects this is for educational purposes only.

In a fedora-35-dvm and after increasing private storage max size to 10GB for dispXXXX:

wget https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/raw/master/fetch-macOS-v2.py
chmod +x fetch-macOS-v2.py
./fetch-macOS-v2.py
[..]
Choose a product to download (1-5): 4
[..]
qemu-img convert BaseSystem.dmg -O raw BaseSystem.img

In dom0:

qvm-create -P poolhd0_qubes --property=virt_mode=hvm --property=kernel='' --label blue --standalone hvm-mac
qvm-start hvm-mac --cdrom=dispXXXX:/home/user/BaseSystem.img

So far, so easy.

Now follows the more difficult part. One has to boot via OpenCore and to attach OVMF_CODE (firmware) and OVMF_VARS (nvram) to the HVM. This works for Qemu/KVM (plus libvirt) and should be doable for Qemu/Xen as well.

Anybody interested in joining me in this ride?

Kholia’s github repo (kholia) contains an opencore.qcow2 and a script which sets up the environment for Qemu/KVM: OpenCore-Boot-CD.sh.

PS: worst part might be a few cpu flags which Xen does not pass through as far as I can tell.

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First problem I encountered is that neither BaseSystem.img, BaseSystem.iso, OpenCore.img or OpenCore.iso are recognized as bootable devices (passed with --cdrom or --hddisk alike).

So, let me rephrase my above post into a few questions:

  • how can I pass arguments (an environment) to an Xen-HVM like it is done in OpenCore-Boot-CD.sh (1) for Qemu/KVM?
  • what is Qubes equivalent to qemu-system-x86_64 "${args[@]}"?

I have taken a look into /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/qubesadmin/ in dom0 and tried to understand how qubes starts Qemu/Xen VMs under the hood. Did grep -Ri qemu and grep -Ri xen and was vim-ing through some of the files, but did not really get a grip on how HVMs are started.

  • anybody out there who would like to share his or her knowledge about the starting process of HVMs?

These are the parameters which attach the devices to Qemu/KVM:

[user@dispXXXX ~]$ grep -i drive Downloads/OSX-KVM/OpenCore-Boot-CD.sh
-drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=“$REPO_PATH/$OVMF_DIR/OVMF_CODE.fd”
-drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=“$REPO_PATH/$OVMF_DIR/OVMF_VARS-1024x768.fd”
-drive id=OpenCoreBoot,if=none,snapshot=on,format=qcow2,file=“$REPO_PATH/OpenCore/OpenCore.qcow2”
-device ide-hd,bus=sata.2,drive=OpenCoreBoot
-device ide-hd,bus=sata.3,drive=InstallMedia
-drive id=InstallMedia,if=none,file=“$REPO_PATH/os.dmg”,format=raw
-drive id=MacHDD,if=none,file=“$REPO_PATH/mac_hdd_ng.img”,format=qcow2
-device ide-hd,bus=sata.4,drive=MacHDD

An important step I believe is to exchange the SeaBIOS to OVMF_CODE.fd which seems to be a tianocore firmware port (2) for Qemu.

This is a start:

https://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Snow_Leopard_Server_on_Xen

In qubes-os the config-files for the VMs are not located in /etc/xen/, however, I found them in /etc/libvirt/libxl/ and that are libvirt-files which can even be edited with virsh edit hvm-mac.

As per the macOS EULA, I have my Apple hardware on standby ready to try this :drooling_face:

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Topics have been merged and my last three posts are older then my first three posts.

Anyway, I got OpenCore to run and BaseSystem to boot like this

qvm-features hvm-mac uefi 1
qvm-block a --persistent hvm-mac dispXXXX:loop0
qvm-block a --persistent hvm-mac dispXXXX:loop1
qvm-start hvm-mac

after making the images available in dispXXXX like this

sudo losetup -f /home/user/git/OpenCore.img
sudo losetup -f /home/user/git/BaseSystem.img

Kudos and Thanks to @tzwcfq who also suggested to create a seperate template like this

which might suite the usecase better, since we have to add a lot more then opencore and the installer medium to get the HVM Hackintosh to work.

Next step is to convert as much args from OpenCore-Boot(-CD).sh into /etc/qubes/templates/libvirt/xen/by-name/hvm-mac.xml as possible.

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And that is clearly a pain in the a… - might be easier to take another machine, install qemu, kvm, libvirt, setup a macOS-VM and transfer the macOS.xml to qubes to see which parts of the kvm xml can be used.

For instance to transfer

-cpu Penryn,kvm=on,vendor=GenuineIntel,+invtsc,vmware-cpuid-freq=on,+ssse3,+sse4.2,+popcnt,+avx,+aes,+xsave,+xsaveopt,check

to the existing

  <cpu mode="host-passthrough">
    <feature policy="disable" name="vmx"/>
    <feature policy="disable" name="svm"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="invtsc"/>
  </cpu>

one probably has to take a big dive into qemu’s and libvirt’s manuals.

https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/system/qemu-cpu-models.html

At least

  <cpu mode="custom">
    <model name="Penryn"/>
    <feature policy="disable" name="vmx"/>
    <feature policy="disable" name="svm"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="invtsc"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="ssse3"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="sse4.2"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="popcnt"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="avx"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="aes"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="xsave"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="xsaveopt"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="check"/>
  </cpu>

doesn’t work out of the box.

edit: this cpu-config is supported though…

  <cpu mode="host-passthrough">
    <feature policy="disable" name="vmx"/>
    <feature policy="disable" name="svm"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="invtsc"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="ssse3"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="sse4.2"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="popcnt"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="avx"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="aes"/>
    <feature policy="require" name="xsave"/>
  </cpu>

Try:

  <cpu mode="host-model">
    <model>Penryn</model>
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Works.

And writing the config to /etc/qubes/templates/libvirt/xen/by-name/hvm-mac.xml to make changes permanent works, too.

Also you can add vendor id if it’ll make a difference:

  <cpu mode='host-model'>
    <model vendor_id='GenuineIntel'>Penryn</model>

I’ll do that. And

are accepted now, too.

Do you have an idea how to get

  -device isa-applesmc,osk="ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc"
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file="some_dom0_path/OVMF_CODE.fd"
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,file="some_dom0_path/OVMF_VARS-1024x768.fd"

inside of the xml? I tried a few times and that just got erased by virt-manager without a failure notice.

Hold on… kholia has got a .xml file in his repo…

libvirt: Domain capabilities XML format

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