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OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

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Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#71
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming you are using an AMD GPU? The last time I looked, there were significant challenges with getting a Nvidia or iGPU to work.

The issues I know of with GPU passthrough are: Non-Quadro NVIDIA cards don't want to work in a VM so you need to disguise KVM to get them to work. NVIDIA says this is a bug but I think they just want you to buy quadro cards. [1] AMD Bonaire and Hawaii architecture cards have issues with resetting in a VM, so you can't let the VM go to sleep or shutdown. Newer (R9 480) or older AMD cards don't have this issue. [2] [1]…

Do you have a source that confirms that the 480 doesn't have this issue? I currently have a set of scripts that disable/enable my 380X automatically when my VM stops/starts and I would love to get rid of them (and get a new card as well).

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#72

This is really cool. Someone fork this locally before Apple sends their takedown notice.

You don't really need to do anything besides a normal `git clone`; any clone is as good as any other, really.

If the project disappears from Github someone would need to find a different place to host collaborative development, though. Maybe there needs to be some sort of Github-alternative in a friendly jurisdiction for projects that are too controversial to host on a mainstream provider in the US? E.g. for DMCA-violating projects, video codecs, DRM removal tools, etc.? I'm not that familiar with the alternatives but it wouldn't surprise me if there are better options in terms of resistance to US court orders.

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part of that EULA section that really gives me trouble is "...that is already running the Apple Software...". I want to run OSX in a VM on my MacBook Pro with Windows as the host OS. I used to do it the other way around, boot into OSX and run Windows in a Parallels VM. These days most of my work is in Windows, especially VR work, so it's more practical to boot into Windows. (And I like Windows better than OSX any…

It's pretty easy to solve that issue by applying a community made fix: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/339-unlocker/

Thank you very much! That looks like a perfect solution for me.

I especially like the fact that it's Python source code, so I can look at the code and get some sense of comfort that it doesn't have anything sketchy in it.

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part of that EULA section that really gives me trouble is "...that is already running the Apple Software...". I want to run OSX in a VM on my MacBook Pro with Windows as the host OS. I used to do it the other way around, boot into OSX and run Windows in a Parallels VM. These days most of my work is in Windows, especially VR work, so it's more practical to boot into Windows. (And I like Windows better than OSX any…

It's pretty easy to solve that issue by applying a community made fix: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/339-unlocker/

he'll still be in violation of the EULA though...

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#76
post #39

I tried doing this the other day, hoping that I would finally be able to get a working OSX setup on my desktop (have made several attempts with no success at getting it working bare-metal on my Z600). Sadly it just ended with more kernel panics, something I was hoping would be avoided as I got the impression from some sources that QEMU was a more straightforward solution than trying to run it on bare-metal. Having sa…

I clean installed macOS Sierra on my 2013 Macbook Air this week it seems just fine to me. So far, I only have a couple of issues with it: 1) more bloat (but almost every OS has this problem). 2) cuts off support for some older Macs for no good reason. One thing I really like the new default terminal font: San Francisco Mono. I don't know if that font is new to the OS entirely but I really like it. I also really like…

The reason they cut off older macs was due to them not having AES accel in the CPU, so there was a small reason for it.

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#77
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what would be the best solution to run three (Fedora, Windows 8 or 10 and OSX or more) OS' under a common hypervisor and achieve (almost) full speed? Or alternatively, Fedora as main and the other ones as VMs, but also with (almost) full speed and graphics acceleration.

You're not going to get full speed, but it depends on what you want to be fast. Graphics intensive activities are going to be constrained by the specifics of the design you go for. Apart from that the biggest constraint is memory since every GB allocated to one OS will by definition not be available to the others. However CPU support for virtualization is pretty good these days. Most of the i7 and i5 CPUs have built…

Crap situation for me then since I need CPU, GPU, and RAM to the max for Video and 3D DCC apps.

Somehow, I thought there was this magical hypervisor that would give all to one OS that I could use and then, out of nowhere, I could switch to another OS in a way that first one would go to sleep and its memory put on hard drive and the other one would wake up its memory from hard drive and show up. I wouldn't need them running concurrently, but I would like to have them switch fast.

In a way I would like to consolidate three machines into one without having to run three machines or wait for shutdown/boot sequences (with multi boot).

Bonus would be to share disks (non boot ones) and copy and paste. That would be really great.

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#78
post #2

Does this support 3D hardware acceleration? That seems to be a common problem for these types of setups.

Hardware acceleration can be done using PCI passthrough to pass your graphics card on to the guest OS. IOMMU and VFIO are two terms I commonly see associated with this, but having never done it myself I am not sure what the difference between them is - perhaps someone can chime in?

VT-d = Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O which basically means the CPU has an IOMMU, the IOMMU is a piece of hardware for doing PCIe DMA re-mapping to provide VM isolation. VFIO is the linux driver for passing through IOMMU devices.

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#79
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming you are using an AMD GPU? The last time I looked, there were significant challenges with getting a Nvidia or iGPU to work.

The issues I know of with GPU passthrough are: Non-Quadro NVIDIA cards don't want to work in a VM so you need to disguise KVM to get them to work. NVIDIA says this is a bug but I think they just want you to buy quadro cards. [1] AMD Bonaire and Hawaii architecture cards have issues with resetting in a VM, so you can't let the VM go to sleep or shutdown. Newer (R9 480) or older AMD cards don't have this issue. [2] [1]…

They don't want to work, but they do. I have no issue with my GTX1070 after a few minutes after playing with some KVM settings.

Re: OS X-KVM: Running Mac OS X El Capitan on KVM and QEMU

#80
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've installed an AppleScript handler from within Messages.app. The script below is called ReceiveMessage.script and is located in ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.iChat and basically accepts messages. That's how I handle inbound messages, and for outbound I basically also have a separate script for sending out messages. I do the actual work in separate python scripts called by the shell scripts though. -- sni…

I like the project, but I really don't like applescript. In programming languages, it seems there is a tension between easy-to-write and easy-to-read. And I suppose a fork in the continuum with easy-to-read-for-novices and easy-to-read-for-programmers. applescript went overboard on the easy-to-read-for-novices at severe cost to easy-to-write.

FWIW you can use JavaScript now instead of AppleScript.
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