Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 111 posts

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#101

Post by SXX »

dperfect wrote: post #91
supernes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please elaborate on your GPU passthrough setup? I was under the impression that NVIDIA have explicit checks to see if you're trying to virtualize a consumer brand GPU and throw an error in that case. I have a PC with a GTX 970 that I wanted to try a similar install on, unfortunately the i5-3570K in there doesn't support VT-d from what I can tell.

From my experience with a GTX 950 and a GTX 1060, the macOS Web Driver from NVIDIA doesn't seem to care about virtualization, and it works fine (assuming the drivers and passthrough are configured correctly). Windows is a different story, and I had to use a patched vBIOS[1] to get my 1060 working without Windows 10 throwing the dreaded "Code 43" error (when it detects virtualization and refuses to work). In my case,…

> As for VT-d, I believe the unlocked "K" processors from Intel all have VT-d disabled for some reason.

This was only the case up to Haswell CPUs. They stopped crippling IOMMU capabilities since Haswell Refresh (i7-4790K).

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#102

Post by blacksmith_tb »

whyagaindavid wrote: post #30

for Virtualbox please see https://github.com/geerlingguy/macos-virtualbox-vm

My memory from having gotten an OSX guest running in Virtualbox on an OSX host was that video performance was pretty terrible. Virtualbox seems to only let Windows guests have real access to the GPU? The KVM/QEMU approach here sounds more promising along those lines (though maybe not on OSX hosts).

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#103

Post by meddlepal »

loxias wrote: post #93
meddlepal wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually need something like this internally for non mobile app reasons. We build telepresence.io at Datawire and macOS dev and testing is a huge pain. Interested in a job :) ?

uhhh... actually, yes, can you email me (it's on my profile) or tell me your email? please?

Sure I'll send you an email in the morning :)

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#104

Post by kstenerud »

rograndom wrote: post #61
the_grue wrote: post #50

How does it compare to running a Hackintosh? Is it much easier to set up? Do you still need to have compatible hardware and to mess with drivers and system configuration? How easy are OS upgrades? How is the performance, including graphics? Any issues?

Someone posted a few months ago a story where they were using something similar to this (couldn't find the actual comment, sorry) where they had a HD with a very bare linux install on it that had enough drivers on it to boot on most any modern machine, load up qemu and boot a OSX image. It was basically a "portable" hackintosh that could be moved between most any desktop machine. I thought it was a cool idea, and tri…

Might have been my setup: https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/ma...

I haven't integrated GPU passthrough yet, though.

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#105

Post by voltagex_ »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #62

I've been running my macOS desktop in an ESXi VM for over a year now. I came from a hackintosh, but got tired of the fragility of some upgrades. Some notes on this setup: - Apple supports macOS running inside of ESXi. Officially, only on Apple host hardware (i.e. a Mac Pro, which is on the ESXi compatibility list). Apple even ships a VMXNet3 network driver in macOS. - For ESXi specifically, you have to patch the host…

Two main questions:

* What's your ESXi host?

* How did you learn ESXi? Coming from VirtualBox/VMWare/Hyper V (Windows 10) the learning curve seems very, very steep.

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#106

Post by thcleaner »

SXX wrote: post #96
SXX wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt synthetic benchmarks are actually represent much since really I just tested it and some things are just weird. For instance memory bandwidth is only significantly lower in multi-core test which could be caused might be by both specific of Penryn CPU or some quirk in how Geekbench implement the test. Total score of my host against VM: Host: 3954 single / 13713 multi core macOS VM: 3770 single / 11630 mu…

Additionally I just want to point out this is test done on absolutely default Ubuntu 18.04 with no VM optimizations whatsoever. It's totally possible to significantly improve VMs performance: * By installing / compiling different kernel: low latency preemption option, 1000 HZ timer frequency, etc. * Use HugePages to decrease memory fragmentation. * Play around QEMU own options since right CPU options and host / guest…

thanks, I suppose adding HugePages might give me some memory bandwidth increase

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#107

Post by Fnoord »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #62

I've been running my macOS desktop in an ESXi VM for over a year now. I came from a hackintosh, but got tired of the fragility of some upgrades. Some notes on this setup: - Apple supports macOS running inside of ESXi. Officially, only on Apple host hardware (i.e. a Mac Pro, which is on the ESXi compatibility list). Apple even ships a VMXNet3 network driver in macOS. - For ESXi specifically, you have to patch the host…

How is the GPU 3D performance? Are you able to play Steam games on that machine?

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#108

Post by the_grue »

dperfect wrote: post #68
the_grue wrote: post #50

How does it compare to running a Hackintosh? Is it much easier to set up? Do you still need to have compatible hardware and to mess with drivers and system configuration? How easy are OS upgrades? How is the performance, including graphics? Any issues?

I've set up several Hackintosh machines in the past (bare metal / no hypervisor), but lately I've been using QEMU/KVM almost exclusively - specifically through Proxmox (I tried ESXi for a while, but I prefer the flexibility of QEMU/KVM). Most of the details from the linked guide can be adapted for Proxmox fairly easily. For me, the killer advantage of using a hypervisor is the ability to easily create and restore sna…

Thank you for your perspective.

Re: Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM

#110

Post by panta »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #62

I've been running my macOS desktop in an ESXi VM for over a year now. I came from a hackintosh, but got tired of the fragility of some upgrades. Some notes on this setup: - Apple supports macOS running inside of ESXi. Officially, only on Apple host hardware (i.e. a Mac Pro, which is on the ESXi compatibility list). Apple even ships a VMXNet3 network driver in macOS. - For ESXi specifically, you have to patch the host…

Hi Matthew, I'm very interested in your setup, since I've stability issues with my Hackintosh. May I contact you in private?
Post reply on HN