Virtual machines and OS X

[Michael Crawford]

I don't think shared folders are implemented as network shares, some
other method is used.  However if you do export a host folder as a
share, your guest should be able to mount it.

I was about to say that the folder is made to look like a regular disk
drive but I'm not so sure, that would require the guest to manage the
filesystem structure - allocating sectors &c. - and that's not done
with any of the VMs I've used.

VirtualBox works on my MacBook Pro (Model Identifier MacBookPro10,1),
but the one time I tried to install a Mac OS X guest, the guest
panicked during boot because it was incompatible with the host
microprocessor.

I remain puzzled as to why that would be a problem.  What I wanted to
do was run an earlier OS X so I could develop my iOS App with an older
Xcode version, so I could use the iDevice Simulator to test my App
with some now long-deprecated APIs.

VirtualBox' doc specifically warns that a guest might not run on a
later CPU model than Apple tested it with during development.  I still
find that surprising, as all the CPU vendors work really, really hard
to enable upward compatibility - like the Xeon in my desktop box can
still do 16-bit MS-DOS just fine.  I've never known Linux, Windows nor
BSD to ever have a problem with later CPUs.

However if it's a kernel panic, xnu - the OS X kernel - might have
used a supervisor-mode machine instruction that works differently than
it does on earlier model of CPU.  Because Apple makes both the
hardware and the software they might not be so concerned about making
their code run on just anything:

   Installing Linux on a Dead Badger
   http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml

I don't recall clearly but I think I wanted to run Snow Leopard in a
VM.  Either 64- or 32-bit would be fine.  If either Parallels or
VMWare would work for me I'd really like to hear about it because I
really do want to support the older iDevices with Warp Life, but I
don't want to have to buy yet another Mac just for that.  It's not the
money it's that I already own a whole bunch of computing devices, I
don't want to have another taking up space.

Parallels offers a free demo, I'll give that a try sometime soon.  Does VMWare?

Mike
Michael David Crawford
mdcrawford at gmail.com
http://www.warplife.com/mdc/

   Available for Software Development in the Portland, Oregon Metropolitan
Area.


On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Marko Käning <MK-MacPorts at techno.ms> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> eventually I had to purchase Parallels 9 because VirtualBox wouldn't allow
> to successfully run Mavericks guests on my Mavericks host running on an i7-iMac.
>
> Parallels usually works fine if you _disable_ power saving on the guests!!
>
> Sometimes but I experience hanging guests! Only chance to recover from that is
> to kill the VM in question from within the host system and restart it (which
> means a cold reboot). This usually happens when there is a lot of load with
> e.g. two VMs running with 7 cores each on the i7 (which has 8 real cores only).
> This can also happen when you're creating a snapshot, while the 2nd machine is
> very busy.
>
> Sometimes also the keyboard's CAPSLOCK is engaged, although the keyboard's
> CAPSLOCK LED isn't lit. Recovering from that you will be pressing the key a
> couple of times until the LED is back in sync with what you type.
>
> Greets,
> Marko
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