EFI is broken for RAM amounts above 3456MB RAM at 32MB VRAM in 64bit Mode

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

When trying to assign more than 3456MB RAM to a Mac OS X Server 10.6.8 guest in 64bit Mode running on a Mac OS X 10.6.8 host the EFI won't initiate the boot process properly. I observed different behaviors depending on the amount of RAM and VRAM I assigned:

• Up to 3456MB RAM at 32MB VRAM or 3328MB RAM at 128MB VRAM everything runs fine
• When assigning 3457MB RAM at 32MB VRAM I get an "No Mapping Found" Error in the EFI and drop back to an EFI shell
• For higher amounts of RAM (like 3500MB RAM at 32MB VRAM) I get only a black screen that changes in size several times

Please have a look at the attached screen shots and logs.

I need to run a Mac OS X Server 10.6 guest inside Virtual Box for some serious work: I have lots of Adobe Freehand documents, Adobe Freehand was obsoleted by Adobe, there is only a PowerPC version of it. Mac OS X 10.6 is the last version of OS X which support PowerPC binaries through Rosetta Emulation. That means I am stuck with 10.6 but I need to update to 10.9 to run other software like Final Cut Pro and Pixelmator. So the only way to go is to keep Freehand inside a 10.6 guest while updating the host. Sadly having less than 4GB of RAM for the guest is not enough. I appreciate your help very much!

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

Log of Virtual Box using 3457MB RAM and 32MB VRAM

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

Screenshot of the RAM test before dropping into the shell using 3457MB RAM and 32MB VRAM

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

Error in the EFI shell using 3457MB RAM and 32MB VRAM

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

Log of Virtual Box using 3500MB RAM and 32MB VRAM

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

Log of Virtual Box using 3329MB RAM and 128MB VRAM

[angiest]

This looks much the same as https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11103.

[Socratis]

Well, I tried it on mine with 8 GB and at least it boots fine. BUT, there is some strange behavior. The "Activity Monitor" and "top" reveal only 3.5 allocated. On the other hand, "About this Mac" and "System Profiler" report 8 GB. Attaching VBox.log. VirtualBox 4.3.18.

One other difference is that my MBP is 8,3.

[Socratis]

MBP8,3 - VB 4.3.18 - 8 GB RAM - 128 MB VRAM

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

I tried the 8 GB RAM / 128GB VRAM setup on 4.3.18 with Mavericks and Snow Leopard. Both booted but it did not allocate the RAM. Looking into top at the host reveals:

68961 VirtualBoxVM 254.7 58:25.43 27/4 1 279 2238 3758M 67M 3815M

And looking into the guests top:

PhysMem: 2457M used (337M wired), 1127M unused.

So those 8 GB work now half way at least, but are sham, only 3.5 GB of RAM are usable.

[Frank Mehnert]

Fixed in VBox 4.3.20. It will still not work if the ICH9 chipset is selected but this problem is covered by #11103.