macOS 13 Ventura installation doesn't complete

[Rainer Orth]

So far, I've been completely unable to complete the installlation of macOS 13 Ventura on macOS hosts.

I've now asked two colleagues to repeat the process on their systems:

• MacBookPro14,3 running macOS 12.6.3
• MacBookPro16,1 running macOS 13.2.1

Both guests (configured as single-cpu Mac OS X (64-bit) with USB 3.0) sucessfully start the installation off of a macOS 13.2.1 ISO image and runs successfully for a long time. Only a the very end, at the last (?) reboot, /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib isn't found.

The same procedure works successfully up to and including macOS 12 Monterey, but somehow breaks down on macOS 13.

I really wonder if macOS 13 works as guest in VirtualBox at all: while there a couple of reports, most seem to be on non-Apple hosts or, even worse, feel like the authors have just run search-and-replace on previous descriptions without actually checking if the procedure still works.

To be able to investigate what's going on, I've run a screen capture during the installation. I'm attaching both VBox.log and a screenshot of the failure situation (launchd not starting for lack of libSystem.B.dylib).

[Rainer Orth]

VBox.log of the installation attempt

[Rainer Orth]

Screenshot of launchd start failure

[richoward]

This issue also/still occurs when installing macOS 14.2.1 (Sonoma) guest on a 2020 MacBook Pro host running macOS 14.2.1 and VirtualBox 7.0.12. [I assume the issue is the same because the boot messages match (e.g. "Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib")]

[accwebs]

I've debugged this a bit and the problem is the failure of Virtualbox to pass through certain Intel CPU features to the guest. As a result, the guest CPU is not considered to be Haswell architecture or newer. See #15471 for the missing features.

[ThomasF]

accwebs, VirtualBox is open source. Can you suggest the correct code fix for this since you've debugged it? IF a fix can be demonstrated perhaps they will take it?

[accwebs]

I noticed there's been an update on #15471 and I think it's implemented now. My *assumption* is this will resolve the issue but I don't have the correct hardware anymore to verify that.

[Rainer Orth]

I've taken a clone of an existing macOS 12 VM and tried upgrading it to 13 with VirtualBox 7.1.4 (after fixing a known bug in 7.1.4 that didn't remove the old extpack even when installing the new one with --replace). Unfortunately, the upgrade still fails the same way as before (unless I have to do more than just upgrading VB to 7.1.4).