How to make Mac OS X virtual machine on my mac mini?

The legal situation may differ by country. To my knowledge for Germany such restriction (EULA) may interfere with constitutional laws i.e. the property rights. E.g. Microsoft restricts Windows versions which come together with PC as a "repair version" that they are bound for that particular PC. In Germany owners of such "Repair Disks" went to court to claim their property rights and succeeded. The result: In Germany plenty of such "Repair" disks are legally sold on ebay. I am not aware about a law suit in Germany regarding Non-Server Snow Leo used in a VM, but . . . I have my opinion, even though I am not an advocate.

It's hard to say what is wrong with your Mavericks VM, but something is not right with it. I have set one up and have been pleasantly surprised at how well it runs. It is definitely possible to set the screen resolution to something other than 1024 x 768; mine is at 1680 x 1050. Unfortunately, I'm typing this on an iPad, so not in front of my computer right now to try to figure out how one adjusts that.

I have found Yosemite to be painfully and unusably slow in a VM, even after I gave the VM 8GB of RAM.

Maybe:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/294083-os-x-mavericks-in-virtualbox/

I have Parallels 9 with five (5) Windows OS's and three (3) of OS X:

ALL were installed from DMG's or ISO's of the install DVD for each.

OS 10.6.8 (Server) runs nice.
OS 10.7.5 runs nice.

OS 10.8.5 runs a little slow (even on 2 cores with 4Gb RAM allocated) but it's manageable.

I tried OS 10.9 as a VM and it has a PILE of problems.
Foremost being that there ISN'T any way to adjust resolution of the VM desktop. It opens in a 4:3 configuration with a vertical height of 1200px. My monitor is 1920x1080, and that means I can't get to my Dock in the VM.

Add to that, with 4Gb RAM allocated to it and two cores, it's slow and choppy. Launchpad froze it altogether and I had to force quit Parallels to get out of it. So I removed it.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/110934/os-x-mavericks-installesd-dmg-an d-basesystem-dmg

http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/159955/howto-create-bootable-mavericks-iso

Starting with Lion, Apple no longer provides install media. The computer have internet recovery which allows booting and connection to the internet to install the OS on a blank HD (or SSD)

OS X: About OS X Recovery

Ihor Bobak wrote:

You say

"ALL were installed from DMG's or ISO's of the install DVD for each."

Wait a second... where is the ISO or DMG ???

I have bought mac mini. Inside the box there were no insall DVDs at all.

I've had Macs since 2002, and since OS 10.2. I have a collection of OEM (came with Macs I've bought) and purchased OS Install discs. I also have four external HDs with software going back about seven years on them. I'm a "hoarder" that way.

Hi there -

What an interesting thread.

Well this is a guess here but what if you buy osx mountain lion from the mac app store? It gives you a full dmg download. Its really cheap for what it is - I paid £20 I think. I guess you could then in turn upgrade the vm to mavericks for free? But I dont know if that would work.

But can anyone say for sure that it is really legal to run osx in a vm even if the host is osx? Perhaps if you paid for both the host osx and the guest osx versions? But surely this still breaks the EULA because a vm is not a mac. I would love to know how the licensing works.

I'd like to run a few different versions in vm's so that I have separate environments. From a software developers viewpoint, this could be useful for troubleshooting different software builds against different osx versions and update levels without having to have dozens of physical machines.

jnbworks wrote:

Well this is a guess here but what if you buy osx mountain lion from the mac app store? It gives you a full dmg download. Its really cheap for what it is - I paid £20 I think. I guess you could then in turn upgrade the vm to mavericks for free? But I dont know if that would work.

I installed the Mavericks VM I had by doing exactly what you described - installed Mt. Lion and then did the AppStore upgrade for it.

But can anyone say for sure that it is really legal to run osx in a vm even if the host is osx? Perhaps if you paid for both the host osx and the guest osx versions? But surely this still breaks the EULA because a vm is not a mac. I would love to know how the licensing works.

I'm pretty sure it would be treated the same as if someone had an iMac and a MacBook, and bought ONE OS install disc, then used it for BOTH systems. Unless they brought both into Apple for service at the same time and specifically mentioned that they were installed from the same disc, it probably wouldn't matter much. To some of the local "Geniuses" I know, it still wouldn't matter.

I'd like to run a few different versions in vm's so that I have separate environments. From a software developers viewpoint, this could be useful for troubleshooting different software builds against different osx versions and update levels without having to have dozens of physical machines.

Precisely.
I do troubleshooting for clients and forums (here as well as Adobe) and I NEED multiple environments to recreate scenarios in "real world" environments, or as close to it as the VM can get, which is pretty darned close. That's why I have what I do, installed. I don't have the room for nine different computers. VM software helps to make sure I don't have to have them.

Actually, with Parallels9, if you have OSX Lion or later

as the host OS, you can create an OSX VM with no disks

and just an internet connection. Parallels will utilize

the RecoveryHD on the host and do an internet recovery

to the create the VM. If you have fast internet, this is the

simplest approach.

If you have previously purchased Lion or Mountain Lion,

you can redownload the installer and extract the install image

from the package. Then, with Parallels anyway, when prompted for

an install disk , you select the image.

As far as licensing, running Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks

in a virtual machine does not violate the EULA as long as

the VM is run on Apple hardware.

From the EULA for Lion

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software

within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that

is already running the Apple Software.

From the EULA for Mavericks:

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple

Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own

or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software

development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using OS X Server; or (d)

personal, non-commercial use.

After about a dozen unsuccessful attempts to create a Mac VM on a Mac host, THIS was the solution.

Much thanks, Ihor!