Important Information on macOS® High Sierra 10.13.4 – 10.13.6 j5create display connectivity has been limited on macOS® High Sierra 10.13.4, 10.13.5 and 10.13.6. This is solved from macOS® Mojave 10.14 onward with our latest driver that can be downloaded here. We recommend updating your macOS® to restore multi-display. How to download macOS High Sierra Make sure you perform a Time Machine backup before starting. Once your backup is done, head over to the App Store and search for “macOS High Sierra”. The final release of macOS 10.13 High Sierra is now available to download as of September 25, 2017. Leading into this, some Apple fanatics opted to install macOS 10.13 High Sierra early via. Office 2016 for Mac is fully supported on macOS 10.13 High Sierra. If you encounter issues using Office 2016 for Mac, please send us feedback so we can address them. In Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, you can click on the Send a Smile icon in the top-right of the app. For Outlook, choose Contact Support from the Help menu. 15.34 and earlier.
During a recent pentest, I needed to throw together a macOS virtual machine. Although there was lots of guides around the web, none seemed to work from start to finish. This post contains the steps I extracted from various resources in order to get a fully working High Sierra install within VirtualBox 5.
Step 1: Download The High Sierra Installer
To do this, you need to be on an existing macOS system. I was unable to find the download within the App Store itself, but following this link opened the App Store at the correct page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-high-sierra/id1246284741?mt=12
After opening the aforementioned page in the App Store, start the download, but cancel the installation when it starts.
You can then verify that the installer has been downloaded by checking that
'/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app'
exists.Step 2: Create a Bootable ISO
Next, you need to create an ISO from the installer application that was downloaded in step 1.
Running the below commands will create an ISO on your desktop named
HighSierra.iso
:![High High](/uploads/1/2/8/4/128432267/554074336.png)
Step 3: Creating the Virtual Machine
I experimented with a few different settings in regards to the CPU and RAM allocation. I didn’t find a combination that didn’t work, but create a VM with the following things in mind:
- Ensure the name of the VM is
MacOS
(ensure to keep the same casing) - Ensure the type is
Mac OS X
and the version ismacOS 10.12 Sierra (64-bit)
(there is a High Sierra option too, but I chose Sierra by accident and it worked) - Untick
Floppy
inSystem > Motherboard > Boot Order
- Use >= 4096 MB of memory in
System > Motherboard
- Use >= 2 CPUs in
System > Processor
- Use 128 MB of video memory in
Display > Screen
- Optionally enable 3D acceleration in
Display > Screen
- Remove the IDE device in
Storage > Storage Devices
and replace it with a SATA controller - Add a new hard disk device under the SATA controller with >= 60 GB of space
- Ensure an optical drive is present under the SATA controller and mount the previously created ISO to it
- Untick the
Enable Audio
option underAudio
After creating the virtual machine with the above configuration, hit OK and exit the settings screen. Now, a number of extra options need to be set.
If you’re on Windows, you’ll need to
cd
into the appropriate directory under the VirtualBox installation path to run VBoxManage
. For Linux users, this should be in your PATH
variable already:After running the above commands, the VM should be ready to boot!
Step 4: Installation
This is where near enough everything I read stopped, despite there being one more problem in the way - UEFI.
Boot into the VM, go into Disk Utility and erase the virtual disk that you added to the machine.
After erasing the disk, start the installation procedure. After a short amount of time, it will reboot the VM.
Once it reboots, it’s going to boot back off the ISO again, once it’s done this, just shutdown the VM and eject the disk [the ISO] and then start the VM again to boot from disk.
On the next boot, it should boot into the installer that was copied to disk, but instead, you will be presented with a UEFI shell like below:
To continue the macOS installation, follow these steps:
Macos High Sierra Download Vmdk
- Type
exit
and hit return - Select
Boot Maintenance Manager
and hit return - Select
Boot From File
and hit return - You will see two partitions, select the second partition and hit return
- Select
macOS Install Data
and hit return - Select
Locked Files
and hit return - Select
Boot Files
and hit return - Select
boot.efi
and hit return
After following these steps, you will boot into the remainder of the macOS installation. From here, just follow the steps as per a regular macOS installation.
The next time you boot your virtual machine, you will not have to go through the UEFI shell; it should work without any further problems.
Macos High Sierra Free Download
Step 5: Tweaking The Resolution
As there is no VirtualBox additions for macOS, the screen resolution won’t automatically change. If you know what resolution you wish to use, however, you can set it manually.
Ensure the virtual machine is powered off, and then run the following command; replacing
1920x1080
with whatever resolution you would like to use:After running the above command, the next time you boot the machine, it will use the resolution specified.
Macos High Sierra Virtualbox Download
Now, you should have a fully working macOS virtual machine!
References
The information found in this post was pieced together from the following sources: