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
Downloading the complete “Install macOS High Sierra.app” file from Apple server using the “macOS High Sierra Patcher” app is a really easy process. Now, step by step guide. Go to the official website of the “macOS High Sierra Patcher” app here and download the app. Download the macOS Sierra installer. Launch the App Store app, then look for macOS Sierra in the store. (Here’s a link.) Click on the Download button, and your Mac will download the installer to. Whether you’d like to install High Sierra on Mac or would like to create a High Sierra bootable USB. Whatever your reason, you can certainly download macOS High Sierra DMG and not only via direct but also via Torrent in this one. Just click in the link and download the macOS High Sierra DMG file. Change Allow apps downloaded from: to App Store and identified developers. Note: For Mac High Sierra (10.13.x), you will need to click on Allow too. Click the lock icon again to prevent any further changes. Installing the Zoom application. Visit our Download Center. Under Zoom Client for Meetings, click Download. Double click the downloaded file. To get the full installer: Method 1. Start the installer, which will download the missing files; Quit when prompted to restart; Copy (or move) the downloaded files from /macOS Install Data to a new SharedSupport folder inside /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/.
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
: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:
- 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.
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.
Now, you should have a fully working macOS virtual machine!
Install Macos High Sierra Beta App Download
References
The information found in this post was pieced together from the following sources:
Did you try updating to macOS High Sierra? If you did, you might have found a small 19mb online installer named “Install macOS High Sierra.app” inside your /Applications folder. Now I hate the online installers, especially when the real files is around 5GB. If you have a slow internet connection, then it can be frustrating. And with this installer, you cannot create an offline bootable USB to install macOS High Sierra to install in other machines quickly. So this post is about “How to Download Full High Sierra Installer to Create Bootable USB?”.
Contents
Download Install Macos High Sierra Application
- 2 Clean Install macOS High Sierra using a Bootable USB
How to Download Full High Sierra Installer?
You can quickly get the full 5GB macOS Sierra Installer. Just follow the steps given below. Here we will be using a third party application named High Sierra patcher application.
- First click on this link and download the High Sierra patcher application.
- The above link will give you a file named macOS High Sierra Patcher.dmg.
- Simply open this file and you will see a new window.
- Now again open the icon named macOS High Sierra Patcher inside the window.
- It will again open the macOS High Sierra Patcher. Here just go to Tools->Download macOS High Sierra… as shown in the below image.
Download Full High Sierra Installer
- It will ask you to select a location to save the macOS Sierra Installer. Select the location and it will start downloading. The file size is more than 5GB is it may take a long time depending on your internet speed.
Clean Install macOS High Sierra using a Bootable USB
Sometimes we need a clean installation of our operating system. But doing it the Apple’s way that is online can frustrate us like hell.
So what you can do is you can download a full installer, and then you can create a bootable USB.
We know how to get a full installer, and now you might be interested in knowing how to create a bootable USB right?
So what you can do is you can download a full installer, and then you can create a bootable USB.
We know how to get a full installer, and now you might be interested in knowing how to create a bootable USB right?
Creating a bootable USB is again very simple, just follow the below steps.
The Extremely Easy Way
We have a simple utility called Install Disk Creator. It is absolutely free and you can quickly create bootable USB by using it.
- Get the Install Disk Creator.
- Once you get the Install Disk Creator, just open it, and you will see the window as shown in the below image. Here you need to select the Installer file that we already downloaded. After choosing the Installer just click on Create Installer and it will do the task for you.
- Make sure you use a USB Drive of size of atleast 12GB.
The Easy Way
- Open terminal (command + space, write terminal and hit enter).
- Now write the following command.
- Don’t forget changing path to installer with your installer path that you downloaded and USB Volume Name with the name of the USB Drive that you are using.
So I hope you got the answer that How to Download Full High Sierra Installer to Create Bootable USB? For any queries and questions just leave your comments. And also SHARE this post if you found it useful. Thank You ?