macOS 10.13 update installer fails

[granada29]

macOS High Sierra updates are failing. VirtualBox is not running the correct boot.efi when reboot is requested by the macOS update installer.

The problem is easily reproduced by attempting to install any of the macOS 10.13 beta updates over an existing macOS installation

To workaround this issue it is necessary to repeatedly hit the F12 key during the boot, break into the EFI shell, navigate to the macOS Installation directory and then run the boot.efi manually.

The details of this workaround are at  https://raimue.blog/2017/06/09/upgrading-a-vm-from-macos-10-12-sierra-to-macos-10-13-high-sierra-in-virtualbox/

If this fails for some reason then its back to the beginning and try again.

I have seen this problem with both rawdisk (VMDK) installations and VDI installations. It also happens with macOS Sierra as the host OS and debian Linux (on Apple hardware) as the host OS. It's not a problem specific to macOS VirtualBox.

[Uli]

+1

[socratis]

Cc: myself and related discussion in  https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=83811

[mcandre]

+1

• VirtualBox lacks support for booting with APFS file system format.
• VirtualBox does not find the High Sierra update / install boot.efi file by default, even when the installer selected JHFS+ file system format.

Workaround steps also detailed on this blog:

 http://tobiwashere.de/2017/10/virtualbox-how-to-create-a-macos-high-sierra-vm-to-run-on-a-mac-host-system/

[socratis]

I wish I knew about this blog before I had to re-discover the wheel from scratch in my  (HowTo) Install OSX 10.13 in a VM article in the forums...

[aeichner]

Closing as fixed as VirtualBox 6.1 has improved macOS guest support and APFS is supported by our EFI firmware as well.