Issues installing macOS Catalina in virtualbox on macOS High Sierra host

Question

I was trying to install macOS Catalina on latest version of VirtualBox, hosting it on a Mac running macOS High Sierra (10.13.6).

I was searching, and I found this blog post: “Install and run macOS Catalina on High Sierra using VirtualBox”

I've downloaded Catalina Patcher (and made the process to get the image file to aplications folder), and everything else from the site (VirtualBox, the extension pack, etc…)

So I I followed the steps in the tutorial, but I was unable to finish the installation with success. The tutorial tells us to name the folder like this: macoscatalinavirtualbox and to save it on the desktop.

Somewhere in the process I have to type this into the macOS terminal:

cd desktop/macoscatalinavirtualbox

To select the folder and then:

make all

To run each script in the folder. That is when the error message appears. I've tried downloading the scripts folder directly from the source on GitHub, but nothing changes. No matter what I do I always get this:

: command not foundx.sh: line 13:
: command not foundx.sh: line 14:
Logfile: /Users/user/Library/Logs/runMacOSVirtualbox.log
: ambiguous redirect.sh: line 18: 1
: ambiguous redirect.sh: line 19: 2
: ambiguous redirect.sh: line 21: 1
: command not foundx.sh: line 23:
: command not foundx.sh: line 24:
: command not foundx.sh: line 31:
: invalid optionlbox.sh: line 33: pwd: -
pwd: usage: pwd [-LP]
: command not foundx.sh: line 61: 
: command not foundx.sh: line 62:
'/runMacOSVirtualbox.sh: line 64: syntax error near unexpected token '{
'/runMacOSVirtualbox.sh: line 64: 'debug() {
make: *** [all] Error 2

I am definitely stuck because I don't know how to fix it, I tried updating the Xcode command line developer tools, but didn't work.

Answer 1

You will find a detailed walk-through in the article
How to Install macOS 10.15 Catalina on VirtualBox on Windows PC.

Although for Windows, the instructions are easily modified to the Mac.

The important part is defining the new VM with Motherboard as 'Enable EFI', for Chipset select PIIX3, for Processor tick‘Enable PAE/NX’ and set the amount of core, and for Display set Video Memory to ideally 128 MB, the Graphics Controller to VMSVGA, set USB to USB 3.0, and add the installation ISO to Storage.

You would need to use VBoxManage to run the following commands. These are taken from Windows, so you need to adapt them to the Mac:

cd "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"
VBoxManage.exe modifyvm "Your VM Name" --cpuidset 00000001 000106e5 00100800 0098e3fd bfebfbff
VBoxManage setextradata "Your VM Name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiSystemProduct" "iMac11,3"
VBoxManage setextradata "Your VM Name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiSystemVersion" "1.0"
VBoxManage setextradata "Your VM Name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/efi/0/Config/DmiBoardProduct" "Iloveapple"
VBoxManage setextradata "Your VM Name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/smc/0/Config/DeviceKey" "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc"
VBoxManage setextradata "Your VM Name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/smc/0/Config/GetKeyFromRealSMC" 1

Once the VM is started, proceed with the installation.