How to Increase SheepShaver Desktop Size Inside VirtualBox?

[Old-School-BBSer]

Okay, this is really starting to drive me nuts!

Here is the problem. As some of you know, I now run my old BBS and my old Hotline server inside of SheepShaver and Mac OS 9.0.4. Whereas before I was running SheepShaver right in El Capitan, now I am running it in a Mountain Lion VM inside of VirtualBox.

Now, as a result of running my BBS and Hotline server simultaneously, I always have seven windows open on my desktop. When I was running SheepShaver straight under El Capitan, I could adjust SheepShaver's window by dragging the corner, as I recall, so that I had enough desktop space so that my seven windows did not overlap each other.

Not so with my new setup.

Try as I might, by working with the available prefs in OS 9.0.4, in SheepShaver, in VirtualBox and in Mountain Lion, I cannot figure out how to increase the size of my OS 9.0.4 desktop so that all of my app windows fit nicely.

In OS 9's "Monitors" control panel, there is only one option available; 1024 x 768. That is not big enough. I need my OS 9 desktop to be more like 1280 x 800.

I have likewise fiddled around in SheepShaver's available prefs to no avail. Fullscreen mode does not seem to work in my setup, and even when I set the screen size to 1280 x 800, it does not seem to take effect. But this may be related to what is happening in VirtualBox, which may be preventing SheepShaver from doing what it wants to do.

Working in VirtualBox, under the "View" menu, the "Virtual Screen 1" option seems to be locked at "Resize to 1024 x 768" with no way for me to change it, because it is enabled and grayed out. So both OS 9 and VirtualBox appear to be limiting my ability to get a larger OS 9 desktop size, so that I have more space for my seven windows.

I even tried enabling and disabling "Use Unscaled HiDPI Output" in the Mountain Lion virtual machine's "Display" tab.

If I grab the bottom right corner of the VirtualBox window which encloses the Mountain Lion window, I can increase the size of the window easy enough, but Mountain Lion's window inside of the main VirtualBox window remains unchanged. It does not expand to fill the space. Instead, I get white borders all around the Mountain Lion window.

Under the "VirtualBox VM" menu, when I click on the "Preferences" option, there is a "Display" prefs pane where there are three options:

Automatic
None
Hint

The problem is that at least two of them -- and I bet the other one as well -- don't work without Guest Additions, which OS X does not have.

So, even if I choose the "Hint" option, and change the current settings in that pane from 640 x 480 to 1280 x 800, nothing happens.

The "Scaled Mode" in VirtualBox is pretty worthless. It doesn't really increase the size of my Mountain Lion desktop. All it does is stretch and enlarge the size of the images and text on the screen. The result is terrible. Not only does the text look very bad and distorted -- everything is more blurry the more you scale up the size -- but the mouse becomes slow and unruly jumping around a bit when you try to go to things.

Within my Mountain Lion virtual machine, I encounter a similar problem. Within the ML OS itself, in the "Display" preference pane, there are only two options: "Best for Display" or "Scaled". If I click on the latter, guess what? The only option available is 1024 x 768.

So from OS 9.0.4 to Mountain Lion to VirtualBox, it seems that I am being limited to 1024 x768, which is stupid.

To make matters worse, because of this, the SheepShaver window completely fills up the Mountain Lion window, and for some reason, I cannot move it now. Maybe all of my fiddling around caused that.

If I could at least figure out a way to enlarge the Mountain Lion VM window without getting all of the white border around it, that would be a start.

If I could go further and figure out how to enlarge the Mountain Lion desktop window inside the ML VM window, that would be even better. At least my SheepShaver window won't take up the whole ML desktop.

If there is a solution to all of this where I can have a larger -- not just scaled -- OS 9.0.4 desktop, so that I can place my seven windows as I like so that they are not cramped or overlapping each other, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!

[Old-School-BBSer]

Just a small, quick update.

Well, I got it back to where I can move the SheepShaver/OS 9 window inside the Mountain Lion window. Being as I could no longer even see the SheepShaver menubar, I had to actually launch the SheepShaver Prefs app, where I discovered that the problem was that SS was still in full-screen mode.

However, the issue of enlarging the OS 9 desktop window and the Mountain Lion desktop window remains the same. So my SheepShaver window still covers all of my Mountain Lion desktop.

So, short of a solution, my seven windows will remain crunched up in OS 9, and I can't open my Hermes BBS terminal window all the way, without covering up some of the other six screens.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

I do not know if there is a limitation in the window size (the virtual machine screen size or resolution) in VirtualBox and/or if that can be set to a different value.

As for SheepShaver:
If one wants to have a 1280x800 window size, it must first be set in SheepShaver preferences. Then, after a new start of SheepShaver, that value will be added as possible resolution choice in OS9's Monitors control panel.

With Ctrl-Return one should be able to toggle between window mode and full-screen mode in SheepShaver. It could be that full-screen mode tries to fill the actual host screen size, not the virtual machine screen size.

[Old-School-BBSer]

Ronald, thanks for the suggestion, but for some reason, it is just not taking effect.

I had in fact already typed in 1280 x 800 in SheepShaver's preferences pane on the "Audio / Video" tab. Furthermore, I opened the invisible ".sheepshaver_prefs" file and confirmed that those screen dimensions indeed replaced the original dimensions of 1024 x 768.

However, I just did it again, and regardless of whether I reboot just OS 9.0.4, or shut down OS 9 and reboot SheepShaver itself as well, 1280 x 800 is not appearing in the "Monitors" control panel.

On the "Resolution" side of the pane, next to "Show", the only option is "Recommended". There is nothing else in the pull-down menu. If memory serves me correctly, it used to be possible -- at least with some versions of Mac OS -- to select alternative resolutions, besides the recommended ones. This option does not appear to be available in OS 9.0.4.

There does seem to be something new this time. Whereas before the only resolution available in the list was 1024 x 768, now there are two additional resolutions -- 640 x480 and 800 x 600 -- neither of which is of any help to me.

Could this limitation in OS 9 possibly have something to do with the amount of RAM I have allotted to SheepShaver? Currently it has 512 MB, which should be more than sufficient, right?

[Old-School-BBSer]

Ronald, I just figured out what is happening in the "Monitors" control panel.

If I have SheepShaver set to "Fullscreen", the "Monitors" control panel only shows 1024 x 768. However, if I set SheepShaver to "Window", then the "Monitors" control displays all three resolutions, as I mentioned in my last post.

Regardless, 1280 x 800 simply refuses to show up.

Furthermore, I am fast approaching the conclusion that even if I could created a larger OS 9 desktop screen, it would be to no avail, because I strongly suspect that the Mountain Lion VM window is restricting the size of the SheepShaver window, because as I mentioned before, even Mountain Lion itself only offers two resolution options in its preference pane: Either "Best for display" which doesn't even list any resolutions, or else "Scaled". If I enable the "Scaled" option instead, it just lists one resolution in the box below it: 1024 x 768.

So even if SheepShaver did want to offer me a larger OS 9 desktop workspace, Mountain Lion seems to be saying "No!".

[adespoton]

The screen resolution issue boils down to the same problem as the guest additions. Thankfully, there are some non-Apple ways to fix this one.
https://superuser.com/questions/478901/ ... virtualbox

If you install MultiBeast/Clover/another EFI bootloader, it has the added benefit that your VM is portable to any Intel-based host hardware. For those good at EFI, it probably means that some of the other lacking features in OS X under VBox could be shoehorned in too, but I haven't heard of anyone actually doing that.

[Old-School-BBSer]

Thanks Adespoton. I am looking at all of those pages right now, and seeing all of the system changes that have to be made in those files. To be honest, it is making me a little nervous. So a few quick questions:

1. How safe is this procedure?

I would feel terrible if something went wrong, and installing MultiBeast breaks my new VirtualBox/Mountain Lion/SheepShaver setup, which took so much work and time to get working right.

2. Should I download the 4.6.1 Lion version of MultiBeast as they suggest, or is it safe to download the most recent version that is compatible with Mountain Lion; that being 5.4.3?

3. Is MultiBeast supposed to be installed in El Capitan so that it can control VirtualBox, or in my Mountain Lion VM? I am assuming that it is the former.

4. It seems that a lot of those steps and file edits are specifically designed for Windows users. What is the bare minimum that I have to do and alter in order to achieve a desktop size of say 1280 x 800, or maybe a little larger?

5. If MultiBeast has to be installed in El Capitan, won't future OS updates break its installation and make it ineffective?

Thanks in advance. I am just a bit nervous about fiddling around in configuration files, removing kernel extensions, or whatever they say to do.

[adespoton]

1. How safe is this procedure?
- Pretty safe. If anything breaks (meaning things won't boot), just re-check "Enable EFI" in Settings->System->Motherboard, and you'll boot using the VirtualBox EFI instead. No existing files on your Guest VM are modified -- new ones are just added.

2. Use the new one; http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/08/multi ... guide.html has a better MultiBeast setup guide for Mountain Lion.

3. Install it inside Mountain Lion. It won't work inside El Capitan.

4. It's changed over time for me -- different Mac hardware and different OS X versions and VirtualBox versions seem to interact differently.

All you should have to do is edit the two .plist files inside Mountain Lion as directed, and then (after shutting down the VM), run

Code: Select all

VBoxManage setextradata <VM Name> VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode 5

from Terminal.app. At this point, you should be booting in your desired resolution. If it doesn't work, play around with some of the other suggestions.


What this is actually doing is creating the classic PC BIOS bootloader on your virtual disk, which does only one thing: loads an EFI boot system off of your disk. The one MultiBeast uses is Chameleon EFI, which is extremely customizable. Because of this, you can then just modify any EFI settings directly on your Mountain Lion disk to change the way the OS interacts with VirtualBox's virtual hardware environment. It also means that if Oracle updates VirtualBox's EFI in the future in a way that breaks compatibility with Mountain Lion, this won't affect you.

[Old-School-BBSer]

Okay, you are making this more palatable to me. So I may give it a shot after my backup completes.

However, there is still one determinant factor to consider here.

While this will hopefully give me a larger Mountain Lion desktop, it is STILL not going to give me a larger SheepShaver desktop, right? That is what I need so I can open my BBS and Hotline windows better.

Or do you agree with my theory that when I enter 1280 x 800 in SheepShaver's Audio/Video tab, SheepShaver may really be trying to open a larger desktop, but simply can't, because it is being suppressed by Mountain Lion?

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

While this will hopefully give me a larger Mountain Lion desktop, it is STILL not going to give me a larger SheepShaver desktop, right?

The limited screen resolution (1024x768) appears to be an issue with OSX guests in VirtualBox, indeed related to the EFI display support.

If you you can get a larger screen resolution for the guest Mountain Lion in VirtualBox, there is no reason why SheepShaver would not be able to use that larger screen with adjusted settings in SheepShaver preferences and OS9 Monitors control panel.

[Old-School-BBSer]

Okay Ronald. I will give it a go just as soon as this humongous backup completes. It is already up to 216 GB transferred.

BTW, I have already downloaded MultiBeast 5.5.5 for Mountain Lion.

I am just not sure where to begin on this page, being as some of it appears to be for Windows users:

http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/08/multi ... guide.html

Can I just run the MultiBeast installer inside of Mountain Lion and let it install whatever it normally installs, or do I need to do a more selective, customized install?

[adespoton]

The default should be fine, although I seem to recall there being custom screen resolution options you can add there too (which would mean you wouldn't need to modify the chameleon plist file later).

[Old-School-BBSer]

2. Use the new one; http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/08/multi ... guide.html has a better MultiBeast setup guide for Mountain Lion.

Okay, I have looked at that tutorial, as well as the previous page that you gave me, and I am really confused. There is a lot of stuff on those pages that is way beyond my current understanding. Right now I feel like there is twenty feet of technological water over my head. In fact, it seems like a lot of that information is directed towards Windows users who are trying to install OS X as a guest system on their PC's.

All you should have to do is edit the two .plist files inside Mountain Lion as directed,

As directed where? I don't see that mentioned anywhere on that page. There is mention of editing a org.Chameleon.boot.plist file right under the "Customization -> Boot Options" heading, but that is all that I see. From what I understand, that file is installed somewhere in Mountain Lion by MultiBeast.

and then (after shutting down the VM), run

Code: Select all

VBoxManage setextradata <VM Name> VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode 5

from Terminal.app.

Again, I do not see any of this information on that macbreaker.com page that you gave me.

However, on that first page which you later told me to ignore, in favor of the new link that you gave me, I did find someone saying that they had tried these commands in the Terminal, but that they did not work for them:

vboxmanage setextradata "MAC OS X" "CustomVideoMode1" "1360x768x32"
vboxmanage setextradata "MAC OS X" "GUI/CustomVideoMode1" "1360x768x32"

Is that what you are talking about?

If so, would I just use 1280x800x32 in those two lines instead of 1360x768?

At this point, you should be booting in your desired resolution. If it doesn't work, play around with some of the other suggestions.

Oh gosh . . . I am so confused by everything that I just read and looked at, that I don't know where I am supposed to start, or what I am supposed to do.

As I said in my previous post, I have downloaded MultiBeast 5.5.5, and read the PDF that is included with it, but it is not really even an installation manual.

So, I have launched the MultiBeast installer, and I am sitting here confused, and wondering if I am supposed to install the full "EasyBeast" package, or if I am just supposed to go down to the Customization/Boot Options/1080p Display and enable that one item. Even still, I don't want a resolution of 1920x1080, because that would be too big.

If I really am supposed to enable that "1080p Display" option, once installed, will it also activate lower resolution options in the VirtualBox prefs, so that I can choose 1280x800 -- or thereabouts -- instead?

Anyway, guys, I could really use some clear guidance here.

Some of you read that new tutorial that I wrote. I strongly believe in the "For Dummies" approach. I like things clear, straight and simple, without any confusing ambiguity. That is why I wrote that tutorial the way that I did; that is, an easy-to-understand step-by-step approach so that anyone can do it, even noobies.

So, again, a little more clarification here would REALLY help.

And, BTW, you can be sure that once I have this all figured out, I am going to append this new VB resolution issue information to my tutorial for folks who will encounter the very same problem, and not know how to resolve it, if they set up SheepShaver in VirtualBox/Mountain Lion.

Thanks again for your patience with me. This is a struggle.

[Old-School-BBSer]

Okay, I still don't know where you got that command string from, being as I didn't see it on that web page. However, it looked very familiar to me, and now I know where I saw it: In the VirtualBox manual.

I am referring to this one:

VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode N

I am slowly understanding what I need to do here, but I still need confirmation before I try it.

My current understanding is this:

In the MultiBeast installer, I need to select either the "EasyBeast Installation", or else the "UserDSDT or DSDT-Free Installation" package. It sounds like I don't really want the second package, because it seems to contain a lot of stuff that only Windows users need, who trying to install OS X on their PC's. Am I right, or not?

Then, as I mentioned earlier, there is that "1080p Display" option found under "Customization/Boot Options", which would give me a higher resolution than I really want.

So am I suppose to select one of those first two options, and then maybe that "1080p Display" option as well, and then hit the "Continue" button to install?

My understanding is that after I complete the installation -- I hope there are no more choices to make after that first install screen -- I next need to launch VirtualBox, go into Mountain Lion, execute the aforementioned Terminal command, and then reboot both VirtualBox and Mountain Lion, and look to see if I have the option to choose a higher resolution, either in VirtualBox itself, or in Mountain Lion.

According to my suspicions, and what Ronald also said, if all of that is a go, I should then be able to adjust the resolution in both SheepShaver and Mac OS 9.0.4, and get positive results this time.

So, how am I doing.

Give it to me straight, guys. I can handle it!

[adespoton]

You seem to be on the right track, although going at it from a different angle

https://superuser.com/questions/478901/ ... virtualbox contains the basic instructions for the screen resolution fix, and has the one terminal line that I referred to for updating your VirtualBox Mountain Lion config file appropriately.

The other page is to answer any questions you have about MultiBeast -- it goes into way more detail than you need to understand for our purposes though; using the EasyBeast Installation should provide everything you need to do basic things like set custom screen resolutions.

Since you have a very specific screen resolution you want, you can probably edit the two plist items as referenced in the above link instead of using MultiBeast's Customization menu.

Remember that when doing things this way, you're basically using VirtualBox as if it was a standard Windows PC instead of a Mac -- which is why all the MultiBeast discussion discusses things the way it does. But it's a simple "reference" implementation, so you don't need any of the extra custom stuff PC users with other hardware might need.

So you need to:
1) install MultiBeast/EasyBeast inside Mountain Lion
2) Modify the two plist files mentioned
3) Shut down the VM
4) Do the terminal command
5) Modify your VM from within VirtualBox to disable EFI
6) Boot Mountain Lion
7) You might have to change the system preferences to get the higher resolution, but I seem to recall it displaying the new resolution by default (due to manually editing the plist file).
8) Ensure your SheepShaver resolution is set appropriately
9) Boot your SheepShaver script
10) Enjoy!

[Old-School-BBSer]

Hello again, my friend,

Well, it seems that I beat you to the punch . . . although with one caveat, which I will discuss in a moment.

Shortly before you responded here, I went ahead and took the leap by choosing "EasyBeast Installation" and the "1080p Display" option, and did the installation.

The latter option indeed seems to have edited the "org.chameleon.Boot.plist" file in the "Extra" folder at the top level of Mountain Lion, so that the Graphic Mode string said:

<string>"1920x1200x32"</string>

That also happens to be one of VirtualBox's default options. In fact, the largest one, which I don't really need.

After the installation completed, and after making sure that both Mountain Lion and VirtualBox were shut down, I ran this in the Terminal on the El Capitan side:

VBoxManage setextradata Mountain\ Lion VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode 5

Upon relaunching VirtualBox and the Mountain Lion VM, lo and behold, ML's desktop now stretched the full 1920x1200.

Furthermore, because I had already previously set both SheepShaver and Mac OS 9.0.4 to 1280x800 -- although the SheepShaver desktop wouldn't open to that resolution earlier because of VirtualBox restricting it to 1024x768 -- this time it worked perfectly, and I was able to rearrange my seven windows and expand them more. So I am now a happy camper about that. :D

You seem to be on the right track, although going at it from a different angle

How so? Please explain.

https://superuser.com/questions/478901/ ... virtualbox contains the basic instructions for the screen resolution fix, and has the one terminal line that I referred to for updating your VirtualBox Mountain Lion config file appropriately.

Again, you are referring to this, right?

VBoxManage setextradata Mountain\ Lion VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode 5

Being as that was too big for me, I altered the "org.chameleon.Boot.plist" string to this instead:

<string>"1280x1024x32"</string>

And then I used the above terminal string and used a 3 instead of a 5.

The other page is to answer any questions you have about MultiBeast -- it goes into way more detail than you need to understand for our purposes though; using the EasyBeast Installation should provide everything you need to do basic things like set custom screen resolutions.

Yes, the vast majority of that Windows stuff was WAY over my head.

Are you suggesting that if I want to, I can add multiple sets of Graphic Mode strings in the "chameleon" file, and then VirtualBox will allow me to select each one under the "View" menu?

Since you have a very specific screen resolution you want, you can probably edit the two plist items as referenced in the above link instead of using MultiBeast's Customization menu.

Yes, I came to the conclusion that using that "1080p Display" Customization" option wasn't very helpful, being as I edited that string manually anyway.

I am still mystified by this second plist file that you keep referring to. The only other one that I see in the "Extra" folder is called "smbios.plist". Are you suggesting that I need to alter that one as well? Right now, it is making the false claim that my VM is a Mac Pro.

Or are you referring to editing the "com.apple.Boot.plist" file? Well, I just now edited that file as well, so that the resolution matches what I put in the "chameleon" file.

Remember that when doing things this way, you're basically using VirtualBox as if it was a standard Windows PC instead of a Mac -- which is why all the MultiBeast discussion discusses things the way it does. But it's a simple "reference" implementation, so you don't need any of the extra custom stuff PC users with other hardware might need.

Yes, I came to the same conclusion that for my situation, a lot of what they were saying and recommending did not apply, and that I should choose the "EasyBeast Installation" option, and not the other one that they were suggesting there.

So you need to:
1) install MultiBeast/EasyBeast inside Mountain Lion
2) Modify the two plist files mentioned
3) Shut down the VM
4) Do the terminal command

All done; that is, if you are referring to the "com.apple.Boot.plist" file.

5) Modify your VM from within VirtualBox to disable EFI

What? Now you just confused me. According to what I read earlier in the manual, I think, or online perhaps, the "Enable EFI (special OSes only)" option on the "System/Motherboard" tab is exactly what we want to enable, because that is what Apple computers need, whereas PC's use the BIOS instead, right?

6) Boot Mountain Lion

Done

7) You might have to change the system preferences to get the higher resolution, but I seem to recall it displaying the new resolution by default (due to manually editing the plist file).

Yes, as I said earlier, that is exactly what happened. It was automatic.

8) Ensure your SheepShaver resolution is set appropriately
9) Boot your SheepShaver script
10) Enjoy!

Again, all done.

Now here is the problem. Right after I installed "EasyBeast" and that "1080p Display" customization, and before I did some of this other stuff, when I shut down the ML VM, in the VM's Terminal shutdown sequence, it got as far as this:

continuing
unmount of /home failed (45)
unmount of /net failed (45)
done
CPU halted


Right after that, I got a dialog on my screen which begins with "A critical error has occurred while running the virtual machine and the machine execution has been stopped."

It then gives me a choice, one of which is to continue shutting down the VM, which I do.

Even though I have verified that everything matches in the various configuration files that we have discussed, it is still happening, and I don't know why.

Whatever this is, it does not prevent me from launching VirtualBox, starting my Mountain Lion VM, launching SheepShaver, or running my BBS and Hotline server. However, it is annoying, and I would really like to fix it, if possible.

BTW, does it do any harm to have the "Use Unscaled HiDPI Output" and "Enable 3D Acceleration" options enabled in the Mountain Lion VM's "Display" pane?

Thanks again.

[adespoton]

I don't have time to answer all the questions right now, but the error on shutdown is to be expected (the OS makes some calls that Chameleon doesn't handle to do with shutting down hardware) -- nothing that's a big problem there.

I was referring to editing the "com.apple.Boot.plist" file.

BTW, does it do any harm to have the "Use Unscaled HiDPI Output" and "Enable 3D Acceleration" options enabled in the Mountain Lion VM's "Display" pane?

nope And you'll probably notice a slight speed increase with the 3D acceleration, as well as improved display effects and Quartz compositing improvements. None of which is used by SheepShaver, but hey....

[Old-School-BBSer]

Well, except for those annoying startup and shutdown messages due to the Chameleon EFI thing, everything is looking very good, and running very smoothly, as good as my straight El Capitan-SheepShaver setup.

So, the next decision I need to make is when to delete my original SheepShaver setup under El Capitan. After all, it is hogging up just under 132 GB of disk space, and I want it back!

But, I don't want to get impatient, jump the gun by deleting it, and then have my new VirtualBox setup suddenly blow up in my face . . . not that I expect that to happen. As I said, it is running rather solidly.

In fact, being as I am only running SheepShaver, my Hotline server and my Hermes II BBS in Mountain Lion, plus two OS add-ons, a few hours ago I dropped its memory partition to just 1 GB, instead of the suggested 2 GB, so that my overall OS has more breathing space.

I also upped Mountain Lion VM's VRAM from the original 10 MB to 48 MB, just to play it safe.

So far, so good.

[Old-School-BBSer]

On a related subject, one thing that bugs me, is that if changes are made to a .dmg file, or a .vdi file, backup utilities such as Carbon Copy Cloner apparently don't know how to read inside such images, and so regardless of how small the changes may be, when they do detect changes, they are forced to backup the entire image each time that a scheduled backup occurs.

In my case, that means every single day. Thus, because changes occur in my Hotline server logs and data files, as well as in my BBS logs and data files, every day, my system comes to a crawl while those 132 GB are being backed up to my external USB drive.

I dare not depart from my current daily backup routine; particularly since I lost my second backup drive a number of months ago, and still haven't replaced it yet, due to financial considerations.

[adespoton]

That's why I suggested moving SheepShaver over to a sparse disk bundle and using a dynamically allocated VDI image for Mt Lion.

One solution I guess would be:
1) Move SheepShaver over to a sparse disk bundle
2) set up Time Machine inside Mt. Lion to ONLY back up the SheepShaver folder
3) Exclude the Mt. Lion VDI file from your El Cap Time Machine backups

End result: you only end up backing up the changes made inside OS 9. Downside: you don't have a backup of your entire VM.

But you could also just do a full backup of Mt. Lion and then exclude the VDI file in El Cap -- that way you still have it all backed up, but aren't dealing with continual backups of large monolithic files.

[Old-School-BBSer]

That's why I suggested moving SheepShaver over to a sparse disk bundle and using a dynamically allocated VDI image for Mt Lion.

I'm sure I must have read that, but the suggestion probably got lost amongst all of the other widely varied topics we have discussed in these threads. Or . . . I guess I could take the easy way out and just blame it on my age.

One solution I guess would be:
1) Move SheepShaver over to a sparse disk bundle

Oh gosh . . . it sounds like you are basically saying to start all over, if I understand you correctly.

Are you saying to move my entire "SheepShaver" folder, which includes its 132 GB OS 9.0.4 hard disk .dmg image file, which is nested inside that same "SheepShaver" folder?

Is it possible to convert my current OS 9.0.4 hard disk .dmg image file to a sparse disk bundle in, say, Disk Utility? Or would I need to start from scratch, open the .dmg file after the sparse image file is made, and then copy everything in the .dmg image over to the sparse disk bundle?

Considering how Apple has been dumbing down apps like Disk Utility, I wonder if it is even possible to do that.

Whatever it is you are actually suggesting here, it sounds a bit risky, and I would have to re-establish my paths in SheepShaver's prefs again, right?

I guess my main concern is that I have worked so hard over the past week or so -- how long have we been at this anyway? -- that I am concerned about undoing everything I have accomplished, and upsetting the apple cart.

2) set up Time Machine inside Mt. Lion to ONLY back up the SheepShaver folder

Okay, actually, I use CCC, but that is beside the point. If I set up CCC inside Mountain Lion to backup the "SheepShaver" folder, that is still going to include the full OS 9.0.4 hard disk .dmg image file. So there would be no time savings there.

3) Exclude the Mt. Lion VDI file from your El Cap Time Machine backups

Okay, so it sounds like you are talking about setting up two different scheduled backups in CCC: one inside Mountain Lion, and one in El Capitan.

It also sounds like you are saying that by converting the current OS 9.0.4 hard disk image file to a sparse disk bundle -- and keeping it inside the main "SheepShaver" folder -- that is how I would end up saving some time, because then CCC would in fact only back up the changed data, since -- at least it seems from what you say -- CCC will be able to read inside of a sparse image.

Have I got it right?

End result: you only end up backing up the changes made inside OS 9. Downside: you don't have a backup of your entire VM.

Yeah, that second point is not to my liking.

But you could also just do a full backup of Mt. Lion and then exclude the VDI file in El Cap -- that way you still have it all backed up, but aren't dealing with continual backups of large monolithic files.

Okay, as I already said, a full and separate backup of Mountain Lion would include the current 132 GB OS 9.0.4 hard disk image file, being as the traditional location for that file is in the "SheepShaver" folder itself, which is in Mountain Lion's "Applications" folder.

I think I am a little confused here. I don't know if you confused me, or if I confused myself, or if I just don't understand what you are suggesting.

As you yourself already said, if I also do a second and separate backup of El Capitan, but exclude the VDI image, then I won't have a complete backup of my Mountain Lion VM. I will just have my full "SheepShaver" folder backup from Mountain Lion.

You know, right now, I just do one complete backup of my entire hard drive, which includes all of El Capitan, plus the entire Mountain Lion setup -- including the enclosed "SheepShaver" folder which has the OS 9.0.4 hard disk image in it -- and the entire VirtualBox installation, including the VDI file, being as that is stored in my Home folder on the El Capitan side.

So what I am beginning to realize, is that I seem to be backing up the OS 9.0.4 hard disk image file TWICE, being as it is found in Mountain Lion's Applications/SheepShaver folder, as well as in the VDI image, which includes all of Mountain Lion, right?

That is why the VDI file is currently 162 GB in size, as you will recall. It includes all of SheepShaver, plus another 20 GB for the VirtualBox setup itself.

Have I got this right? Is the entire "SheepShaver" folder actually being backed up twice; once because it is Mountain Lion's "Applications" folder, and twice, because the Mountain Lion VDI in turn includes the whole Mountain Lion setup?

If that is the case, even if I convert the OS 9.0.4 hard disk image file to a sparse image bundle, while that may save considerable time during the daily backup, won't it still be backed up twice, because it is in Applications/SheepShaver in Mountain Lion, and in the VDI on the El Capitan side?

Would I have to somehow take the OS 9.0.4 hard disk image -- whether it is a DMG file or a sparse bundle image -- out of the "SheepShaver" folder, place it on the El Capitan side, and then change the path in SheepShaver's prefs, so that it points to the hard disk image file on the El Capitan side, if that is even possible, since they are two separate OS environments?

Yet still, I don't see how that would resolve anything, because the OS 9.0.4 hard disk image file would still be backed up twice, even if it is somewhere on the El Capitan side.

In any case, having to create a a dynamically allocated VDI image for Mountain Lion sounds like having to start all over again, and I am not prepared to do that. I'd just rather let the 2.5+ hours daily backup run.

Are you confused? I am. Maybe you can untangle this for me.

[adespoton]

Hmm... don't have time right now to read right through your comments, but I'll try to be a bit clearer:

1) In Mountain Lion (which doesn't have the neutered Disk Utility, but that's OK, we won't use it anyway):
In Terminal.app:

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hdiutil convert -format UDSB -o <OS 9.0.4> <path/to/OS 9.0.4.dmg>

This will create an OS 9.0.4.sparsebundle bundle in the folder where you ran the command. So you might as well do

Code: Select all

cd <drag your SheepShaver folder onto window>

first.

After this, your .SheepShaver_prefs file will have to be modified to change .dmg to .sparsebundle, but that's it. This will only work in the 2013+ builds of SheepShaver, as that's when SparseBundle support was added.

And after this is where you set your second CCC job to run inside the VM, and exclude the VM's disk image from the El Cap backups.

It also sounds like you are saying that by converting the current OS 9.0.4 hard disk image file to a sparse disk bundle -- and keeping it inside the main "SheepShaver" folder -- that is how I would end up saving some time, because then CCC would in fact only back up the changed data, since -- at least it seems from what you say -- CCC will be able to read inside of a sparse image.

Have I got it right?

Yes, mostly. Sparse Image Bundles replace a flat file DMG with a bundle folder that contains "bands" -- small slices that only contain parts of the internal filesystem. So when you make a change to the inside filesystem, only the bands that are actually rewritten get updated. This means that if you add a single character to a text file in your OS 9 environment, probably about a 1.3MB band will be rewritten, and the rest of your 100GB+ filesystem will remain unchanged. So CCC will then see that the 1.3MB file has changed, and update just that file. This means that you can use CCC (or Time Machine) to easily switch between states of your OS 9 HD, too -- so if it becomes corrupted or something, you can roll back 30 mins or so to the last good version, only changing the data that actually changed.

Remember that what we're doing here is like nesting boxes... what the sparsebundle trick does is makes the innermost box (the OS 9 box) actually be a bunch of boxes instead of just one. These are all inside the Mt. Lion box, which is in the El Cap box. CCCing from El Cap will only see the Mt. Lion box. CCCing from Mt. Lion will only see the OS 9 box, but if that box is actually a bunch of boxes, it'll only need to duplicate the ones that have changed.

So the basic rule is: don't back up vdi files; run your backup inside the VM, since it only changes when you're using it.

You could probably do this for the SheepShaver DMG too, except that running Retrospect or similar seems a bit clunky, and the sparsebundle solution obviates the problem anyway.

Going with a fixed-size VDI just means that you've got a portion of your El Cap HDD that can never be used for other purposes, even if it only contains 0's on the Mt Lion side.

[Old-School-BBSer]

I asked this once before, but don't recall having received an answer, so let me ask again, because this may be something that I want to add to the tips and tricks section of the tutorial.

It is possible to add multiple resolutions to the "org.chameleon.Boot.plist" and "com.apple.Boot.plist" files?

In other words, instead of having just this . . .

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<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>"1920x1080x32"</string>

. . . in the "org.Chameleon.boot.plist" file. Could I have this instead . . .

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<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>"1920x1080x32"</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>"14400x900x32"</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>"1280x1024x32"</string>

in that file?

Could I do something similar in the "com.apple.Boot.plist" file like this . . .

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<dict>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string>"Graphics Mode"="1920x1080x32"</string>
	<key>Graphics Mode</key
	<string>1920x1080x32</string>
	<string>"Graphics Mode"="14400x900x32"</string>
	<key>Graphics Mode</key
	<string>14400x900x32</string>
	<string>"Graphics Mode"="1280x1024x32"</string>
	<key>Graphics Mode</key
	<string>1280x1024x32</string>
	</dict>

As long as the resolutions listed in both files match each other, would it work?

Would all of these resolutions then appear under VirtualBox's "View" menu, and next to the "Virtual Screen 1" menu option as selectable choices?

Or would VirtualBox yell at me, and my computer would blow up in my face?

Right now, all of the resize resolution options are grayed out under VB's "View" menu, and have been that way since I first started running VirtualBox.

I have also found no way to disable "Auto-resize Guest Display", and I am wondering if that is why all of the resize options are grayed out when I click on the "Virtual Screen 1" menu option.

In fact, I have had this suspicion for a few days now -- correct me if I am wrong -- that due to the lack of OS X "Guest Additions", it is not possible to have a selection of resolutions to choose from in VirtualBox, which would explain why all of those other sizes are grayed out under the "View" menu.

As I said, it is just a suspicion I have had, but I get the impression, that whatever resolution we choose to hardcode when we make these various MultiBeast edits, that is the one we are stuck with, until we go in and edit those two plist files again, and run that Terminal command again.

[adespoton]

I think the only way to answer this one is to try. I seem to recall trying multiple resolutions a number of years back, and I seem to recall only getting one of them to work.

[Old-School-BBSer]

That is my impression as well, from the little that I understand about all of this. It just doesn't seem logical -- at least not to me -- that adding multiple resolution parameters in each file would work . . . unless you could give each one a different name, perhaps. That seems to be what that one person did, but that was on a Windows machine running OS X as a guest.

In fact, I may have mentioned it in my previous post, but I think that is why the "Auto-size Guest Display" is not an editable option in the "View" menu.