VirtualBuddy 1.6.1 bug: won't start macOS VM after installing

[darkuser89]

Bildschirmaufnahme.2024-08-26.um.17.47.17.mov

[veics]

me and other friends are experiencing the same issue.

[insidegui]

• What's the version of macOS?
• What's the version of VirtualBuddy?
• Which version of macOS was restored in the virtual machine? Did the installation finish successfully?

[tbachnxd]

Exact same thing here. If we can all give them as much debug info as possible, it can help:

1. Host machine: MacOS Sonoma 14.6.1 (M3 Pro chip)
2. Virtual Boddy 1.6.1 (130)
3. macOS virtual machine installed: MacOS Sonoma 14.6.1
4. The installation finished with complete success, no log information of any kind showed in the VB log window
   ...I get the same infinite loop of trying to open/run my new VM, it says it needs to finish installing, I try to allow it to finish installing, it says it is successful, I close that success window, I try to open/run my new VM, and all over again it says 'Finish Installation' ...'Would you like to install it now?', then click 'Install' then it says 'Your macOS Virtual Machine is Ready! -- Back to Library' and then we do it all over again. Same result every time you try to open/run the new VM.

[tbachnxd]

(How many of you above, with this issue, are trying to run this software from a machine that belongs to your organization? ...and you don't even have 'sudo' access rights to your machine? That is in fact that case with me, just fyi... but UTM and Cirrus Labs 'Tart' work just fine creating a mac vm and running it successfully on my same machine - just so you are aware of that as well)

Also: Having seen the notes related to the reported issue "Installation of macOS 14.6.1 fails" I did just now try to install a vm with '14.6' instead of '14.6.1' and I still experience the same issue reported above.

[mariusbaumann]

Same here:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f3150690-8341-44fb-8992-ca8fb47df898

Host: Apple M2 Pro, Sequoia 15.0 Beta
Guest: 14.6.1 or lower, tried 14.6, 14.5 and 14.4

Virtual buddy: 1.6.1

[mariusbaumann]

I've now downgraded to version 1.6 of Virtual Buddy. There it works just fine.

[joshua-quek-sonarsource]

Same here. I downgraded to Version 1.6 too.

[insidegui]

UPDATE: Version 1.6.2 is now available with a fix for this bug.

Thanks everyone for reporting.

I have identified a bug in version 1.6.1 that triggers this issue and I'm working on a fix that should be out soon in version 1.6.2.

The TL;DR is that VirtualBuddy is not correctly flagging the restore as successful, even though the virtual machine has been correctly installed, thus triggering its install recovery process incorrectly.

Apologies for not catching this before releasing that update. The entire installation process is going to get a lot better in VirtualBuddy 2.0 🙏🏻

Workarounds

There are two fairly simple workarounds you can use in the meantime.

1: If you already have VMs that you have successfully restored but are in this bad state

• Right-click the affected VM in VirtualBuddy and select "Show in Finder"
• Quit VirtualBuddy
• Right-click the VM file in Finder and choose "Copy" (or ⌘C)
• Launch Terminal
• Run the following command:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :installFinished true" /path/to/your/machine.vbvm/.vbdata/Metadata.plist

So for example, if you're using the standard library location and your VM is named "Monthly Jaguar", the command would look like this:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :installFinished true" /Users/insidegui/Library/Application\ Support/VirtualBuddy/Monthly\ Jaguar.vbvm/.vbdata/Metadata.plist

The VM should then open and start up normally once you re-launch VirtualBuddy.

2: If you haven't installed new VMs but would like to avoid this issue

Downgrade to VirtualBuddy 1.6 until version 1.6.2 is out with a fix