Rosetta-enabled virtual machine based on Apple Sample Code

Live stream

The Live stream recording where this was built and tested is on YouTube.

Building the app

The built app is downloadable at the releases page, or you can build the app yourself with XCode 13 Beta.

If you want to build the VM app yoursef, rather than using the pre-built download, do the following:

1. Open XCode-beta and select from the menu bar XCode -> Settings
2. In the settings dialog navigate to Accounts
3. If your account is not listed click the + button at the bottom of the list and login to your Apple Developer account (a free account is sufficient)
4. Close the settings window
5. Clone the git repository off GitHub, e.g. git clone https://github.com/diddledani/macOS-Linux-VM-with-Rosetta.git
6. Open the RosettaVM.xcodeproj project file in XCode
7. Click the left-hand sidebar entry at the top of the tree labelled RosettaVM
8. In the right-hand pane navigate to the TARGETS entry RosettaVM
9. Click the top-bar entry labelled Signing & Capabilities
10. In the Team drop-down select your Apple Developer account/team, and set the Signing Certificate drop-down to Sign to run locally
11. Click the > (Run) button at the top-left of the XCode window

Setting up Rosetta

When you start the RosettaVM app, you should be prompted by the app to select a Linux installer ISO.

• Ubuntu 22.04.1 Desktop (This is a daily build of the ISO and is classed as unstable, meaning that any particular day's download may have bugs - There is currently no 'stable' ISO for the desktop release)
• Ubuntu 22.04.1 Server

Once you've supplied the app with an installation ISO file it should start the Virtual Machine. You need to follow the standard installation of the distro that you have downloaded.

If you're using the Ubuntu Server ISO you will need to install binfmt-support to provide the update-binfmts command which we will use below to enable the Rosetta wrapper. To install binfmt-support run:

sudo apt install -y binfmt-support

Once installed, you need to execute the following commands inside the Linux VM to enable Rosetta to intercept x86_64 binaries:

sudo mkdir /var/run/rosetta
sudo mount -t virtiofs ROSETTA /var/run/rosetta
sudo /usr/sbin/update-binfmts --install rosetta /var/run/rosetta/rosetta \
    --magic "\x7fELF\x02\x01\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x02\x00\x3e\x00" \
    --mask "\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xfe\xfe\x00\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xfe\xff\xff\xff" \
    --credentials yes --preserve no --fix-binary yes

Now you should be able to execute x86_64 Linux binaries as though they were native. Bare in mind, however, that you need all your Linux app's required libraries in x86_64. On Ubuntu these are installable by adding the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (ensure you change jammy to the codename of the version of Ubuntu you are running):

deb [arch=amd64] http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy main restricted
deb [arch=amd64] http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-updates main restricted
deb [arch=amd64] http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy universe
deb [arch=amd64] http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-updates universe
deb [arch=amd64] http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy multiverse
deb [arch=amd64] http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-updates multiverse
deb [arch=amd64] http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-security main restricted
deb [arch=amd64] http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-security universe
deb [arch=amd64] http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-security multiverse

You also need to tell APT and dpkg to enable amd64 repositories:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture amd64

When you make changes to the /etc/apt/sources.list file, or add an additional architecture with the dpkg command, you should run sudo apt update to update your cache of known packages.

To install an x86_64/amd64 library in Ubuntu once you've updated your /etc/apt/sources.list you need to append :amd64 to each package name, e.g.:

sudo apt install libx11-6:amd64

Installing the Ubuntu Desktop for graphical applications (Only when Server ISO were choosen)

When you install Ubuntu Server with the above ISO you will only have a command-line environment. You can upgrade from Ubuntu Server to Ubuntu Desktop by evecuting the following commands, which will take a while to complete:

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y full-upgrade
sudo apt -y install ubuntu-desktop^

Note: the ^ symbol is important when you want to install ubuntu-desktop as this tells apt to use a task which defines the complete Ubuntu Desktop. If you omit the symbol you may not get a fully-installed desktop. You won't need to use the ^ for any other apt install calls, however, only for ubuntu-desktop.

Once the process completes, you should reboot the VM with the following command:

sudo reboot

After the VM reboots you should see the graphical login screen.