While I haven't tried it yet, some might find it interesting that the new version 3.2 of VirtualBox supposedly is able to run OSX.

I'm not totally sure if you need OSX Server or not. The changelog mentions Server, while the manual only talks of OSX.

I tried it on my Mac Book Pro.
First I tried to install Tiger using the original DVD which came with my MBP (as suggested on the VB site somewhere), but didn't get it to boot at all, I just got an EFI shell.
Then I found a DVD which says "For Mac Computers Mac OS X Install Disc 1" with version 10.4.10 on it. That one tried to load kext and after a while I got a Kernel Panic (on the host OS that is).
Would be cool if someone who got it to work could tell me the settings s/he used.

Sorry for the delay, but I was too busy to actually try it myself.
I'm currently at the process of installing Mac OS 10.5 on VirtualBox so at least that part works, but I still don't know how it'll run in the end.

First of all, I think 10.5 was the first official OSX with Intel code, so it isn't really a surprise that 10.4 won't work. Although a Kernel Panic is a bit harsh when it hits an illegal instruction...

I also hit the EFI shell first and hadn't have the Install DVD mounted yet. So after mounting it in VirtualBox I played a bit with the shell commands. I started with help and progressed to reset, which rebooted the virtual machine and actually booted the installer.
In the beginning you'll get a lot of text output and I think around the network code I had quite a long wait until it finally continued.

When the GUI actually starts the next problem is that there is no install volume to select. That's because the virtual hard disk hasn't been formated yet. Select the DiskUtility from the menu to fix that. Then select the volume and a longish installation process should be starting.
Hmm, really seems to be long. After the Installer has been reading data from the DVD for a while the GUI is now telling me that the remaining time is over 1 hour...

BTW, when I went through the details of the freshly created virtual machine I noticed that a floppy drive was included in the boot sequence. I think eliminating that option was the only change I made to the default configuration, as far as I can recall.

UPDATE:
The install went fine and the OS 10.5 also boots correctly. I haven't performed any benchmarks yet, but without any acceleration through virtual machine additions (which don't exist for OSX yet) it doesn't seem to run as bad as I feared.
So it's confirmed: VirtualBox is capable to run plain OS 10.5 (not sure about 10.6 and so far I've only installed the 32-bit version).

It seems that VirtualBox is violating Apple's EULA by virtualizing the OSX Client (Server doesn't have this restriction):
Oracle VirtualBox runs OS X guests in VMs, at odds with Apple EULA

M.I.K.e wrote:


Surely users who install it are violating the EULA, not Oracle?



I think you as the user (running 2 copies) will bare the blame... Oracle didn't ask you to break Apple's rule. What does the EULA itself say though? (I'm too lazy to read it.)

jetboy wrote:


It remains to be seen if Apple sees it the same way. I just wanted to note that there might be some chance that this feature of VirtualBox might be dropped in the future.



I'm also too lazy to read them, since EULAs don't have any legal grounding in Germany.

EDIT: But I think the EULA says that you're not allowed to run the same copy of the OS to run more than once on a machine. It's probably there to push the more expensive Server edition, which otherwise wouldn't have any real advantage.
So it might be OK to run two different editions of the OS, e.g. when you have upgraded to 10.6 and want to see if your software still runs on 10.5.

can I run 10.4.11 in virtual box?

OS 10.4 should be PPC-only, and since VirtualBox doesn't emulate the CPU but virtualizes it instead it can only run x86-editions of operating systems.

10.4 is NOT PPC only.
Intel support started at 10.4.8 or something like that (not universal though).
My MacBook Pro shipped with that one, and I used that disc to install it inside Virtual Box, which lead to a Kernel Panic that few months ago, I didn't follow what happened in the mean time, were there any updates regarding these issues?