Content Caching in macOS Virtual Machine (Proxmox VE)

[vinaypundith]

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this - I have searched the whole Internet and cannot find any help, and Hackintosh community laughed me off for using macOS VMs at all. I have a macOS (tried Mojave 10.14.6, Catalina 10.15.7 and Big Sur 11.6.2) virtual machine created using this guide: https://www.nicksherlock.com/2020/06/installing-macos-big-sur-on-proxmox/ (and the respective ones for Mojave and Catalina). My whole purpose of the VM is to serve as a local software update cache. But I cannot get Content Caching to work - it says "Registration Rejected" in the logs.

I'm aware Apple blocks Content Caching from being used on virtual machines - however I have tried the kernel patch from https://github.com/ofawx/VmAssetCacheEnable and the other patch (for macOS 11.3 and newer) from https://github.com/acidanthera/RestrictEvents. Both do their job of erasing the VM compatibility block, and I do not get any related errors, but when I try to enable Content Caching, it says "Content Caching is temporarily unavailable" an in the Console logs it says "Failed to create context -44006" followed by "Registration Rejected".

What I've tried: Avoiding usage of vmxnet LAN adapter (instead PCIe passthrough-ing Intel 82574L), change OpenCore serial number (stuck with iMacPro1,1 SMBIOS though), above patches.

Does anyone know what's up with this? I assume maybe something in my OpenCore setup (taken exactly from link in the above nicksherlock guide, I can't seem to find any other guide). People seem to have had luck with this, but no one has posted what their setup process was like. I don't care if I have to downgrade macOS or OpenCore or anything, for this to work.

Thanks in advance!

 

[vinaypundith]

Update: I figured this out, posting this here for anyone else who has the same issue. The problem is with the network controller used for the VM. Using PCIe Passthrough for a LAN adapter does NOT WORK. On my system at least, when I used PCIe Passthrough to pass my Intel 82574L LAN adapter to the macOS VM, it was detected in macOS's System Preferences as "PCI Slot 16 Ethernet Card". This apparently causes AssetCache registration to fail. I tried using VirtIO network adapter instead, and it shows up in macOS System Preferences as "Ethernet" and Content Caching works normally now. Yay!

 

[Powerbooky]

I've recently installed Proxmox on a Mac Mini 2014. It works quite well and all the VM's that used to run on Virtualbox, now run on Proxmox with less power consumption on Proxmox. But I still need Mojave too. It is kind of a compromise for specific software, AFP file sharing, TimeMachine for older(AFP), TimeMachine for newer Macs(SMB), HomeKit hub (bluetooth) and Content Caching.

So I created a VM with Mojave too, but I just cannot get content caching running. The VirtIO network workaround isn't available in Mojave, the one driver I could find simply doesn't work. All default OpenCore patches I could find didn't work. So far I have added the correct ID's like serial number and model of the actual Mac mini that runs Proxmox, but nothing helps.

I'm using KVM-Opencore v19

 

[Powerbooky]

@vinaypundith I got it working for Mojave!

Although I would have liked to use the Virtio-net driver for the network too, that turned out to be impossible due to the fact that the Virtio-net driver posted on Github isn't a signed extension (which is mandatory in the last Mojave version).
Only the HDD worked with the built-in Virtio-block driver, making the HDD shown as an internal drive.

After I already added the real serial, MAC (slightly altered +1), Hardware UUID from the mini itself, the only thing I had to add to the OpenCore config was the "built-in" flag to the virtual E1000 network card (opencore guide)