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OSX

Content Caching on OSX VMs

Apple’s Content Caching is not available when running OSX in a VM.

It seems Apple is detecting if it’s running inside a VM:

$ sudo /usr/bin/AssetCacheManagerUtil activate
AssetCacheManagerUtil[] Failed to activate content caching: Error Domain=ACSMErrorDomain Code=5 "virtual machine"...

To get around this, you can patch the kernel to remove the cpuid features check:

  • First disable SIP
  • Next: sudo mount -uw /
  • kernel_autopatcher.py /System/Library/Kernels/kernel
  • sudo kextcache -i /

Reference: https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/reversing-notes.md

By jochen

Developer at TestingBot and Tinder

One reply on “Content Caching on OSX VMs”

Thanks for the info. I’d like to be able to use Caching on a fully up to date Catalina VM. How safe is this process? I’m not familiar with patching the macOS kernel. IS this something that would be undone every time the OS was updated? Does there have to be an updated version of the patch to go with every macOS update that touches the kernel? Sorry for my ignorance.

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