What host BIOS settings could prevent Mac VM from starting?

[Sturmkater]

Hi,
my Asus ProArt Creator Z790 motherboard seams to be flaky and I did replace it, but I forgot to save the BIOS settings in advance. Now everything works like charm (Linux, Windows VM's) except my Mac VM's hang at the apple logo. I think it must have something to do with the BIOS settings, since everything else stayed the same.

Any idea witch one of those endless settings could be responsible?

Im super happy about every hint since I need the mac environment to work!

 

[l.leahu-vladucu]

Hello Sturmkater! Could you please do the following:

1. Post the output of lscpu.
2. Post the output of dmidecode -t bios -q
3. Post the output of qm config VM_ID of the VMs in question.

Maybe the virtualization features of the CPU are turned off by default, but if you post the output of the commands above, we'll be able to see whether that's really the case.

You can also try to perform a BIOS update to the latest version and see if that improves the situation. Keep in mind that you might have to reconfigure the BIOS settings after a BIOS update.

 

[Sturmkater]

Hi l.leahu-vladucu
Thank you for your replay! After a very long night I got it working. The solution was to send the gpus rom file when starting the vm. As far as I understand, proxmox messes with the ROM (how can proxmox mess up a read only file??) when starting up, even though the drivers are in the blacklist. Now it works. Com to think of it, maybe the second gpu I just send in for repair suffered the same problem.

The BIOS is the latest version. I did include the outputs you requested, maybe I messed up some other settings as well.

Architecture:             x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):         32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:          46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:             Little Endian
CPU(s):                   28
  On-line CPU(s) list:    0-27
Vendor ID:                GenuineIntel
  BIOS Vendor ID:         Intel(R) Corporation
  Model name:             Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700K
    BIOS Model name:      Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700K To Be Filled By O.E.M. CPU @ 3.3GHz
    BIOS CPU family:      198
    CPU family:           6
    Model:                183
    Thread(s) per core:   2
    Core(s) per socket:   20
    Socket(s):            1
    Stepping:             1
    CPU(s) scaling MHz:   54%
    CPU max MHz:          5600.0000
    CPU min MHz:          800.0000
    BogoMIPS:             6835.20
    Flags:                fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rd
                          tscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monit
                          or ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand l
                          ahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault epb ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp ibrs_enhanced tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1
                          avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb intel_pt sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves split_lock_detect user_shstk avx_v
                          nni dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp_notify hwp_act_window hwp_epp hwp_pkg_req hfi vnmi umip pku ospke waitpkg gfni vaes vpclmulqdq tme rdpid
                          movdiri movdir64b fsrm md_clear serialize pconfig arch_lbr ibt flush_l1d arch_capabilities
Virtualization features:
  Virtualization:         VT-x
Caches (sum of all):
  L1d:                    768 KiB (20 instances)
  L1i:                    1 MiB (20 instances)
  L2:                     28 MiB (11 instances)
  L3:                     33 MiB (1 instance)
NUMA:
  NUMA node(s):           1
  NUMA node0 CPU(s):      0-27
Vulnerabilities:
  Gather data sampling:   Not affected
  Itlb multihit:          Not affected
  L1tf:                   Not affected
  Mds:                    Not affected
  Meltdown:               Not affected
  Mmio stale data:        Not affected
  Reg file data sampling: Mitigation; Clear Register File
  Retbleed:               Not affected
  Spec rstack overflow:   Not affected
  Spec store bypass:      Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:             Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Spectre v2:             Mitigation; Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB conditional; RSB filling; PBRSB-eIBRS SW sequence; BHI BHI_DIS_S
  Srbds:                  Not affected
  Tsx async abort:        Not affected

BIOS Information
    Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
    Version: 2801
    Release Date: 11/29/2024
    Address: 0xF0000
    Runtime Size: 64 kB
    ROM Size: 16 MB
    Characteristics:
        PCI is supported
        BIOS is upgradeable
        BIOS shadowing is allowed
        Boot from CD is supported
        Selectable boot is supported
        BIOS ROM is socketed
        EDD is supported
        Japanese floppy for NEC 9800 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
        Japanese floppy for Toshiba 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
        5.25"/360 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
        Serial services are supported (int 14h)
        Printer services are supported (int 17h)
        CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
        ACPI is supported
        USB legacy is supported
        BIOS boot specification is supported
        Targeted content distribution is supported
        UEFI is supported
    BIOS Revision: 28.1

BIOS Language Information
    Language Description Format: Long
    Installable Languages: 9
        en|US|iso8859-1
        fr|FR|iso8859-1
        zh|TW|unicode
        zh|CN|unicode
        ja|JP|unicode
        de|DE|iso8859-1
        es|ES|iso8859-1
        ru|RU|iso8859-5
        ko|KR|unicode
    Currently Installed Language: en|US|iso8859-1

affinity: 0-9,20-26
args: -device isa-applesmc,osk="ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc" -smbios type=2 -device usb-kbd,bus=ehci.0,port=2 -global nec-usb-xhci.msi=off -global ICH9-LPC.acpi-pci-hotplug-with-bridge-support=off -cpu host,kvm=on,vendor=GenuineIntel,+kvm_pv_unhalt,+kvm_pv_eoi,+hypervisor,+invtsc
balloon: 0
bios: ovmf
boot: order=virtio0
cores: 16
cpu: Penryn
efidisk0: local-zfs:vm-1200-disk-0,efitype=4m,size=1M
hostpci0: 0000:03:00,pcie=1,x-vga=1,romfile=Sapphire.RX6600XT.8192.210604.rom
hostpci1: 0000:00:14.0,pcie=1
machine: q35
memory: 32768
meta: creation-qemu=8.1.2,ctime=1701557170
name: PowerMac
net0: vmxnet3=BC:24:11:E8:C5:76,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
net1: vmxnet3=BC:24:11:B4:AA:02,bridge=vmbr8,firewall=1
numa: 0
ostype: other
parent: migrated
scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
smbios1: uuid=9ef1dffb-73a4-4c8a-bedd-b221661cbe24
sockets: 1
startup: order=3,up=200
vga: none
virtio0: thpl:vm-1200-disk-0,cache=unsafe,discard=on,iothread=1,size=700G
vmgenid: da383594-82da-4ffc-91a5-87590f1b719d