iMessage On Android

My Insane Journey that I did 2 months ago and forgot to post here.

Links: https://www.nicksherlock.com/2020/04/installing-macos-catalina-on-proxmox-with-opencore/ https://hsve.org/hackintosh-the-new-way-using-proxmox-2023/ (Used the Video) https://caizhiyuan.gitee.io/opencore-install-guide/installer-guide/mac-install-recovery.html https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/config-HEDT/haswell-e.html#starting-point I could probably use this to install MacOS 10.10 but that's out of my realm of understanding.

WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU INSTALLING MACOS 10.10 IN 2023 FOR?

A lot of my friends started a group chat. All of those people in the group chat use an iPhone, or iPad because they do not have a phone. I have an Android phone and my only apple device's have shot batterys. Considering how I would stay in touch with events I remembered a project called Airmessage (https://airmessage.org/install/) and decided to try and set it up. Seeing the the minimum version for airmessage is macOS 10.10 Yosemite I thought it would be fun to install it on my home proxmox server. Key word here is FUN. Considering the only MacOS I've installed in a virtual machine was MacOS 11, I was not prepared for the pain ahead.

How to go about what I did.

I first figured out to get an install of MacOS 10.10. That wasn't too hard as archive.org had a copy. You can also intall it via macrecovery.py (https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/blob/master/Utilities/macrecovery/macrecovery.py) You can install it by going to releases, downloading the release, and running the .py program from either the terminal or by double clikcing on it if you have python installed. Then once you install the dmg file you can use dmg2img to convert the DMG to an ISO so proxmox/your virtual machine can use it. When installing dmg2img for windows if you cannot access the webpage turn off https only mode in firefox, or use edge temporaily if you're on windows. (Windows: https://vu1tur.eu.org/tools/dmg2img-1.6.7-win32.zip) or (https://github.com/Lekensteyn/dmg2img if you want to build it) (Linux: https://pkgs.org/download/dmg2img or use your distros package managers) I then converted it using the terminal, put it into my proxmox machine, created a virtual machine with 32gb of storage, though I recommend at least having 64gb. I then put the ISO of of Opencore from Nick Sherlock (after unzipping the .gz file) into proxmox. In proxmox I added the two ISO's, went to the main terminal, edited the config to remove media=cdrom to cache=unsafe so they could be read as hard drives. I then booted into OpenCore where I manually opened the boot.efi which caused nothing to happen. After hours of troubleshooting I was unable to get it to boot.

Giving up on that Ancient MacOS version?

For now yes. A few more GB's of storage and ram being used up isn't the end of the world, but it's defintely unforuante. I tried to figure out the issue but to no avail. It could be that I just need to go up one version number later to El Capitan 10.11 (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 this makes me think that I just have one version too short) but for now I will just use MacOS 10.15. (Which booted totally fine once I replaced it instead of the MacOS 10.10 iso.) Install was very slow but it eventually booted. Because I was ignorant of OpenCore Configurator (the best tool for getting your Hackintosh up and running), I proceeded to do everything manually according to this guide, and absolutely none of that worked. I ended up calling Apple support to see if they could fix my problem because I thought my AppleID was blacklisted. Apparently it was not so I found out about hackintool. By editing the EFI file I was able to make the computer to show en0 as builtin. (If you want more details follow the guide.) Even that, which usually fixes the issue, did not fix the issue. I therefore then found out about OpenCore Configurator. I opened it, tried to change my Mac serial number and everything, and still to no avail. So I decided I was start with a clean slate.

Giving up?

no. HAHAHA, kinda. but little did I realize I was only part way done! https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Post-Install/universal/iservices.html So after trying to get MacOS 10.15 to work and iMessages not allowing to me to signin even Apple Support helping me out, I decided to just restart with MacOS Big Sur. (Also known as MacOS 11.) The main reason I did this was to eliminate any doubt that it could've been because MacOS High Sierra was just slightly too old. I proceeded to wipe the hard drive, wait 40 minutes for it to boot and install, wait 2 hours for it to finish setting up the install, waiting another 10 minutes for it to boot just to fail, booting into the main disc, crying, and eventually booting into MacOS Big Sur. I logged in without using the apple ID, installed OpenCore Configurator and,,,,somehow I actually had all my configuration in there arleady. Because I selected "add this section to the config.plist" somehow it must have saved it all??? I'm not sure exactly how that works but I am not upset about it. But when I signed into iMessages it worked!!!! The only thing I can say is praise the Lord because I could not have had this perserverence without Him. I then set up airmessage, and the app worked like a charm! I then set up the server, I personally didn't port forward becaues that's what my self hosted VPN is for, installed Airmessage with a username and password because I didn't want to use my Google account, put in my local ip information in the Airmessage android app on F-Droid, and it worked with little to no issue.

Advice for users trying to do what I did.

First of all if you have an SSD use that to install MacOS because the install process takes forever. If not applicable be willing to wait. Make sure you follow the guides by NickSherlock and have to get a good understanding of what to do. If you plan to use iMessage like I did, I recommend if you don't have a Mac lying around, to use proxmox, use MacOS Big Sur (unless you can get it to work on Catalina), make sure your ethernet driver is marked as built in via editing the config.plist. I also recommend using hackintool to find the name of your ethernet adapter, and OpenCore Configurator to change the type of Mac to an appropriate serial number. Everything else is built into the tool.