Plan genuine macOS and Windows captures from VMs #6

Merged

geusebio merged 1 commit from docs/vm-capture-plan into main

2026-08-17 15:45:47 +00:00

geusebio commented

2026-08-14 20:46:12 +00:00

Owner

hack/screenshot photographs the real menu, but only on Linux — the macos/ and
windows/ folders are that same GTK menu in a stylesheet, and the README said a
genuine one "needs a runner this project does not have". It turns out we have one:
the Proxmox mule rrru is a Macmini6,1, so Apple-branded hardware answers the
licence question a macOS guest would otherwise raise.

This is the write-up of how to get real captures. No behaviour changes and no
new captures — documentation only.

What it records

Capture and drive from outside the guest, at the framebuffer/VNC layer. Same
instinct as walking the menu by keyboard instead of by coordinates: it is the
layer that cannot lie about what was on screen. It also means no screen-capture
API, no TCC grant on macOS, no "is anyone logged in" question on Windows, and
popup menus — the entire subject — come out natively. vncdo spans every host,
with QEMU's screendump as the KVM fallback.
What the dressing gives away, as the argument for doing this at all: shots
captioned macOS put the tray icon top-left, where macOS has no menu bar for one
to sit in; the Windows shots have no taskbar or notification area; all of them
still carry the placeholder icon.
What the mule decides. i5-3210M is Ivy Bridge with avx and no avx2, so
the guest ceiling is Big Sur — good enough to illustrate a manual, useless as a
platform to test on. tart on Apple silicon stays the fallback.
Windows: Packer template (no virtual floppy on Proxmox, so autounattend.xml
ships as a second ISO), mandatory autologon, and the notification-area overflow
as the genuinely hard part.

Verification

markdownlint clean. Nothing else applies — the diff is one .md file, so per the
docs-only rule this opens ready rather than draft.

Tracked in the platform repo as
#648, under
#627's scenes.

`hack/screenshot` photographs the real menu, but only on Linux — the `macos/` and `windows/` folders are that same GTK menu in a stylesheet, and the README said a genuine one "needs a runner this project does not have". It turns out we have one: the Proxmox mule `rrru` is a `Macmini6,1`, so Apple-branded hardware answers the licence question a macOS guest would otherwise raise. This is the write-up of how to get real captures. **No behaviour changes and no new captures — documentation only.** ## What it records - **Capture and drive from outside the guest, at the framebuffer/VNC layer.** Same instinct as walking the menu by keyboard instead of by coordinates: it is the layer that cannot lie about what was on screen. It also means no screen-capture API, no TCC grant on macOS, no "is anyone logged in" question on Windows, and popup menus — the entire subject — come out natively. `vncdo` spans every host, with QEMU's `screendump` as the KVM fallback. - **What the dressing gives away**, as the argument for doing this at all: shots captioned macOS put the tray icon top-left, where macOS has no menu bar for one to sit in; the Windows shots have no taskbar or notification area; all of them still carry the placeholder icon. - **What the mule decides.** `i5-3210M` is Ivy Bridge with `avx` and no `avx2`, so the guest ceiling is Big Sur — good enough to illustrate a manual, useless as a platform to test on. `tart` on Apple silicon stays the fallback. - **Windows**: Packer template (no virtual floppy on Proxmox, so `autounattend.xml` ships as a second ISO), mandatory autologon, and the notification-area overflow as the genuinely hard part. ## Verification `markdownlint` clean. Nothing else applies — the diff is one `.md` file, so per the docs-only rule this opens ready rather than draft. Tracked in the platform repo as [#648](https://git.grey.ooo/Grey.ooo/Someones.Computer/issues/648), under [#627](https://git.grey.ooo/Grey.ooo/Someones.Computer/issues/627)'s scenes.

geusebio added 1 commit

2026-08-14 20:46:12 +00:00

Plan genuine macOS and Windows captures from VMs

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Details

d9998ca21a

The macos/ and windows/ images are a Linux GTK menu in a stylesheet, and the
README said a real one needs a runner we do not have. We do have one: the
Proxmox mule is a Macmini6,1, so Apple-branded hardware answers the licence
question a macOS guest would otherwise raise.

Records the approach — capture and drive at the framebuffer/VNC layer rather
than with an agent inside the guest, which is the same reason the existing walk
is by keyboard rather than by coordinates, and which sidesteps TCC on macOS and
the "is anyone logged in" question on Windows entirely.

Also writes down what the dressing actually gives away (the tray icon sits
top-left in shots captioned macOS; there is no menu bar for it to sit in), and
what the mule's Ivy Bridge CPU decides: no AVX2 means the guest ceiling is Big
Sur, which is post-redesign and so good enough to illustrate a manual, and
useless as a platform to test on.

Tracked in the platform repo as #648, under #627's scenes.

geusebio merged commit 15393c2f76 into main

2026-08-17 15:45:47 +00:00

geusebio deleted branch docs/vm-capture-plan

2026-08-17 15:45:48 +00:00

geusebio referenced this pull request from a commit

2026-08-17 15:45:49 +00:00

Plan genuine macOS and Windows captures from VMs (#6)

geusebio referenced this pull request

2026-08-17 15:50:00 +00:00

A scene per state, asserted, and the manual generated from it #12