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Run Mikrotik Winbox on macOS Catalina

Run Mikrotik Winbox on macOS Catalina

Since upgrade macOS to 10.15 Catalina, 32bit applications are no longer supported. It causes mac user some inconvenience to continue use legacy applications. A typical case is the Mikrotik RouteOS management and configuration tool winbox cannot run on macOS anymore. The main reason behind winbox not able to run is related to a windows application simulation tool wine (winehq) is no longer supported by Catalina.

To solve this issue, there’s two ways.

  1. Get a Winbox macOS version directly from https://joshaven.com/resources/tools/winbox-for-mac/ – Be aware, this is not an official release and some limitation. It needs to wait for new release after Mikrotik winbox update.
  2. A small trick to let wine continue to work under macOS Catalina. See instruction below.

Steps:

  1. Download latest Winbox from offical website https://www.mikrotik.com/download, please choose winbox (64-bit)
  2. Move winbox64.exe to /Applications/ folder
  3. Download XQuartx 2.7.11 from https://www.xquartz.org/releases/XQuartz-2.7.11.html and install
  4. Download Wine Stable 5.0 from https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/macosx/download.html (Wine Dev/Staging version may have some compatible issues)
  5. Please choose Wine Stable 5.0 installer not the tarball which will cause idiot Symantec SEP client lot Heur.AdvML.B report.
  6. Install Wine Stable 5.0 and choose 64-bit support during the installation
  7. Open macOS Automator app and create a new application
  8. export PATH="/Applications/Wine Stable.app/Contents/Resources/wine/bin:$PATH"
    wine64 /Applications/winbox64.exe
  9. Save the created Automator application to the Desktop for example
  10. Now double click the Desktop Automator icon, it will bring up Wine. The first start up, it will install couple components (mono and gekco) of wine required.
  11. Idiot Symantec SEP client will report /Users/xxx/.wine/drive_c/windows/mono/mono-2.0/support/installinf-x86.exe as malware (Trojan.Gen.2). You can just ignore it or uninstall Symantec SEP client. macOS does not need Symantec.
  12. Your winbox is ready to use now.
  13. Optional: Right click the Automator application and get info, you can change the logo from there.
  14. You may experience macOS complaining winbox64 is not verified app, needs to move to bin. You can ignore this message by click ‘cancel’, then goto system security to allow winbox64 anyway, or disable gatekeeper (at your own risk).

Update:

As wine requires XQuartx, and XQuartx hasn’t been updated for almost 4 years, there’s a security vulnerability within XQuartx. Please refer https://www.xfelix.com/2020/04/fix-xquartz-sparkle-vulnerability/ to address the issue.

Written by Felix. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported.

Leave a Reply to imz Cancel

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  • imz

    Hi,I just did the exact same as you said, but got this error as result =>
    ” export PATH=”/Applications/Wine Stable.app/Contents/Resources/wine/bin:$PATH”wine64 /Applications/winbox64.exe ”

    You got any idea?
    cheers

    4 years ago Reply
  • asya.ai

    Lifesaver, thank you so much!

    4 years ago Reply
  • Francisco

    Genial aporte. Me funcionó perfecto con MacOS Catalina 10.15.5. Muchas Gracias!!!!!!!!!!

    3 years ago Reply

xFelix

Run Mikrotik Winbox on macOS Catalina
Since upgrade macOS to 10.15 Catalina, 32bit applications are no longer supported. It causes mac user some inconvenience to continue use legacy applications. A typical case i…
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2020-03-06