Has anybody been able to get sophos to install on a macmini ?

if that particular macmini (3,1) is intel based, it might be best to use a hypervisor to install sophos utm. Maybe ESXi baremetal or vmware fusion on osx.

It is a Core 2 Duo/8GB Ram.  I've tried ESXi (5.5 u3 currently installed actually), however It doesn't support passthrough, so I cannot get the VM to see my USB ethernet adapter.   I'm considering Fusion/VirtualBox with Sophos as an alternative. I was just hoping to get as much horsepower out of this little box as possible for Sophos itself.

Which is why I was hoping someone had figured out how to get a mac to see Sophos's installer as bootable. I've even tried 3rd party boot managers but they arn't seen either for some odd reason.  It does only seem to "see" USB2 keys as bootable at all (I tried a USB3 key with ESXi wouldn't work, burnt the same ISO to a USB2 key and it picked it up right away).  Tried the Sophos installer on the SAME usb key, and it doesn't see it as bootable either. Frustrating.

Hi Oliver,

Even if you manage to get the Mac mini to boot the UTM installer, will the UTM have drivers for a second network adapter? (I assume a USB to Ethernet adapter, right?)

I never tried to boot my 2012 Mac mini with the UTM installer because I use the Mac mini as a server. I run the UTM in a VMware Fusion virtual machine on the same Mac mini. If you decide to go with a virtual machine solution, here are the details of my installation:

https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/f/52/p/27167/80436#80436

Good luck!

Yeah,

I've tried ESXi, however this older hardware doesn't support passthrough, so I can't use a USB 2 Ethernet device in that manner.  I have however, found some information on how to compile and build my own ESXi driver for the USB nic that I have. So I am going to try that route. If I can get that to work, I'll run Sophos as a VM in ESXi.  I don't like the idea of running a VM on top of OSX. Especially since it means if there is a power failure, its hard to get the VM to stand up gracefully again. If I get the driver working, I'll be posting it via my blog (thecanadianbacon.wordpress.com)

I hope that you are able to get ESXi running easily and it meets your needs. I want to refute two of your comments about running a VM on top of OS X, based on my own experience:

* I have no problems with autolaunch after power failures. Power failures happen a few random times a year, and power "glitches" happen more often, usually during thunderstorms. I have surge-protected (ha!) power strips, but do not have a UPS. The power failures and glitches have not upset my OS X / WMware-based UTM. After a power failure, the Mac boots, the server account logs in, VMware starts, and its launches the UTM virtual machine. For me, it just works. For reasons I don't understand, my desktop iMac (mid-2011 21-inch) blinks off immediately on the slightest power glitch, but the Mac mini just powers through without a hiccough.

* It is easy to make a backup of the full virtual machine file in OS X, just in case the running version gets corrupted (which has never happened to me). Compressing the backup (zip) takes half the space. Yeah, you have to shut it down to make a backup, but you should not need to do a full backup very often.

* The OS X driver for the USB/Ethernet adapter just works. VMware and the virtual UTM just see it as another Ethernet device. I am still running Mavericks, and I have heard about various issues with USB in El Capitan. 

Whatever you decide, I wish you good luck!

Thanks for the info.  I have actually followed your lead on this, since it does work, and frankly compiling NIC drivers for ESXi was a little over my head.  I had your suggested setup, up and running within an hour (although it took me a few to find a new El Capitan installation that would boot).  Thanks in advance!.