[Guide] USB Flash Drive-Based Chameleon / Retail Install

[dougaa]

USB Flash Drive-Based Chameleon 2.0RC2 / Retail Install

 

This tutorial is for installing OS X Leopard 10.5.6 on a PC using a USB flash drive. The end result is a flash drive which can be used to boot your PC using Chameleon and do maintenance on OS X (eliminating the need for an extra OS X partition), and Chameleon and OS X installed on your hard drive. The flash drive offers several advantages over a DVD. It is easier to set up, boots much faster than a DVD, and makes it easy to try different kexts or other changes. At the time of this writing, the required 8GB USB flash drive costs less than $20.

 

For Snow Leopard, I've written a similar tutorial at http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=199832.

 

These steps are based on my experience doing installs using an Intel D915GUX motherboard with a Pentium 530J processor, and also an Intel D975XBX2 motherboard (Bad Axe 2) with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. I've tried to generalize what worked well for me into a tutorial. The information here comes from a variety of sources, but munky's tutorial at http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=127330 was particularly helpful. I've concentrated on the steps to get an initial install of OS X running, even if some hardware, such as sound, may not work initially. These steps and Chameleon are compatible with using EFI, but setting up EFI is not covered.

 

While the retail DVD installs 10.5.6, this method works for 10.5.8. After installing 10.5.6, Software Update can be used to update to 10.5.8 without taking any special precautions (thanks to Chameleon).

 

Please let me know about any problems with this tutorial and I'll make updates as needed.

 

Change Log

2009-05-15: Minor updates for 10.5.8 and Chameleon RC2

2009-05-15: Added a note that this works for 10.5.7

2009-05-15: Added a note about hard drive installation with RAID

2009-05-09: Initial version

 

Requirements

 

* The BIOS in your motherboard must support booting from a USB drive

 

* Leopard 10.5.6 retail DVD

This may also work with the original 10.5.0 DVD, but I haven't tested that.

 

* An 8GB or larger USB drive which can be completely erased

I assume most people will use a flash drive, but any drive separate from the one you are installing on will work.

 

* Access to an existing installation of 10.5.6

Access is only needed long enough to get the USB drive set up.

 

Before starting you need to know what modifications are needed for OS X to run on your system. At a minimum, some number of kernel extensions (kexts) need to be replaced. You may also need a replacement kernel such as the excellent Voodoo kernel. Also, you may need to add device strings to com.apple.Boot.plist. If you already know what changes need to be made for your hardware this should go very smoothly. If not, do an initial install using one of the Leopard distributions. The distributions are a source of kexts and kernels, and by changing installer options you can determine what works best on your hardware. Also, the Leopard system you install using the distribution can be used to perform these steps. Once the flash drive is set up the distribution install can be replaced by the retail install.

 

Partition the USB Drive

 

These steps create a 512MB partition on the USB drive for Chameleon and any files needed to customize your OS X installation. They also create a 6.66 GB or larger partition for a copy of the OS X retail install DVD.

 

1. Connect the USB drive to the OS X machine. If a window comes up that says the disk is not readable, click on Ignore.

 

2. Open Disk Utility (under Utilities in the Finder's Go menu.) Locate the USB drive in the left section of the Disk Utility window and click (once) on the drive itself. Info about the drive should appear at the bottom of the window, and you can verify it's the correct drive. BE CAREFUL to select the correct drive, because the next steps will delete all the data on the drive you select.

 

3. Click on Partition to the top right and under Volume Scheme select 2 Partitions. Click on Options... at the bottom and select GUID Partition Table, then click on OK.

 

4. Click on the Untitled 1 partition, then set its name to usbboot, the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and the size to .5 GB.

 

5. Click on the Untitled 2 partition and set its name to "OS X Install Image" and the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Its size should be the remaining space available on the drive. For my 8GB flash drive its size is 6.98 GB. Click on the usbboot partition again and verify its size is 512MB.

 

6. Click on Apply. A window will appear asking you to confirm partitioning the disk. Verify that it names the correct disk. Once again, BE CAREFUL. Then click on Partition. When the partitioning is complete, the new partitions, "usbboot" and "OS X Install Image", will appear on the desktop. Quit from Disk Utility.

 

7. For each partition on the USB drive, "usbboot" and "OS X Install Image", right click or control click on it and select Get Info. In the info window, if necessary expand Sharing & Permissions by clicking on the arrow on the left. Click on the lock at the bottom and enter your password to unlock it. Then uncheck the box that says "Ignore ownership on this volume" and close the info window.

 

Copy the Retail Image to the USB Drive

 

These steps copy the contents of the retail DVD to the USB drive partition. To save space, the Xcode Tools optional install is not copied. After OS X is installed, the original retail DVD can be used to install Xcode Tools. Also, the latest version of Xcode Tools can be downloaded from Apple after getting a free ADC membership.

 

8. At this point we need to switch to the command line using the Terminal application. Open Terminal (under Utilities in the Finder's Go menu.) Then enter:

sudo -s

and enter your password. This provides root privileges for commands.

 

9. Execute these commands to prepare for copying the retail DVD. They create a file where the "Xcode Tools" directory would be copied. The copy command we'll use won't replace a file with a directory, thus the file prevents the "Xcode Tools" directory from being copied, saving almost 1GB. Enter:

install -d "/Volumes/OS X Install Image/Optional Installs.localized"

touch "/Volumes/OS X Install Image/Optional Installs.localized/Xcode Tools"

This can be skipped if the USB drive is 9GB or larger.

 

10. Insert the retail DVD into your DVD drive. "Mac OS X Install DVD" should appear on the desktop. Then copy the contents of the DVD to the USB drive partition. Enter:

ditto -V "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD" "/Volumes/OS X Install Image"

-V is just to show detailed progress information. That's useful, because this takes a long time.

 

Customize the Retail Image

 

Because Chameleon is being used, little or no customization of the retail image is normally needed. If you can't use the vanilla kernel, you'll need to add a replacement kernel to the retail image. For my P4 install I need to use the Voodoo kernel. For my Core 2 install the vanilla kernel works.

 

11. (If you need it.) Get the replacement kernel on the OS X machine, so you can access it in the Finder. It should be named something other than mach_kernel. For Voodoo, it's provided as the file mach_kernel.voodoo. In the Finder, drag the kernel file to "OS X Install Image", so that it's copied to the root of the image partition. Experienced people may want to make additional changes to the retail image at this point.

 

Add Additional Terminal Commands to the Retail Image

 

The OS X installation disk contains only a subset of all the Terminal commands included in a full install of OS X. This step makes all the commands available when Terminal is run from the installation disk, so it can more easily be used to setup or repair a hard disk installation. For example, this makes the "more", "emacs", and "vi" commands available. While the rest of these commands can be done from either an Intel or PowerPC machine running Leopard, these additional commands must be copied using an Intel OS X machine. While the additional commands can be very useful, they are not required for the other steps listed here.

 

12. Issue this command:

cp -npv /usr/bin/* /Volumes/"OS X Install Image"/usr/bin

This copies only the commands not already present.

 

Install Chameleon on the USB Drive

 

13. Download the current version of Chameleon from the Chameleon Boot Loader web site. Download the bin.tar.gz version. As I write this, the current file is Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640-bin.tar.gz. Double-click on the file to expand it and create a Chameleon folder. Back now in Terminal, make the Chameleon folder the current directory. Enter "cd" followed by a space, then drag the Chameleon folder to the Terminal window to paste the path, and press return. If this worked correctly, the "ls" command output will include "i386". Enter:

cd i386

to switch to the directory with the files to install.

 

14. Determine the device number for the USB drive. Issue the command "diskutil list". The output will show sections beginning with "/dev/diskX", and then the disk partitions. Determine what X is for the USB drive with the usbboot partition. The usbboot partition should be displayed with IDENTIFIER diskXs2, and diskXs3 should be "OS X Install Image". BE CAREFUL to identify the correct disk, because we will be writing to the disk MBR and the boot area of a partition.

 

15. Issue these command to install Chameleon in the MBR and the usbboot partition. Replace X by the number you determined. Enter:

fdisk -f boot0 -u /dev/rdiskX

dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXs2

cp -p boot boot0 boot1h /Volumes/usbboot

Fdisk will ask you to confirm that you want to write the MBR. Enter "y" after verifying X is correct. The boot0 and boot1h files are copied to /Volumes/usbboot not because they are needed now, but so it will be easy to set up a hard drive with Chameleon later.

 

16. (Thanks to munky.) Flag the first MBR partition on the USB drive as active This stage may not be necessary for some motherboards, but it's harmless in any case. Enter the fdisk command and then each line as shown:

fdisk -e /dev/rdiskX (NB: Ignore any fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory error)

f 1

w

q

At this point the USB drive is bootable and will run Chameleon, but customization is needed before it can boot OS X successfully.

 

Add Customizations for Chameleon to Load

 

These steps install the kernel extensions and com.apple.Boot.plist files needed for your hardware. If you added a replacement kernel in step 11, you should have a com.apple.Boot.plist file which specifies the name of the replacement kernel. For my P4 install, com.apple.Boot.plist contains:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
 <dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel.voodoo</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
 </dict>
</plist>

 

17. Setup the Extra and Extensions folders. Enter:

install -d /Volumes/usbboot/Extra/Extensions

to create the folders. Using the Finder, copy the kernel extensions your hardware needs into the Extensions folder in usbboot/Extra. Copy com.apple.Boot.plist into usbboot/Extra. Authenticate to the Finder when asked to.

 

For people installing with one of my motherboards, for my D915GUX P4 install I used dsmos.kext, IOATAFamily.kext, IONetworkingFamily.kext, and System.kext from Voodoo. For the D975XBX2 Core 2 install I used dsmos.kext, IntelCPUPMDisabler.kext, and three kexts from the Chameleon Optional Extras folder: AHCIPortInjector.kext, ATAPortInjector.kext, and IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext.

 

18. Set permissions. Enter:

chown -R root:wheel /Volumes/usbboot/Extra

chmod -R 755 /Volumes/usbboot/Extra

 

19. Create the kernel extension cache. Enter:

kextcache -a i386 -m /Volumes/usbboot/Extra/Extensions.mkext /Volumes/usbboot/Extra/Extensions

chown root:wheel /Volumes/usbboot/Extra/Extensions.mkext

chmod 644 /Volumes/usbboot/Extra/Extensions.mkext

Warning messages are normal for the kextcache command.

 

Disconnect the USB Drive

 

20. Disconnect the USB drive from the machine used to set it up. Enter:

sync

and if the activity light on the USB drive indicates any activity, wait for it to stop. Then enter:

exit

and quit from Terminal. Drag the two partitions for the USB drive to the trash to eject them. When both no longer appear on the deskop, disconnect the USB drive. If the Finder says the volumes cannot be ejected because they are in use, provided you entered the sync command and waited for disk activity to stop, it's safe to remove the drive. The device removal error that is displayed can be ignored.

 

Boot the USB Drive and Install OS X

 

We're ready to boot the USB drive. With the USB drive connected to the PC, boot or reboot it and go into the BIOS settings. Make sure the BIOS is set to allow booting from USB drives, and that the USB drive comes before any hard drives in the boot order. Don't forget to save any changes. If you've carefully followed the above steps, the most likely reason the USB drive won't boot is the BIOS settings. Just getting the USB drive to boot should work even if it turns out there is a problem getting OS X to run.

 

21. Boot from the USB drive. The Chameleon boot screen should appear. It should have Apple icons for usbboot and OS X Install Image, and may have icons for partitions on hard drives in the machine. Use the left and right arrow keys to select OS X Install Image. To enable verbose boot messages, type -v, which should appear at the bottom left. Then press return. The install image should then boot. If this hangs or fails in some way, it's likely due to not having the correct kernel or kexts for your hardware.

 

22. Continue to the screen which says "Select a Destination", and select the hard drive or partition you want to use for OS X. Notice that there is an Options button which provides options you may want to use. Also, you can run Disk Utility at this time to partition the drive. To do that, select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. If you partition a drive for OS X, be sure to select a GUID partition table as in step 3 above. When you quit from Disk Utility you will be back at Select a Destination, and any new partitions you created should be displayed.

 

23. The installation should proceed and take a while. At the end, you may get an "Install Failed" warning message due to not being able to set the startup disk. That can be ignored provided the reason given is setting the startup disk.

 

Finish the Installation

 

If you didn't need to make any changes to the retail disk image (step 11), and you always want to boot OS X using the USB drive, you're done! When booting just select the version of OS X you just installed on the Chameleon boot screen. After booting, the usbboot and OS X Install Image partitions can be ejected by dragging them to the trash.

 

If you did make changes to the retail disk image, continue with the next step. Otherwise, skip to step 26.

 

24. When the computer restarts after the install, once again boot from OS X Install Image. At the Welcome screen, select Terminal from Utilities. In Terminal you already have root privileges.

 

25. Make the same changes to the newly-installed OS X as were made in step 11. To install the Voodoo kernel enter:

cp -p /mach_kernel.voodoo /Volumes/"xxx"

where xxx is the name of the partition you installed OS X on. Any files on the usbboot partition are available at /Volumes/usbboot. When you're finished making changes enter:

reboot

 

26. Now you can verify the new installation of OS X boots. After rebooting, on the Chameleon boot menu select the partition you installed OS X on. The newly-installed OS X should boot and run the interactive setup.

 

Install Chameleon on the Hard Drive

 

WARNING: The directions that follow assume a dedicated hard drive for OS X without any other operating systems. Also, BE VERY CAREFUL if there are any hard drives in the PC with data which needs to be preserved. You should have backups, and not follow these directions unless you are sure you understand the significance of each step.

 

These directions are not for RAID installs. However, Chameleon will work with RAID. That's documented under "RAID Install" in the README file found in the Chameleon doc folder.

 

27. Restart and select OS X Install Image in the Chameleon boot menu. At the Welcome screen, select Terminal from the Utilities menu.

 

28. Chameleon will be installed in the EFI partition that Disk Utility creates when there is a GUID partition table. Similarly to step 14, determine the device number for the hard drive which Chameleon will be installed on. Use "diskutil list" and find the drive number for the drive which contains the partition you installed OS X on.

 

29. The EFI partition must be changed from FAT32 to HFS+ format. Reformat the EFI partition: be CERTAIN you determined the correct device number, then enter:

diskutil eraseVolume "HFS+" "EFI" /dev/diskXs1

where X is the device number. Mount the partition. Enter:

mkdir /Volumes/EFI

mount_hfs /dev/diskXs1 /Volumes/EFI

 

30. Issue these command to install Chameleon in the MBR and the EFI partition. Replace X by the number you determined:

cd /Volumes/usbboot

fdisk -f boot0 -u /dev/rdiskX

dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXs1

ditto -V /Volumes/usbboot /Volumes/EFI

Fdisk will ask you to confirm that you want to write the MBR. Enter "y" after verifying X is correct.

 

31. As in step 16 flag the first MBR partition on the hard drive as active. Type the fdisk command and then each line as shown:

fdisk -e /dev/rdiskX (NB: Ignore any fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory error)

f 1

w

q

 

32. (Thanks to munky.) Enter this command to prevent the File System Events Daemon (fseventsd) from logging on the EFI partition, which can cause it to become unmountable:

touch /Volumes/EFI/.fseventsd/no_log

 

33. Unmount the EFI partition and delete the directory. Enter:

sync

umount -f /Volumes/EFI

rmdir /Volumes/EFI

 

34. Done! Enter:

reboot

then once the system is rebooting remove the USB drive. If necessary, change the BIOS settings so the hard drive with Chameleon will boot first. Booting from the hard drive should result in the Chameleon boot menu, and you can select the partition containing OS X.

 

Set Chameleon Options

 

If desired, you can edit com.apple.Boot.plist to set various Chameleon options. The available options are listed in BootHelp.txt, which is in the Chameleon doc folder. I used the options to set the default partition in the boot menu, and also the graphics enabler and built-in Ethernet enabler. The enabler options are new in Chameleon RC2, and with those I no longer needed a device-string in com.apple.Boot.plist. Read Chameleon 2.0-RC2 is available with new features and less bugs on the Chameleon web site for more information about that.

 

35. In the newly-installed OS X, run Terminal and mount the EFI partition. Enter:

sudo -s

mkdir /Volumes/EFI

mount_hfs /dev/diskXs1 /Volumes/EFI

 

36. For the default boot partition, edit com.apple.Boot.plist. Enter:

diskutil list

In the output from "diskutil list", find the identifier for the partition you want to be the default for booting. Edit /Volumes/EFI/Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist (I used vi), and add the following key/string pair:

<key>Default Partition</key

<string>hd(x,y)</string>

where x and y are the first and second digits from the partition identifier. Add it making sure not to split up an existing key/string pair.

 

37. For the graphics and Ethernet enabler options, also in com.apple.Boot.plist. add:

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>

<string>Yes</string>

<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>

<string>Yes</string>

 

38. Unmount and remove the EFI volume. Enter:

umount /Volumes/EFI

rmdir /Volumes/EFI

When you reboot, the partition you chose should be the one initially selected in the Chameleon boot menu.

 

Good luck!

[weaksauce12]

Great guide, thanks for posting it!

[abs_bom]

after following everthing to the T .... i get this

 

boot0: GPT

boot0: testing

boot0: done

boot1: error

 

 

plz help

newbie here

[dougaa]

after following everthing to the T .... i get this

 

boot0: GPT

boot0: testing

boot0: done

boot1: error

plz help

newbie here

 

At what point does that happen? When you try to boot Chameleon from the flash drive or boot Chameleon from the hard drive?

 

In step 15 (for the flash drive) and step 30 (for the hard drive), make sure you didn't skip the "dd" command to copy boot1h.

[abs_bom]

When booting from the hdd

i checked with gpart live cd.... it shows my efi partition as boot....i mean marked boot

 

both the steps properly followed

 

is it possible to install chameleon with the installer from the official site.. i mean to the efi partition..

if that way .. or this..plz help.......better to learn this way... as this way i learn a few commands

[dougaa]

When booting from the hdd

i checked with gpart live cd.... it shows my efi partition as boot....i mean marked boot

 

both the steps properly followed

 

is it possible to install chameleon with the installer from the official site.. i mean to the efi partition..

if that way .. or this..plz help.......better to learn this way... as this way i learn a few commands

 

When you're installing OS X, at step 22, it may be necessary to re-partition your hard drive using Disk Utility for booting from the hard drive to work. That depends on how your hard drive has already been partitioned. As it mentions, you must have a GUID partition table.

 

I don't know if you can use the installer package that comes with Chameleon. I didn't use it because I couldn't find any documentation describing exactly what it does. Also, it's just a few commands to do the install yourself. There is a thread on the boot1h error problem at http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=131575, and it even happens with distributions.

[abs_bom]

yes my hdd was partitioned with disk utility as guid at the time of install

 

but my usb , the one which i am using to install the os.. is mbr..

 

details...

 

my usb

 

partition 1: 8 gb for os install disk

partition 2: 2 gb for chameleon 2.... with extra extensions... to install on my asus p5b deluxe wifi board

 

both these partition hfs+

 

one more partition 3: ntfs .... some backup here

 

i installed chameleon with the steps mentioned in the chameleon thread.... and the usb boots properley.. i get the chameleon screen (the partition 2 is active.. i mean the one with chameleon ;usbefi;)

once chameleon screen i choose.... the osx install partition to install osx on the hdd..which went ok

 

then again i booted from usb and followed ur instructions to install chameleon to hdd EFI partition

this when i get this error..... even tried with offcial installer with the efi install option... still same..

 

what is the error i am doing

[dougaa]

yes my hdd was partitioned with disk utility as guid at the time of install

 

but my usb , the one which i am using to install the os.. is mbr..

 

details...

 

my usb

 

partition 1: 8 gb for os install disk

partition 2: 2 gb for chameleon 2.... with extra extensions... to install on my asus p5b deluxe wifi board

 

both these partition hfs+

 

one more partition 3: ntfs .... some backup here

 

i installed chameleon with the steps mentioned in the chameleon thread.... and the usb boots properley.. i get the chameleon screen (the partition 2 is active.. i mean the one with chameleon ;usbefi;)

once chameleon screen i choose.... the osx install partition to install osx on the hdd..which went ok

 

then again i booted from usb and followed ur instructions to install chameleon to hdd EFI partition

this when i get this error..... even tried with offcial installer with the efi install option... still same..

 

what is the error i am doing

 

Does the usbefi partition on the USB drive contain the "boot" file, and was it copied to the EFI partition on the hard drive? It should have been copied by the "ditto" command in step 30. If you used some other instructions to make the USB drive bootable, that may be the problem. If it's not in the EFI partition you need to copy it there. Step 35 and step 37 tell you how to mount and unmount the EFI partition.

 

Can you run the Leopard system you installed if you boot from the USB drive?

[abs_bom]

The boot file is copied in the usb drive as well as the EFI partition in the hard drive

i checked both

 

and yes i can boot the leo install on the hard disk with the help of chameleon from the usb i created

in the steps..

 

only not able to boot from hard disk directly

it says

boot0: GPT , boot0: testing, boot0: done, boot1: error

 

re tried it many times with ur mehtod as well as with chameleon installer with the efi hard disk option

same result... i really don't understand

[dougaa]

re tried it many times with ur mehtod as well as with chameleon installer with the efi hard disk option

same result... i really don't understand

 

I don't understand either. Installing Chameleon consists of just installing boot0, boot1h, and boot. There are directions for that in the README file that comes with Chameleon, and the directions in the tutorial do the same thing. One possible cause would be if you had downloaded another loader and somehow got the files mixed up, so that boot0, boot1h, and boot are not all from Chameleon r431. Apart from that I've run out of ideas. The README file says you can get help from the Chameleon developers on IRC at irc.osx86.hu #chameleon. You could try getting help there.

 

If you find the solution, please post it here in case it can help someone else.

[abs_bom]

no problem with mixing up.. as this was a clean new installl

and i downloaded the files from the official site.. the installer as well as the other one...

used all files from the same zip of r431

 

 

i have never used chat.. but. maybe ill try that

willl post if i get a solution

[abs_bom]

solved the issue

 

could not get any help from irc.....basically i have never used irc before in my life... (have to learn that)

basically read the chameleon read very carefully many times.. then tried..a few things

my mother board i asus p5b deluxe wifi

i always used the raid mode for the hard disks.....

changed that to ahci.... and very things working... (anyone facing this.. plz check ur bios for mode of hdd... it should be ahci not raid)

but the problem is this. i need the raid mode.. cauz ihave a raid parition on another drive...currently this was not connected..

my final intention is retail osx, ubuntu, win08 r2 on gpt.... and i need the raid mode.. to access my raid drive which has a lot of data..

so i will have to look for solutions for that..

anyway..thanks a lot ""DOUGAA"" for your help

if any ideas on my final solution plz do inform. thanks again

[dougaa]

but the problem is this. i need the raid mode.. cauz ihave a raid parition on another drive...currently this was not connected..

my final intention is retail osx, ubuntu, win08 r2 on gpt.... and i need the raid mode.. to access my raid drive which has a lot of data..

so i will have to look for solutions for that..

anyway..thanks a lot ""DOUGAA"" for your help

if any ideas on my final solution plz do inform. thanks again

 

Great to hear you got it working. Chameleon can work with RAID. Look at "RAID Install" in the README file in the Chameleon "doc" folder.

[abs_bom]

the readme says about installing to a raid partition

my issue is that i want to install with raid option in bios ... i mean instead of ide or ahci ....i want raid in bios..

raid is the method of access in bios.. it gives. boot1h error...................

some people getting same with ahci mode.

i hope u get my point

[dougaa]

the readme says about installing to a raid partition

my issue is that i want to install with raid option in bios ... i mean instead of ide or ahci ....i want raid in bios..

raid is the method of access in bios.. it gives. boot1h error...................

some people getting same with ahci mode.

i hope u get my point

 

I think you're saying you want to use hardware RAID but the directions are for software RAID. Ideally with hardware RAID the RAID drives should act like a single drive, but it's obviously causing a problem for Chameleon. I don't have any experience with that. Maybe someone else knows, or you can look for forum threads about it, or try the Chameleon IRC channel.

[jjoe]

This is a great guide!!

 

The method is great because:

1. My laptop doesn't read DL DVDs, so I can rip all the contents to a flash drive.

(4G flash drive is the largest one I have. I'll also try to remove language and printer packages to see if they fit.)

 

2. I can try different combinations of kexts without wasting CDs.

(I already wasted 5 CDs to try different kexts for Boot-132)

 

Just one question:

 

After installation, the guide says copy the modified kernel (voodoo in this guide) to Mac OS in hard drive. Will this prevent us from updating through Apple? I thought Chameleon can load a different kernel from EFI partition, just like it reads a modified com.apple.Boot.plist from EFI. I am not entirely sure. Maybe I am wrong.

[dougaa]

This is a great guide!!

 

The method is great because:

1. My laptop doesn't read DL DVDs, so I can rip all the contents to a flash drive.

(4G flash drive is the largest one I have. I'll also try to remove language and printer packages to see if they fit.)

 

Glad you like the guide. If the flash drive is too small, when you partition it with GUID Disk Utility won't include the EFI partition. I know 2GB drives don't get an EFI partition and 8GB drives do get it. I don't know about 4GB, since I don't have one to test with. I used GUID to make the flash drive setup like a hard drive, but MBR should also work. If you format your flash drive with GUID and "diskutil list" shows the EFI partition, you could save about 200MB by using MBR instead.

 

If the flash drive doesn't have the EFI partition, either because Disk Utility didn't include it or because you used MBR, the partition numbers in the steps for setting up the flash drive need to be changed. In steps 14 and 15, s2 and s3 become s1 and s2.

 

Just one question:

 

After installation, the guide says copy the modified kernel (voodoo in this guide) to Mac OS in hard drive. Will this prevent us from updating through Apple? I thought Chameleon can load a different kernel from EFI partition, just like it reads a modified com.apple.Boot.plist from EFI. I am not entirely sure. Maybe I am wrong.

 

As long as the kernel is named mach_kernel.voodoo, or some name other than mach_kernel, updates won't replace it. Apple only replaces mach_kernel to update the kernel. I installed 10.5.7 on my machine which uses mach_kernel.voodoo without any problems.

 

I expected that Chameleon could load a different kernel from the EFI partition, but I was never able to get that to work. I didn't spend more time on it since it doesn't affect updating. If someone knows how to get that to work, please let me know and I'll update the guide.

[dougaa]

To save space on a 4GB drive you can also make the usbboot partition smaller. I left plenty of extra space because that was not a problem with the 8GB drive. It depends on the size of all your extensions and the cache, but just 20MB may be enough in some cases.

[noctrl]

First of all well done m8. A great tutorial.

 

This may also work with the original 10.5.0 DVD, but I haven't tested that.

FYI, the 10.5.2 works like a charm. I had one here as a bundle with my white macbook. The only thing of course I had to do was to replace the OSInstall.mpkg with e.g. this one: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?act...st&id=31044

 

If you partition a drive for OS X, be sure to select a GUID partition table as in step 3 above.

No need for GUID partition table. It rocks with the mbr one as well.

 

An update to 10.5.7 went flawless

 

cheers

/noctrl

[themerk]

Worked flawlessly for me too.

 

I don't have an 8GB usb drive (my largest is 4GB) so I did this using an old hard drive I had lying about.

 

Also, managed to use Buildsmart's nVidia DSDT and Audio driver, so I've basically got this thing as stock as can be!

 

Updated to 10.5.7 with no problems whatsoever.

[nfsx]

Much more elegant is to use carbon clone copy cloner ...

[dougaa]

Much more elegant is to use carbon clone copy cloner ...

 

I know what you mean, but it's one more thing to download, and I like using the utilities included with OS X when possible.

[nfsx]

Correct i would like to thank you for this outstanding guide.Everything works OOTB however i am having sound and video problems.Sound only works after i install the drivers after the installing has completed.The video part is giving me headaches becouse i get a distorted screen if i dont use -v -x.

Is it possible to use VESA drivers?If so how...

 

ASUS P5KC

4 GB DDR 2

ATI 3870 PCI-E

Atasinic L1 ethernet

Al883

 

- A tip wich cost me almost 1 hour,install the all the .kexts with osx86 tools from your chameleon.

 

And yes 10.5.7 update went flawless.

[dougaa]

Correct i would like to thank you for this outstanding guide.Everything works OOTB however i am having sound and video problems.Sound only works after i install the drivers after the installing has completed.The video part is giving me headaches becouse i get a distorted screen if i dont use -v -x.

Is it possible to use VESA drivers?If so how...

 

ASUS P5KC

4 GB DDR 2

ATI 3870 PCI-E

Atasinic L1 ethernet

Al883

 

- A tip wich cost me almost 1 hour,install the all the .kexts with osx86 tools from your chameleon.

 

And yes 10.5.7 update went flawless.

 

Glad you like the guide. I don't have any experience with your motherboard, but for my D975XBX2 (Bad Axe 2), I couldn't get the sound drivers to be loaded by Chameleon. I need to use STAC9274D.v7, and I installed it the same way as OSx86Tools would do it. After the 10.5.7 update I had to re-install the sound drivers, but it's very quick, and doesn't bother me when the machine boots fine after the update. I don't know for sure why Chameleon can load some drivers and not others, but I've read it may be related to the dependencies between drivers, and drivers not being loaded when the dependencies can't be met. Fortunately, Chameleon does load all the drivers necessary for booting to work (at least for me.)

 

For graphics, I have an Nvidia 9400 GT, and adding an EFI device-properties string for it in com.apple.Boot.plist worked well. OSx86Tools makes it easy to generate the string, and it also let you include the Time Machine fix (under Ethernet Strings), using its ability to combine strings.

[Maconvert]

Hi Everyone,

 

It looks like my Intel 975XBX2KR (Bad Axe 2) mother board supports Firewire (IEEE 1394a).

Do you guys think it would be worth it for me to get myself a Firewire drive enclosure as a boot drive and, if so, would this be fast enough to actually run Leopard right off of the external drive?

I don't have a lot of experience with that.

 

Please let me know your thoughts.

 

Cheers!