How to: Install to a MBR drive from a unmodified vanilla osx dvd

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How to: Install to a MBR drive from a unmodified vanilla osx dvd

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Fredde87

InsanelyMac Protégé

Aug 23 2009, 09:38 PM

Post #1

Group: Members
Posts: 17
Joined: 19-August 09
Member No.: 474,950

Hi there,

Please be patient with me as this is my first How To... I came across the same issue other people have had where they want to dual boot OS X with Windows and already have a MBR hard drive with Windows on that they can not repartition as GPT (which is required by the installer).

First off all I want to thank llauqsd for creating this guide (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=116505) on how to modify a retail DVD in order to accomplish the same goal.

Unfortunately you need access to a mac in order to follow this guide, which I did not. Here is how I got around it. Please note my way requires a separate spare 5gb partition. This can be on any drive (even a USB stick), or if you already have Vista then you could temporarily shrink it by 5gb, create a new partition on it and then after the installation delete it and expand the vista partition back to its original size.

Here we go,

1. Boot the retail DVD using boot 132
2. Open the Disk Utility and format the spare 5gb partition. I used Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but it shouldn't matter. Lets name it TempPart in this guide
3. Now open a terminal window
4. Type the following,

CODE

cp -R /System/Installation/Packages/* /Volumes/TempPart

(obviously replace TempPart with your partition). This copy will take a while to finish, but it will also massive speed up the actual installation later on so it will take you around the same time as a normal install anyway.
5. Type the following to change into this directory,

CODE

cd /Volumes/TempPart

6. Lets create a temp folder to work in,

CODE

mkdir temp

7. We need to copy OSInstall.mpkg which we are going to modify,

CODE

mv OSInstall.mpkg temp/

8. Lets move into it our temp folder,

CODE

cd temp

9. Lets extract the OSInstall.mpkg,

CODE

xar -x -f OSInstall.mpkg

10. Lets remove the GPT check,

CODE

cat Distribution | sed "s/eraseOptionAvailable='true'//g" > Distribution2

(Please note the difference between single and double quotes above!
11. Lets replace the old file with our new one,

CODE

mv Distribution2 Distribution

12. Lets delete our original OSInstall.mpkg so that we can create a new one,

CODE

rm -Rf OSInstall.mpkg

13. Lets pack it all up again,

CODE

xar -c -f OSInstall.mpkg *

14. Lets move it pack with the rest of the packages,

CODE

mv OSInstall.mpkg ../

15. Lets go up a directory,

CODE

cd ..

16. Lets delete the temp folder,

CODE

rm -Rf temp

17. Now we need to find out what the actual path is to this directory. Type the following command,

CODE

mount

and look for the /Volumes/TempPart in the list. Note down the disk and partition it is on, you are looking for something like this /dev/disk0s3
18. Lets go out of this folder so that we can unmount it,

CODE

cd /

19. Lets unmount it,

CODE

umount /Volumes/TempPart

20. Lets remount it but in the /System/Installation/Packages folder to trick the installer to read/install the packages from our partition rather then our cd. Remember the replace my example with the disk address you noted down in step 17.

CODE

mount -t hfs /dev/disk0s3 /System/Installation/Packages

21. Exit out of the terminal now. Then click back in the installation wizard all the way to the beginning again where you choose the language. It will now reload the OSInstall.mpkg file which we have now modified to allow MBR installations. If everything has gone well then it should now allow you to install to your MBR partition. If not then you will probably get a error message when you select the language.

I have written these instructions from the top of my head, hopefully I didnt get any typos in there but if anyone has any problems or can see something wrong in my instructions then please let me know.