*** SSE2 & SSE3 Intel owners, you CAN boot the retail Leopard DVD! ***

Latest News: I posted a guide on how to install patches/kernels to the hidden EFI partition: here

(Older posts on this subject, leading up to me actually getting it to work are archived here)

As we all know, dfe's excellent modified Boot-132 bootloader allows us to place extra kernel extensions on a ramdisk, which can be used to boot the retail Leopard DVD on Core architecture PCs. An amazing milestone in OSx86 history, as i'm sure we all agree.

But what exactly is required to run the retail Leopard DVD and the so-called vanilla (ie Apple-supplied) kernel? Why can't my Pentium D run it?

It turns out the kernel performs an explicit check for the CPU 'family'. Only processors in 'Family 6' (or P6 processors) are permitted to boot. Pentium 4 and its derivatives (including Celeron D and Pentium D) are in Family 7 (P7).

There are a whole bunch of intel CPUs in the P6 family, but only Core Solo and above have SSE3, thus effectively limiting the kernel to Core processors.

64-bit operation adds another level of complexity - the only implementation of a certain routine in the kernel code (bcopy) in 64-bit mode uses SSSE3 (Supplemental SSE3), which - again - only Core and better CPUs have.

The upshot is that my machine *requires* a patched kernel to boot. The changes needed are fairly minimal, but as it stands my machine cannot run the kernel which is on the retail Leopard DVD.

Thus my thoughts turned to another approach - can I specify the 'extra' kernel extensions *and* a kernel, and have the machine boot from the DVD? I emailed dfe to ask if this is something he could add support for, only to discover it was already possible:




This led me to perform a whole bunch of experiments to try to get my Pentium D to boot the retail DVD. See here for the blow-by-blow account of me getting this to work

Ok munky, get to the damn point. Where's the beef?

Heh.. ok, well here's what i've managed so far:

- Booted the retail DVD from a modified boot-132 CD.
- Installed successfully to a fresh partition on a GPT disk.
- Booted the installed partition and completed setup, again by booting from the boot-132 CD.

To boot, you need to place a suitable patched kernel in the root of the ramdisk image (initrd.img), and at boot time, after typing in the two-digit code to boot the Leopard DVD (or your hard disk partition), you boot thus:

rd(0,1)/mach_kernel.patched -legacy boot-uuid=<uuid of boot device>

OR

rd(0,1)/mach_kernel.patched -legacy rd=diskXsY

So, to break that down:

rd(0,1) refers to the ramdisk, so rd(0,1)/mach_kernel.patched is how we're specifying the kernel to boot.

-legacy is needed if the kernel cannot operate in 64-bit mode. the kernel i have been testing with is an experimental pre-release kernel and still has SSSE3 routines in the 64-bit code, so I have to force 32-bit operation.

boot-uuid=<uuid> or rd=diskXsY - this is the real trick. specifying a kernel on a different device causes the boot sequence to switch the 'root' device to the device which holds the kernel. trying to boot without specifying the uuid or root device (rd) will cause mach to try to boot from the ramdisk itself. this is obviously not what we want. so you need to specify the uuid or the correct bsd address of the device you want to boot - the Leopard DVD or the installed partition.

Remember, this is all down to dfe and his cunningness, and his helpfulness and patience in assisting me. Thanks dfe!!!

Well just done some tests in VMware using the vanilla kernel on the ram disk. Works fine and in this configuration you can use the rd parameter rather than boot-uuid one. Not sure if this is true for all circumstances but in this test case it work. Haven't tired with installation DVD yet.

rd(0,1)/mach_kernel.donk -v rd=disk1s2

Just need a test kernel now with minimum changes.

funny, i did wonder if rd would work. i had tried it but i think in retrospect i'd specified the wrong drive for the DVD. if it does work, then the whole uuid thing is unnecessary

donk: what hardware are you using? if its pre-Core, could you perhaps test with the Modbin kernel?

http://www.infinitemac.com/940-modbin-kernel-for-amd-intel/

I have both pre & post-Core available plus AMD. However, won't be able to test until tomorrow, but will give it a go.

so Is P4HT-630 3.2GHZ supported then ??

nickhe: yes, why not test it out?

ok a couple updates:

1) i was being an idiot with the rd= thing... it DOES work, so no need to faff about with UUIDs.

2) modbin kernel works for me to boot a vanilla install.

I'm going to make an ISO and upload it somewhere for people to test. Nickhe: you up for it? You got a retail Leopard DVD?

So is it possible to boot from usb stick if you know uid of your DVD? Or that is something totally diferent.

no, you can't boot DVD if u have booted from usb :-(

for anyone wishing to test this out, i have prepared an iso with the bare minimum patched kexts (inc. ps/2 ones, dsmos.kext, SMBIOSEnabler and IntelPMDisabler) and the modbin kernel.

download here

- burn it to CD-R (or better still, to CD-RW so you dont waste a disc )

- boot from it

- swap for your Leopard retail DVD (hope you bought one!)

- type the two-digit code for ur dvd-rom drive (mine is 90)

- you should see the 'Press any key to start from CD-ROM or press F8 to specify...', hit F8

- now type:


where X and Y specify the Leo DVD. i'm not actually certain how you figure this out... example:


if you cant figure it out, but have access to a mac or working hackintosh install, put your retail Leo DVD in, open Disk Utility, click on the Leo DVD and click the blue 'Info' button. take a note of the UUID. now try to boot with:



example:



either approach (rd= or boot-uuid=) should work. lemme know how you get on!

Our savior.... I must try this. I have a 3.2MHz Pentium D. I hoped that someone come out with something like this. Thx munky

well... funny thing, i actually think this could open up booting retail to more people.

anyone know the state of the art of SSE3 emulation for SSE2 processors? or AMD binary patching?

if either of those can be fixed 'on-the-fly' via kernel or kext, then its possible this could work for those machines as well.

ie if there exists a kernel with built-in SSE3 emulation, then booting the retail DVD using that should theoretically work....

anyone who knows about these things (i have never had an AMD hacky, and I moved on from SSE2 a long time ago...) please get in touch

update: well it seems like i picked a good kernel to put on that ISO... its apparently SSE2 compatible, with built-in SSE3 emulation.

can someone who happens to have a retail Leopard disc and an SSE2 intel machine please test?!

Just want to toss out 2 ideas. Consider using prelinked kernels. This effectively combines your custom kernel with a mkext cache and allows for specificying multiple "profiles". This could help in making a very generic booter.

A kernelcache of the currently booted system is stored at /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/kernelcache. You can use that as the kernel to load and can totally ignore the mkext cache.

Also instead of using boot-uuid consider the following method as explain in the BootHelp.txt of boot-132.



The root device is probably easier to find than the boot uuid. While it will change on a lot of systems its still easier than entering uuid which will change for all the different Leopard releases as well.

Haha it worked! Awsome i succeded in booting the retail on a Intel Pentium D 3.2MHz mobo Asus P5GPL-X SE HDD on SATA. Even though i`ve got stuck a little. After it load the kexts it shows me this (i don`t have a realtek network card):



I managed to fix the thing above by adding the system.kext that comes with modbin kernel but now i`m stuck elsewhere :



any ideas ?

is speedstep needed?

Lastowl: Afaik speedstep is not required... in fact im certain my pentium d doesn't have it.

Synapse: not really sure... that doesn't look like an error tbh, just looks like it's setup your serial port correctly. Have you just tried waiting for a bit? Couple times I thought mine had hung but it was just 'thinking'. :-)

Thanks a lot you're the man, Now I can boot retail Leopard on my Celeron D machine

3d man: have you tried? did it work?

oh, and dfe is the man, im just the guy who put two and two together

Yes i let him 20 mintes to do its think..but no success . I think i`m missing a kext but dunno which one.

Still looking for some intel sse2 testers!

synapse: draw up a list of kexts ur machine needs to boot a hackintosh and start adding them to the initrd.img. U need to add a clause to the Info.plist to get it to load from the ramdisk. See near the start of the main boot-132 thread for details. I'd post it here but I'm on iPhone with no copy paste ;-)

Thx...i`ve tryed doing that...but the problem is i don`t know the exact kexts that my machine needs...i`ve tryed adding a few from kalyway`s 10.5.2 same thing...then i`ve added the whole extension folder and this time didn`t worked at all...so to be honest to try them one by one it would take me a few days.

ah well u gots to do ur homework sorry i cant be of more help...

so you can put any kernel in there like a nforce kernel, modbin kernel, if thats true that would be awesome then

yup thats the idea.... give it a test and see how you get on

There is a way to test this in VMware even on Core 2 CPU. I have already done some tests with disabling SSSE3, and should be able to disable SSE3 as well. I will try it and get back to you.

1: Boot munky´s CD
2: Swap Retail Leo DVD
3: Press 2x Enter
4: Press F8
5: boot: -v

crash no boot


1: Boot munky´s CD
2: Swap Retail Leo DVD
3: Press 2x Enter
4: Press F8
5: boot: rd(0,1)/mach_kernel.modbin -legacy -v

the last screen

darkuser:

those are expected behaviour. first attempt was never going to work - you're not specifying the kernel, so it'll try to use the vanilla kernel which wont work on a Pentium D.

in the second example, your machine is waiting for a root device with uuid F8F... which is most likely the initrd ramdisk.

please re-read the first post - you NEED to specify the root device explicitly - either by rd=diskXsY or by boot-uuid=<uuid of the dvd>

you'll need to figure out the values for X and Y, or find the UUID of your DVD. if you have a working hackintosh install on the machine, you can find either by using Disk Utility.

good luck!



woo! thats good news man. i'd like to know the results of that to see if its theoretically possible to boot on SSE2. however, I think real SSE2 machines are still required, as we may have to deal with other deficiencies. i'm not 100% sure what the impact of HPET, PAE, XD etc etc are on booting vanilla - i suspect they're required. can you disable those in your VMWare environment?

imho only Intel chipsets with those features and SSE2 will be likely candidates for booting, unless those deficiencies can be overcome by adding more kexts to the ramdisk. we need, in short, a knowledgeable SSE2 user for testing. any takers?

rd(0,1)/mach_kernel.modbin -legacy -v rd=disk2

loading loading and reboot :-(

disk2 isnt enough. you need to specify something like disk2s1 which describes the disk number and partition number. if you can boot any old hackintosh Tiger or Leopard on that machine, do so and put the retail DVD in the drive once booted, and open Disk Utility. Select the 'Mac OS X Install DVD' and hit the blue 'Info' button - this should tell you the correct value for the diskXsY and the boot-uuid - either should work.

rd=diskXsY

OR

boot-uuid=ABCDE-123-456-ABCDEF (replace this with your real uuid).


in other news...

an update on my setup - i usually need an older version of IONetworkingFamily and IO80211Family to get Wifi, and I need Natit to get my X1800 to work, and ALCInject for audio.

i placed these on the ramdisk, and booted my vanilla install. result - Natit is doing its thing, I have resolution changing (usually I have QE and CI but no res change), so thats working. Still no wifi, I will need to experiment more. Still no audio.

also, i tried booting the modbin kernel without -legacy. it booted to desktop, but I dont think its running 64-bit mode - certainly Get Info on the Chess application made no mention of 64-bit and Activity Monitor reported Chess.app running as an 'Intel' (rather than Intel 64-bit). Hmm....

was having a think about how best to proceed for my ultimate 'vanilla' setup.

basically what i'd like to do is treat the OS as installed by apple as sacrosanct. i want to get my machine fully working (gfx, audio, wifi etc) without ever having to put anything into /System/Library/Extensions. or at the very least, without having to modify anything thats put there by apple. (putting *extra* stuff in is theoretically ok, cos apple wont overwrite it in a software update).

however, i'd prefer to have it untouched, because i want to share a USB disk between my work machine (a MacBook Pro) and my hackintosh. i have partial success in this so far - I can boot my work machine's clone on the hackintosh and have working gfx (Natit on the ramdisk). If I can have wifi (critical) and audio (nice-to-have) then i'll be set.

ultimately, i'd like to perhaps create a second partition on that disk which will boot the boot-132 routine and then boot the main partition. plugging the same disk into a real mac should just boot the normal apple bootloader from the first partition

@Dense: sorry, i dunno why your post has ended up halfway thru this topic...

anyway, as you can hopefully see I realised that uuid was unnecessary, as rd=diskXsY works just as well.

im intrigued about the prelinked kernels though... do tell

I have manged to get it work on my Celeron D machine, And I've successfully booted the retail Leopard DVD.
I was having "Still waiting for root device error" but I fixed it by adding AppleVIATA.kext on my BOOT-132 ISO.
I have problems with PS/2 but I'll add its kexts to the BOOT-132 ISO.
Thanks a lot

excellent!! great 3dman, thanks for providing the first independent verification of this method

i sent you some kexts by PM which may help overcome your PS/2 problems. failing that, go buy a USB keyboard and mouse

No PS/2 Problems
Thanks munky for the kexts they fixed PS/2, Now all things are working as they should, I'll install it tomorrow and see what will happen
Thanks

woot!

Hi everyone...
i saw something fishy with the 132-BOOT iso`s. Regardless of which iso i boot my pc..after it load the stuff from initrd.img (the whole dots thing ........... ) it says for about a second:



and then continues normaly...

Is that ok to do so? Anyone encountered this thing before?

synapse: yeah, i noticed that too. doesnt seem to be anything to worry about.

Well my real P4D machine has had a disk crash so won't be testing there until it gets fixed. VMware can mask flags from the CPUID instruction which is how I tested the SSSE3 requirement. It should be able to mask out all the other bits e.g. PAE, XD. HPET is different as is part of the BIOS definition. Whilst I know how to modify a VMware BIOS it is more of a PITA, and would need time to do it.

donk: ok man, well if you can manage that'd be cool, otherwise don't sweat it

why do you need to put rd(0,1) and boot-uuid. trying to understand how this method works. thanks

(rd0,1) points to the ram disk that is loaded by the modified boot-132 loader. It is where the extra extensions and the modified xnu kernel are being stored. Once you do this the xnu kernel thinks that it is going to start all its processes from the ram disk, which obviously is the wrong place. Using the boot-uuid or preferably the rd parameters just tells the modified kernel to go and read all the other information, extensions, ... from either the installed hard drive or the installaiton DVD.

Today I have Installed from my retail disk, and I've successfully booted Vanilla installation
and updated to 10.5.4 without any problems.
If you want to boot vanilla installation without the CD:
1- Install Chameleon Bootloader.
2- Copy boot from your boot CD to your root Partition.
3- Create Extra folder on your root partition, then add your hacked kernel that you want to boot from to it.
4- Create new folder called Extensions and put the extensions of your initrd.img and all necessary extensions on it.
5- Navigate to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration, then copy your com.apple.Boot.plist file to desktop.
6- Open the file with TextEdit then change <key>Kernel</key> with this <key>hd(X,Y)/Extra/mach_kernel</key> (X is disk number nad Y is the partition number you can get them from disk utility)
7-Under Kernel Flags add rd=diskXsY (Example: <string>rd=disk0s2</string>)
8- backup your old com.apple.boot.plist and then add this new one, Your new com.apple.boot.plist will look like that:



That's all now you can boot your Vanilla installation on Pre-Core processor without CD and without typing you kernel location every time your start up

rock on mate

i actually plan to do those steps on a second, tiny partition, so that i dont add anything extra to the main OS partition. thats cos i want to boot it from a real mac, too.

oh, and thanks for the shout-out in yer sig... keep spreadin the word. now we just need someone with an SSE2 box to try this...

also people, please also try the StageXNU kernel - you'll need Disabler.kext too for this, as it 'upsets' AppleEFIRuntime.kext, unlike modbin.

Anyway doing this without Burning a DVD DL they are sol out in the local store and i'm to lazy to go in to town ??

I want to use ToH 9.2.0 sleep kernel but I can't because it make panic with AppleEFIRuntime.kext, is there any disabler for this kext to load 9.2.0 kernel ?
and btw sometimes I have
nfs_boot: Network is not inialized kernel panic and sometimes no
I don't know why

I tried it with my single layer DVD it works but it will take a lot of time to boot than the double one

aren't the the Leopard install Disc 6gb big ??

Yes but there are ways and means (mainly by removing XCode and various other stuff) you can squeeze it onto a single layer disc.

I managed too boot the retail finaly ...but when the install initialized the beach-ball kept spinning and i couldn`t go ahead...
any ideas what did i do wrong?


@3D man...with your technique is it possible to update Mac OS X directly from the updater withput doing the steps to update it like for the cracked kernels?

Yes, I've installed today 10.5.4 combo update package and I didn't modify any file on my installation till now ( only com.apple.boot.plist, added Extra folder that contain my extensions and kernel and installed chameleon bootloader) then I restarted.
but I must use -f or -v -f at boot or it will not load.

Same here too using the chameleon boot with a C2D.

If I haven't picked it up wrong, I think the reason you need to boot with -f each time is because the extensions in your extra folder have missing dependencies. If you place the kexts they require in with them until the dependencies are satisfied you may be able to boot without -f. Not sure how many it would take, or if it's worth the effort though.