How to create a iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 live USB stick using Ubuntu Linux

What you need:
PC with installed Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Linux.
8GB USB stick.
Broadband Internet connection.
Some Linux know-how.

Step 1: Download
"iPortable OSx86 Leopard 10.5.5 USB Stick" via torrent from p2p.

The download contains 3 files:
iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 info.dmg size: 18.6 MB
iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 USB image.dmg size: 2.4 GB
iPortable ReadMe.rtf size: 30.4 KB

Step 2: extract .dmg file
Use DMGExtractor from http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/index2.html to convert the 2.4GB .dmg to a .img file. The resulting .img will be about 7.5GB

To do this you need to have Suns Java installed.
Then rightclick on
/home/me/dmgextractor-0_70-bin/lib/dmgextractor.jar
and run it using "Open with Sun Java 6 Runtime" option.

Step 3: Prepare USB stick
"dd" the .img file to a 8GB USB stick:
sudo dd if='/home/me/iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 USB image.img' of=/dev/sdb
(There is no need to format the USB stick. The .img file contains everything needed, includung the MBR and the partition.)

Done
Restart and enjoy!

P.S.0:
Please post a message if you could repeat this.
I especially like to know if OSX on the USB stick is fast enough for you.
It's extremely slow for me.

P.S.1:
When trying to actually use the OSX I noticed that it is way to slow for everything.
This might be related to the USB stick, even when i just bought it January 2009.
I will try to repeat the whole process with a USB 2.0 HDD and hope for better speed.

P.S.2:
The following is unnecessary to create the bootable live USB stick.
If you just like to have a look at whats inside the .dmg file, without using a USB stick, this is the way:

Preparations:
Search for "hfs" (without the quotes) in Ubuntu Synaptic Package Manager and install all packages found, to deal with Mac OSX hfs file systems.

file home/me/iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 USB image.iso
gave
x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0xaf, starthead 1, startsector 63, 15658902 sectors

So I cut off the first 63 sectors:

sudo dd if='iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 USB image.img' of='/home/me/iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 USB image2.img' skip=63

Which I then was able to mount:
root@u810:/home/me# mount -o loop -t hfsplus '/home/me/iPortable OSx86i 10.5.4 USB image2.img' /home/me/here

which has this directory structure and all files are totally accessible:

Applications
Library
System
Users
mach_kernel.ctfsys
update

In Ubuntu Nautilus file manager you might want to press Ctrl+H to make hidden files visible, as there are a lot!

P.S.3:
If you unplug and then plug in the USB stick again, Ubuntu will mount it automatically.
(If you have the hfs packages installed as described above.)

Does Ubuntu have to be installed on the machine that you are making the iPortable? or can it be done using a LIVE OS Disc?

catch22,... some thoughts,...

- people who want to try it , don't have osx,... as such, should be able to install ,
from windows, or linux !? maybe a tar file,... or dd dump ?
instructions should be there for all 3,....
- add-ons,... there should be bunch of apps, like browsers, xbench, etc,... osxtools,....
to get additional info ,....
on a 16GB stick be fine,.... and 8GB option
- maybe a 2 partition think, with a fat32,.... since, that will allow, to dump lspci info, etc,
and be readable on other os,... if you put it on a sd-flash,... or USB, usually, people don't have 2 sticks,...


thanks

I tried it a few hours ago following the 3 steps to install.

It boots very fast (150 seconds) on a 8GB USB stick on a DELL PowerEdge SC1430 (2xQuad Intel CPUs, 6GB RAM, onboard giga NIC).
The only issue is network did not work. it does see 2xNICs (en3 and en6), However I believe I have only one NIC (BCM5751) in the SC1430. This issue was fixed manually. It was caused by zero MAC address. A permanent solution has in place (http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=3525&pid=147065&mode=threaded&start=0#entry147065).

I also tried it on my old DELL Dimemsion 4600 (Intel P4, 2GB). It is either extremely slow or hang during the boot. I gave up after a few minutes. The USB stick boots successfully using the "sleepkernel" since the D4600 lack of SS3 support. Network and sound supports work out of box.

According to my past experience with USB booting, most old computer has only USB 1.1 support from BIOS during boot. It is painfully slow. If the booting OS bring in USB 2.0 support which needs a USB bus reset, you will lose your boot device during the reset and probably cause the boot to fail.
Without OS support booting directly from USB stick, most windows-based OS use ramdisk to boot from USB stick: copy the iso to ramdisk and boot from ramdisk to avoid USB bus reset caused issue.

janmartin: Tried on a friend's HP DX5150 with AMD Dualcore 3400+, 512MB RAM with USB keyboard/mouse.
It boot up without any issue. Boot up time is about 3-4 minutes till no I/O on USB stick.
The live OSX does not support PS2 keyboard/mouse. But it does support USB to PS2 adapters with PS2 keyboard/mouse.

thx for this wonderful post

now i know that there exist DMGExtractor that would deal with dmg in all platforms

it even works in mac os

Does this let Sony Viao or SIS IDE chipset users to boot into Leopard? (with waiting for root device error)

If it is intended to be used as a rescue system, between other usages, perhaps would it be smart to add some kext such as the PS2 driver? I'll do it on my sytem. Maybe could you add an entry in the first post about that?

Just for the record, I was successful with this (wish I could say I was responding now on the machine, but there are still some other tweaks needed). Here's what worked:

On an Acer Aspire One, with 120 GB HD and 1 GB RAM ... running XP Pro and Easy Peasey Linux.

1. Managed to find an torrent with the iPortable*.dmg file and got it downloaded (overnight!)
2. Copied this to an 8GB USB flash drive
3. Put the USB drive into a MacBook Pro running 10.5.6, and copied the iPortable files to it and mounted them
4. Re-formatted/Partitioned the USB to a Mac HFS with "Master Boot Record" on it
5. Used Carbon Copy Cloner to "clone" the *.dmgs BACK to the reformatted USB drive
6. Popped the drive back in to the One and booted it up
7. Took about 1 minute to come to a full working desktop

I did hook up an external USB keyboard and mouse, as the built-ins didn't seem to be working, but otherwise, AAAWWWWWESOME!

So my question is this: is it possible to use this to boot up in to OS X, use the tools to appropriately format a drive/partition and install Leopard from my retail DVD (yes, I own one)? Would I then need to use the included tools from the iPortable install to "fix" the Retail Leopard partition's install to make things work (like appropriate screen resolution, audio etc)?

Thanks for your hard work.

After doing those steps and rebooting to try it out all I get is a blackscreen and boot0:MBR boot0:done spamming forever. What could be wrong? I did this on a freshly installed ubuntu. oh and the partition goes corrupt after i decide to reboot the computer and enter linux.

Out of curiosity...doesn't writing and running larger scale (meaning not a portable linux OS) damage the USB stick and create a large possiblity of crashing?Whenever I use a portable OS...the USB heats up slowly but surely...that can't be good for it. :-p

I'm a noobso if I'm wrong, go easy on me. :-p

You probably shouldn't have to do all this: just install osx86 to the flash drive as you would any other harddisk... just make sure the flash drive's at least 8GB or it may not install. sorry for bringing this post back from the dead by the way .

Use an external hard drive (wd mybook) install iportable then take apart my book put it in computer and bam osx86 super fast
they are usually sata drives so its fast transfer rate compared to usb

I did this (using iATKOS 7 on an XPS M1530) and it works great. Sound works, Core Image/Acceleration, wireless, bluetooth, webcam, etc.... Mmmm! A better long-term solution is to install to a hard drive, however -- an external USB 2 drive is WAY faster than any USB flash drive I've tried.

ME too!!!!!! it is really awsome on my Acer Aspire One !!! i can take this usb stick to school and boot it up on there dell computrs too! THANK YOU!!!1

I cannot get my keyboard to work with this, that so far is my only major problem. I have a ps/2 keyboard and a MCP6P M2+ biostar motherboard. If I could even just find a virtual keyboard I could use I could at least get around a bit. Anyone know how to fix this?