OS X for SSE Project

Hi,

This thread has been created for the purpose of exchanging information regarding OS X being emulated on SSE processors by using a lightweight linux distribution as a host, and the open-source application qemu to emulate the SSE2 instructions. The linux distribution will serve as a host for qemu and will be loaded into ram for maximum speed. I have chosen Featherlinux as the current host distro because it is only 122mb in size, can fit into a small amount of ram, and has qemu pre-installed.

So far there are 3 people working on this project. Ai Haibara, Embio, and myself. Anyone else feel free to contribute.

Project Information

Aim: To get OS X emulated at the most usable speed possible, and create a DVD installer.
Method: The Featherlinux CD will be altered to house a 10.4.8 installation dvd, the necessary scripts required to create the files for qemu (harddisk image) and scripts to launch the virtual harddrive or native harddrive in full screen mode at startup.
Requirements: SSE PC with more than 512mb of ram, a decent graphics card, and a dvd-rom drive.

Our first goal is to find out what limitations we have other than ram and graphics. Embio and I are waiting for some more RAM before we can get to testing again, but if anybody has a PC that meets the requirements in the meantime feel free to try it and post your successes/failures.

My P3 is a custom built PC with a 'coppermine' processor, 256mb RAM and a radeon 9250 128mb (PCI) graphics card.

You CANNOT test this method in vmware because the video support that vmware provides does not work with qemu.
When booting from OS X in qemu, use the follow flags in the boot prompt :

platform=X86PC "Graphics Mode"="800x600x16" -v

If you need a demonstration of how to use qemu/featherlinux, download the attached file.
To run Featherlinux in ram, enter "knoppix toram" in boot options when the cd loads.

References/Thing of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qemu - Qemu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather_Linux - Featherlinux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine - KVM
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/kqemu-doc.html - Qemu Accelerator



Good luck,
Dragon

http://www.yourfilehost.com/media.php?cat=...knoppixqemu.rar

Awesome!

Just wanted to point out lots of SSE boards top out at 512 of ram, have you guys even tried with 256?
I hope you the best of luck, maybe I could pull out some old parts if you get this going. I've read of a couple of gurus that have been able to run on SSE for a while

On the apple website, it says that you must have "At least 256MB of physical RAM" to run tiger. Seeing as Featherlinux is going to be taking up a small portion of the ram, we are going to need more than 256mb. I have tried with 256mb and I think that is what is causing OS X to crash so I think the minimum amount of ram that we need to get OS X running is 384mb. That's only a 256mb + 128mb.


What do you mean? Did they get it running natively or using qemu?

Dragon

I still say 512MB is going to be a minimum, I'm going to get a couple of 256 sticks for this one. Do we know what Qemu takes up?

My old Athlon XP 2100+ had only SSE, and had a GB of RAM. I got a Celeron-D 2.26 GHz and i find it equivalent in speed. But sadly my Athlon is all burnt up, so oh well, so much for that. On the other hand, my new Celeron does SSE3 so thats awesome.

I'm not sure and I cant seem to find the posts. I think it would be natively because I believe I read it while looking through kernel development crap. I think it had something to do with compiling the kernel but I'm not positive what was done.

you will have no luck guys

kvm need Intel VT or AMD SVM technology

no intel VT on pentium3 procs, and no AMD SVM on AthlonXP

Yeah, Semthex told me that the current kernel runs on SSE in single user mode, it's just the extra non-open source stuff like the finder and dock which still need SSE2. Let's get back to work on getting OS X running in qemu though .

I just posted that there as an item of interest. We are probably using qemu.

I will most likely be picking up some RAM this weekend. On a side note, why is 100mhz SD-RAM still so expensive? 1GB in sticks of 256MB costs the same as the 1GB 667 SO-DIMM I got for my Macbook, its ridiculous.

i am going to try this on my old p3 after i get it back from grandma

i have a P3 im willing to test on. i can also provide OS X 10.0 10.2 and 10.3 if needed
the p3 has 512MB RDRAM with an ati radeon 9250 PC and CD burner.

FeatherLinux - 122mb
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/download.htm

Install Featherlinux to HDD.
Use USB media/network connection to transfer OS X iso to linux partition.
Boot Featherlinux, open terminal ..
create hdd image, boot OSX.

tell us what happens

how do we make a hard drive installed FeatherLinux boot into RAM?

hmm... never thought of that
i can't remember if it loaded boot options when booting from the hdd.
it copies the operating system files from the cd into RAM so i'd assume it would do the same with a hdd install..

anyways, i'll be checking tomorrow. gotta get some sleep

cya

would it be possible to make a complete installer, qemu menu, feather linux and osx?

first things first, FeatherLinux needs to have web browsers, word processors etc. stripped out.

I have been reading about Knoppix remastering...
Featherlinux is just a remastered version of knoppix, i.e packages removed.
So I say we remaster our own version of knoppix, so we can choose what we want in it and what we don't.

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_Remastering_Howto
http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/20...hout_remas.html
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=...pix+remastering
http://www.brianmadden.com/content/content.asp?ID=575

knoppix will load into RAM also, if small enough.

which version of OS X are we tring?

10.4 Tiger > 10.4.9

BTW, there is a version of featherlinux called tiny-feather that is only 49mb which we could pop qemu in.
I'm just trying to find it now.

tiny-feather.iso

where can i get the copy of tiger? the earliest version leaked was 10.4.1

Roflmao, 10.4 Tiger is the branch, he wants to use 10.4.9. XD

@mac-mini

you're right, the earliest leaked version was marklar-tiger.dmg and was version 10.4.1

tiger-x86.tar.bz2 is the 10.4.1 version
Apple.OS.X.x86.Developer.Kit.Install.DVD-pheNIX is 10.4.1 also

just google these, the top one is the harddrive image.
the second is the dvd install.

we may as well use 10.4.8 or .9, no use going back to 10.4.1. From an OSx86 point of view and an OS X point of view Tiger has come a long way since last year.

why dont we try modifying rhapsody to act more osx... ish? and was the osx public beta compatable with x86 and would it run on sse? (idc.... just poping some ideas in.... cant test it though... only got sse 3... well one intel thats not, but i cant touch that for fear of messing windows 95 up!)

We could easily get rhapsody to look and act like os x, but it wouldn't BE OS X. There are a few window managers that look almost identical to aqua. Although they are hard to find, I still have a few somewhere on my pc. But you can't run any OS X applications lol.
OS X public beta wasn't x86 compatible although they did release kernel source for x86.

Dragon

I think you can install this in KDE if you like : http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=50977
And this used to be a theme source for Rhapsody : http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood.../schemetotheme/

Kaleidoscope themes
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchi...perArchive.html


"You can make your older Mac look like it has OS X on it with very little effort."

http://lowendmac.com/archive/010420.html



POSTED BY jeremy1701 @ http://www.linuxforums.org/


Here are some KDE themes... with the right combination of these you can have an exact clone of OS X.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=7855
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=11373
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=50977
Dragon

nevermind

Hi there guys, I've been reading up on your past threads and I must say I need what you guys are trying to develop.

I have a Compaq Presario 2195us laptop with:
Athlon XP-M 1.87 GHz
512 MB (DDR SDRAM)

I currently have no OS in it, since I tried installing Tiger 10.4.6 and well... I found out I need atleast SSE2 to get it running.

So, I'm able and capable of doing some testing for you guys. Now I was very interested in running OS X 10.3 (Jaguar) on my laptop. I found a copy of 3CDs with the Jaguar install files via torrents and am downloading it as we speak. (Will take a day or som to download = 1.9gigs). Do I need anything else to install these CDs or can I install it natively.

As I mentioned I have OS X 10.4 x86, so I can see if I can install that as well. But I need an external DVD to run those burnt DVD since my laptop DVD-CDRW combo drive will not read them. I can try anything out for you guys starting on Monday . Just give me a nice set of instructions and am good to go!

I mean, if you guys manage to get either OS X 10.2, 10.3 or even 10.4 on a SSE processor!! It would be amazing! Good luck!!

**EDIT**
Just wondering if one can use OpenDarwin in order to boot OS X??

You can use your 10.4.6 DVD.



BTW, we are using qemu as you can see on the first post.

You can't run OS X natively on an SSE only computer. SSE2 needs to be emulated...
also you can't use 10.2 10.3 unless you have the marklar x86 builds from apple.

If you would like to test for us, here is what you have to do (in detail) :

either :
1. Download a copy of Featherlinux
2. Install it to the harddrive.
3. Copy OS X iso or img to your install.
4. Boot it using qemu
5. At boot options enter " platform=X86PC -v "Graphics Mode"="800x600x16" "
6. Post results.

OR: help us remaster a knoppix cd.

today im going to put featherlinux on a 10GB HD and ill test using a JaS 10.4.8 with semthex kernel

I have Feather Lunux on a 220MB CD I had around. Aparently I can only boot the CD using the failsafe mode. All other options just display a blank screen and freezes.

I do not currently have the OS X iso for 10.4.6 I have the DVD but as I mentioned I'll need the external drive to read it. So I'll have to wait till this Sunday the 21st.

Also, wtf is QEMU? I'll download the full version and see what I can come up with.

As for: "help us remaster a knoppix cd." Well I have no idea how to do that. I'm in no way a software developer or programmer. Not that I'm a NOOB to computing but in order to help you I guess you guys will have to be some what specific around the details.

If Featherlinux isn't working for you, you can just use knoppix 5.0.1. Knoppix comes with qemu aswell and is fairly fast. The only problem with using it is you can't load it to ram unless you cut it down small enough. Remastering is just taking out unnecessary applications or adding them. We want to take out as many applications as we can so we can load it into the smallest amount of ram.

Qemu is just an x86 processor emulator. It emulates SSE2, that's how we can get it running on an SSE only pc. If you don't understand, watch the videos in the link I posted in my second post.

Also you need an OSx86 iso for it to work. Not just an intel-mac install DVD.

Yea I get it. Sounds easy enough..

MAC OS X x86 10.4.6 DVD >> Done

Dowloading Knoppix 5.1.1 >> Processing >> 2hrs remaining, I'll work on it tomorrow morning. Its 12:07am as is.

Use Qemu >> Pending

Post Results >> Pending

Remastering Knoppix <<< Up to you Dragon

-save yourself some bandwidth; those disks are for PPC Macs, and 10.3 =panther; jaguar is 10.2. So yes, you will need something else to install them -a G3 to G5 powerPC mac with built in USB. lol
-I think if you used the search function on the forum you'd find how OpenDarwin tied in to the OSx86 project.

Update

Ok, so Dragon I downloaded and burnt Knoppix.

I loaded it up, and ran Qemu with the commands you posted...
That is when everything went wrong.

Ok, the first is the error, the second is the Ext. Drive mounted on /dev/sr0 << the picture presents the contents that it actually is MAC OSX X86 10.4.6

Look at the pictures for the errors. Telll me what I can do Dragon. I'll await your responce.

Also the '-v' command created an error. According to Knoppix that variable doesnt exist in its Qemu

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Guys, Mac OS X on qemu is slow as molasses, you'd be better off using the PPC version on PearPC.

No, OSX doesn't run natively on a SSE CPU but only with Qemu. I tried it long time ago with 0.7.2, 0.8.0 and a CVS Version .
I got OSX running in Qemu with only 192 MB and it was working.
Even if I gave OSX more RAM in Qemu, it was still very slow.
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=5055

Try booting from the 10.4.6 iso instead of the dvd.
Also when you start your knoppix cd, check what your cd is mounted as, at knoppix startup it says "searching for KNOPPIX cdrom at /dev/scd0".

Try copy the 10.4.6 iso into your root directory and run it from there.


@Pu7o
We are running linux in RAM which will hopefully increase the speed.

Dragon

What distro were you using? and did you load it into ram like we are doing?
We don't just plan on running OS X with qemu. We want to make qemu load up on a super quick linux distro and let it perform as fast as possible.

It was long time ago (Nov 2005), I used a Suse 9.3 installation but it should work with every Distro (also live-CDs).
Maybe it will run a little bit fast faster if you are using a small linux Distro into RAM, but I doubt that it will be real fast
Did you take a look at DSL Linux? It's very small (50MB), you can load it into RAM, possibility for remastering and it was already used for a similar projekt (Atari Falcon as live-CD based on DSL with ARAnyM emulator)
Remaster DSL:
https://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/bin/view...emasteringGuide
AFROS Live-CD as example:
http://aranym.sourceforge.net/livecd.html

P.S: I don't know if the Qemu binary in Featherlinux will work for OSX; for 0.7.2 and 0.8.0 I had to compile my own binary with a small modification (see the other topic)

It'd still be faster it you did all that you're doing, but using PearPC instead of QEMU.

Thank you for the info. I read the other topic you posted and compiled the modified source. I tried with DSL but it was missing things and I didn't feel like screwing around with it. But remastering DSL wouldn't be a bad idea. We can probably add the missing stuff.

Thanks for that,
Dragon

@Pu7o

Emulating a whole different architecture would be faster than emulating x86?

I don't know the technical aspects of it, but I do know from experience that running OS X Intel on QEMU is slower than running OS X PPC on PearPC. Remember that in both cases, you're emulating a whole architecture, which means it basically comes down to what was better implemented.

It's all going to be ssllloooww

That is true, I guess. I have never actually used PearPC so I am downloading now and am about to give it a shot.