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How to create a custom Mac OS X Retail Installation Media on USB


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This pretends to be a simple guide with pictures to install Leopard Retail from a USB drive to a hard disk using Chameleon 2 RC1.

[updated 15/05/2009]

It involves using Chameleon2 RC1 to boot a copy of a Retail DVD on a USB Drive, install from there to a hard disk partition, boot the newly installed partition from the same USB Drive, and perform the necesary kext/kernel/chameleon installation over the HD partition to make it able to boot from it independently (it could also be posible to keep the USB Drive as the boot device and dont touch the partition with the retail installation at all but I havent tested this scenery).

It is assumed you know what kexts your specific hardware needs to boot and work as you would need to provide them for the USB drive to boot, this is meant to be a general guide, not specific for any hardware. Its supposed to be a replacement for boot132 methods where you dont have a ready made dvd and need to create one, with this method you can easily customize the kexts used during installation just by copying them to the USB drive instead of creating custom isolinux images. Also it can be useful when you have troubles with distros that doesnt support a specific SATA/IDE Controller and, instead of modding the distro DVD to inject the missing kexts, it would be easier to mod the retail with the storage controller's kexts you need to boot.

It has been tested on a GA-73PVM-S2H board (nForce 630i/Geforce 7100 chipset, C2D E8200, Geforce 8600 GTS), installing from a generic SanDisk USB Stick to a SATA AHCI hard disk partition in MBR format, using the vanilla kernel.

This is my first time installing retail so please correct any mistakes or stupidities I may have done but this worked for me at first try so I'm sharing it to help other people install retail.

 

REQUIREMENTS:

 

Hardware:

A 8 Gb USB Drive (smaller will do if you remove some installation packages)

Being able to boot from USB (most motherboards will, need to configure BIOS to select device boot order)

 

Software:

Chameleon 2.0 RC1 Installer

Leopard Retail DVD/DMG (tested with Leopard 10.5.6 - 9566 Build)

An existing installation of Leopard (doesnt need to be the same computer)

 

STEP 1: COPYING THE INSTALLATION DVD/DMG

 

You need to repartition the USB drive and dump the retail installation media to the DVD drive using Disk Utility.

 

A) Erase the USB Drive:

 

Plug in the USB Drive.

Open Disk Utility and select the USB Drive in the left:

voilacapture3.png

Click on the Partition tab and select Volume Scheme: 1 partition:

voilacapture4.png

Click on the Options button and make sure the Master Boot Record option is selected:

 

voilacapture6.png

 

It should be the default but its mandatory for the USB drive to boot so better to be sure.

The Volume Format should be Mac OS Extended Journaled but its selected by default.

You can name it something like "Mac OS X Install USB" to avoid mistaking it.

Click on the Apply button and wait while the whole USB drive is repartitioned into a single MBR partition with HFS+ format.

 

B) Copy install media to the new USB partion:

 

Insert Mac OS X Retail DVD disk or mount the corresponding DMG image or just drag it to Disk Utility.

Select the USB Drive on the left and click on the Restore tab.

You have to select the Mac OS X Install DVD as the source and the Mac OS X Install USB as the Destination, dragging them from the list of units on the left to the corresponding field on the right (or by selecting each of them as Source or Destination in their respective context menu).

voilacapture7.png

Select the Erase destination option and click Restore.

This will take a while as it will copy the whole DVD to the USB.

 

STEP 2: EDIT THE OSINSTALL.MPKG TO ALLOW INSTALLATIONS ON A MBR PARTITION

[updated 15/05/2009]

By default the Retail DVD doesnt let you install over a partition in an MBR partitioned disk, when you select the partition to install it just gives you the choice to Erase the disk into a GPT partitioned format.

If you already have a GPT partitioned disk or you dont mind repartitioning that way with Disk Utility you dont need to do anything and can use the Retail Install as it is.

But if you need to install into an already existing MBR partition and you dont want to erase the whole disk or you just simply dont want to use GPT, you need to edit a file in the retail dvd to allow that.

Basically you have to extract the contents of the OSInstall.mpkg file with a XAR compressor command, edit the (text file) named Distribution contained inside changing directive that says eraseOptionAvailable='true' into eraseOptionAvailable='false'.

And compress all the files you extracted back into a new OSInstall.mpkg using XAR again.

You can follow the specific steps detailed in this thread (part B)

Instead of compiling XAR compressor by yourself you also can get a binary from this page. Keep in mind that there is already a xar command in Mac OS X but its not v1.5.2, make sure you are using the right version you have installed (find them all with "which -a xar" and find the version of each with "/full/path/xar --version" and use the full path to the right version when performing the decompression and compression).

Here its an already edited OSInstall.mpkg taken from Mac OS X Retail 10.5.6 (9G66), it may work with other versions too but its not tested.

OSInstall.mpkg_modded_for_MBR_install_from_Retail_10.5.6__9G66_.zip

You just have to replace the OSInstall.mpkg in the USB Drive located in with the new one edited. Keep a backup copy of the original just in case.

(remember you need to be able see hidden files in the finder to do that).

 

voilacapture.png

 

STEP 3: MAKE THE USB DRIVE BOOTABLE

 

Right now you have Leopard Installer on the USB but you are not able to boot from it yet.

What you need is simply to install Chameleon Boot Loader onto it to make it bootable.

For this just launch Chameleon official installer and follow the prompts until you reach the page where you can Choose Install Location. Click that button and make sure you select the same USB drive you want to boot from on the list:

voilacapture10.png

 

STEP 4: CUSTOMIZE CHAMELEON CONFIG ON THE USB

 

The USB Drive is already bootable but you need to configure certain things to be able to boot the Install DVD succesfully.

 

A) Kexts:

You need to add all the kexts you need to the Extra\Extensions\ folder on the USB Drive.

1. Mininum (always required) ones:

-
AppleDecrypt
.kext or
dsmos
.kext

-
IntelCPUPMDisabler
.kext or a generic
Disabler
.kext to avoid
AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement
.kext crashes.

- You should need no SMBIOS enabler because I think Chameleon 2 already does that.

2. PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse/Trackpad support:

Either
VoodooPS2Controller
.kext or A
PCIPS2Nub.kext+ApplePS2Controller
.kext (just one of them), of course not needed if you use USB Mouse & Keyboard).

3. Storage Controller support:

This will vary depending on what board you are going to install, if its not natively supported by Vanilla Leopard you need to add its kexts. Keep in mind that you only need to see the destination disk in the installer, so if for instance you are installing to SATA, you dont need IDE support even if you have an IDE DVD because it will not be used during installation.

4. Other kexts you may need during installation:

I'm not sure if any graphics kexts are needed to boot the graphical installer, for my NVIDIA card its not needed, I dont know about ATI.

 

[updated 21/05/2009]

Remember to modify kexts' info.plist OSBundleRequired property to Root if needed (VoodooPS2Controller.kext needs this, for instance). The "Root" value seems to be required for any kext to load successfully from /Extra/Extensions.

If you are not using legacy (plist-only) kexts but modded ones that overlap Apple's originals present in /System/Library/Extensions (for instance, a full modded AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext or IOATAFamily.kext with a binary instead of just LegacyApplePIIXATA.kext) I think you also need to increase the version properties in each info.plist so the ones in /Extra/Extensions get favored over the ones in /System/Library/Extensions on the loading queue.

 

B) Custom Kernel:

If your system can boot the vanilla kernel (AMD, i7), you also need to install the Voodoo kernel to the USB Drive.

I'm not using it at the moment but I think the mach_kernel.voodoo file has to be in the root of the USB drive.

You may also need to include the System.kext that comes with Voodoo Kernel (in Extra\Extensions\ folder), but I think its only needed for proper USB hotplug support (not needed for just USB detection).

 

C) com.apple.boot.plist customizations:

Follow Chameleon's help to configure it accordingly to your system (for instance you need to specify the voodoo kernel here if you want to use it).

 

D) smbios.plist customizations:

I think this is not needed for installation, at least for my system, but if you need to set specific SMBIOS values edit this file.

 

E) Custom DSDT:

You can also include a modded DSDT.aml file, I think it goes in Extra too but I havent tested (if you use one you should not even need to include a disabler kext for AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement). This is not tested by me either.

 

voilacapture11.png

 

I think thats all, Chameleon its too new so if I've missed something please correct me.

 

STEP 5: BOOT AND INSTALL FROM THE USB DRIVE

 

With this you can restart the computer, configure your BIOS accordingly and boot from the USB drive.

You should see Chameleon menu and it should select the boot device by default.

Just press Enter or better press Arrow Down to make the Options menu appear and select the option to boot in verbose mode to see whats going on if something goes wrong.

You can also type kernel or booting parameters there if needed, just read the help.

The Mac OS X Installation should start, just follow the typical installation procedures from the other guides.

Remember that you wont be able to install into a MBR partition by default, you would need to mod the OSInstall.mpkg on the DVD for that. There are also guides for that in the forum.

If all goes well the installation will complete in about 10 minutes (depending on what options you choose) but it will complain at the end that it failed because it couldnt make the destination volume bootable.

 

STEP 6: FIX INSTALLATION VOLUME

 

You should have Mac OS X installed on the destination drive/partition but you are not able to boot from it on its own.

You can however boot from the same USB Drive you have used from installation and when prompted by the Chameleon Menu, select the destination partition where you installed Leopard instead of the Default "Mac OS X Install USB".

The new Leopard installation should boot to the desktop and when you are there you need to install Chameleon again but now on the Hard Disk partition and copy the extra extensions (and kernel) you have used on the USB drive the hard drive, same as you would do with boot132 installation methods.

[updated 15/05/2009]

Keep in mind that if you are using voodoo or other kernel you may need to specify it in the chameleon's com.apple.Boot.plist configuration so the mach_kernel.voodoo file from the USB drives is used instead of the vanilla mach_kernel in the HD partition. You can also copy it to the destination partition before booting from replacing vanilla mach_kernel. I'm not using voodoo kernel so I cant give detailed instructions, pleaser refer to the Chameleon 2's threads for more help on how to specify a custom kernel when booting an HD partition from an USB Drive.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It worked... Thank you.

 

 

No more CD swapping for me.

 

 

 

I do have a question.

 

 

Where is the boot.plist on the hdd after install? Cant find it.

for the HDaudio and enabler i use a modded version of it, i just raise the version number, correct?

 

 

Sorry, I'm new to this. any help is appreciated.

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Glad you got it working!

I'll be updating the guide with the instructions on how to mod the OSInstall.mpkg so you can install the retail OS X on a MBR partition when I have a little bit of time.

 

If you mean chameleon's com.apple.boot.plist, I'm not sure what you mean, chameleon installer doesnt create it, you have to create one by yourself or use the one from usb drive if appropiate which should be unless you need a very specialized boot.plist; I just copied the whole \Extra folder from the USB over the one installed by chameleon on the HD partition and it worked.

For the audio if you mean to load a modded AppleHDA.kext from \Extra\Extensions I'm not sure if it will work, but yes I think you would have to bump up the version number (including the plugins) to override the vanilla one. The HDAEnabler you shouldnt have to edit anything as it doesnt exist in vanilla extensions.

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Glad you got it working!

I'll be updating the guide with the instructions on how to mod the OSInstall.mpkg so you can install the retail OS X on a MBR partition when I have a little bit of time.

 

If you mean chameleon's com.apple.boot.plist, I'm not sure what you mean, chameleon installer doesnt create it, you have to create one by yourself or use the one from usb drive if appropiate which should be unless you need a very specialized boot.plist; I just copied the whole \Extra folder from the USB over the one installed by chameleon on the HD partition and it worked.

For the audio if you mean to load a modded AppleHDA.kext from \Extra\Extensions I'm not sure if it will work, but yes I think you would have to bump up the version number (including the plugins) to override the vanilla one. The HDAEnabler you shouldnt have to edit anything as it doesnt exist in vanilla extensions.

 

 

Thank you. but what version field do I change? i found like 3 different versions in the AppleHDA.kext file.

Do not want to change the wrong version.

 

I just got an issue. If I try to restore the DVD to USB it always fail.

 

I tried to erase, repartition and even change to GUI then back to MBR. always fails to restore.

I even got a new USB flash and it restores but then froze on installation of Chameleon.

Always freezes when Installer is: Writing Package Receipt... Its just sits there with no activity.

 

 

Its not making any sense to me at all.

 

 

The OpenHaltRestart.Kext you have, Is it to fix the shutdown and restart problems?

My System never turns off. but it fully shutsdown. I always have to turn it off by holding the power button.

 

Will that KEXTs fix this, If yes, Can I have a copy and try it?

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Cross-posted from infinitemac:

 

Hi Thorazine. Thanks so much for posting this guide.

I've got the same motherboard and USB key as you..

gigabyte ga-73pvm-s2h

sandisk cruzer 8gb

bfg 9800GT

SATA hd

 

I'm having trouble booting the installer. I followed your steps, but when I choose my Mac OS X install disc in Chameleon, it starts loading up a few kexts, says "Loading Darwin x86".. and goes into a reboot loop. I've spent hours trying to figure this out... BIOS settings, command line switches (-f -x -v -s cpus=1), and nothing is working for me so far.

 

I've even tried installing the voodoo kernel, but it gets to the install screen (so, it does get further), and the kernel panics.

 

Any advice? The reboot loop really sucks.

 

EDIT: I forgot to note - I was using Leopard retail 10.5.1 .. I'm trying 10.5.6 now. Will update this thread if there are any changes.

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Update! Installing with the 10.5.6 Retail (vanilla kernel) worked... no more boot looping. Now I just need to figure out how to get it to recognize my SATA drives.. for some reason it's ignoring them. Will try playing with the ACPI function in my BIOS.

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I installed 10.5.6 successfully on AMD Athlon X2 64 Black Edition with the Southbridge 700 (yea, what are the odds?)

 

Installation went flawlessly after editing the OSInstall.mpkg, installed on MBR formatted partition, on the same hard drive with windows 7.

 

however, at the first boot, it works perfectly, when I attempt to restart, it goes into that "boot loop" described earlier by archimed. I attempted to install chameleon but that doesn't work either.

 

Any advice?

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I installed 10.5.6 successfully on AMD Athlon X2 64 Black Edition with the Southbridge 700 (yea, what are the odds?)

 

Installation went flawlessly after editing the OSInstall.mpkg, installed on MBR formatted partition, on the same hard drive with windows 7.

 

however, at the first boot, it works perfectly, when I attempt to restart, it goes into that "boot loop" described earlier by archimed. I attempted to install chameleon but that doesn't work either.

 

Any advice?

 

What does a "-v" (verbose) switch at the boot command line reveal for output?

 

I don't have the boot loop problem, but I'm having problems with my ps2 keyboard at the moment

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Thank you. but what version field do I change? i found like 3 different versions in the AppleHDA.kext file.

Do not want to change the wrong version.

 

I just got an issue. If I try to restore the DVD to USB it always fail.

 

I tried to erase, repartition and even change to GUI then back to MBR. always fails to restore.

I even got a new USB flash and it restores but then froze on installation of Chameleon.

Always freezes when Installer is: Writing Package Receipt... Its just sits there with no activity.

Its not making any sense to me at all.

The OpenHaltRestart.Kext you have, Is it to fix the shutdown and restart problems?

My System never turns off. but it fully shutsdown. I always have to turn it off by holding the power button.

 

Will that KEXTs fix this, If yes, Can I have a copy and try it?

 

I'm not sure which one is the right one to change but you can change all of the safely, just make all of the version fields=9.9.9 and the extensions in extra should load over any same named extension in S/L/E

The OpenHaltRestart is exactly for that, fixing shutdown reboot issues; its not really needed for the installation but it doesnt reboot on my machine so I just added it to avoid hard resets. You can get from here

Lately I tried VoodooPower.kext and it also fixes shutdown/reboot issues, so it would be better using that one alone.

About the restore problem, do you mean when restoring the Install DVD or when installing Chameleon? Check you are using chameleon 2 rc1 official installer, also you could try manual install method (terminal commands) with the other chameleon2 rc1 package. I think the write package receipt its just writing to the main partition telling what is installed so maybe chameleon its already installed, did try if the usb flash drive boots already?

 

Update! Installing with the 10.5.6 Retail (vanilla kernel) worked... no more boot looping. Now I just need to figure out how to get it to recognize my SATA drives.. for some reason it's ignoring them. Will try playing with the ACPI function in my BIOS.

 

SATA Ports works without any modifications if they are set up as AHCI in BIOS. In IDE mode it would be kinda hard to get them to work, you would need a modded AppleVIAATA.kext added or some Generic PC ATA kext. That would slow down the computer quite a lot so use AHCI mode is strongly recommended.

 

I installed 10.5.6 successfully on AMD Athlon X2 64 Black Edition with the Southbridge 700 (yea, what are the odds?)

 

Installation went flawlessly after editing the OSInstall.mpkg, installed on MBR formatted partition, on the same hard drive with windows 7.

 

however, at the first boot, it works perfectly, when I attempt to restart, it goes into that "boot loop" described earlier by archimed. I attempted to install chameleon but that doesn't work either.

 

Any advice?

 

"boot loop" is not really any descriptive, you would need to boot with -v to see whats going and any error messages.

Do you mean first boot after installation?

I'm not familiar with voodoo kernel which you would need for that machine, maybe first boot (of installed system, after installation) its not using voodoo kernel and you have to specify the kernel on the USB drive (using com.apple.boot.plist parameters or copy it to the destination partition, you can try asking in the chameleon 2 threads where to put the kernel.

 

I don't have the boot loop problem, but I'm having problems with my ps2 keyboard at the moment

 

You need VoodooPS2Controller.kext or a (adequate) combination of APCIPS2Nub.kext + ApplePS2Controller from Eureka's thread.

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You need VoodooPS2Controller.kext or a (adequate) combination of APCIPS2Nub.kext + ApplePS2Controller from Eureka's thread.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I tried both - and both don't work for me for some reason - perhaps an incompatibility with my ancient PS2 keyboard. The VoodooPS2Controller kext has slightly more compatibility in that OS X 'thinks' it has a keyboard attached, but it still results in a frozen keyboard (caps-loc, num-loc do not worK) and no text.

 

I'm going to buy a USB keyboard today - there's no reason to use a PS2 for my new machine anyway -_-

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Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I tried both - and both don't work for me for some reason - perhaps an incompatibility with my ancient PS2 keyboard. The VoodooPS2Controller kext has slightly more compatibility in that OS X 'thinks' it has a keyboard attached, but it still results in a frozen keyboard (caps-loc, num-loc do not worK) and no text.

 

I'm going to buy a USB keyboard today - there's no reason to use a PS2 for my new machine anyway :whistle:

 

Using a USB keyboard worked. Now I'm running 10.5.6, except, I can't get any audio from this realtek ALC889A

Did you have any luck getting audio working on yours thorazine?

 

thanks!

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I got troubles with PS/2 too I dont know if they are caused by the motherboard or Chameleon2, I got it to work with VoodooPS2Controller but I had to disabled USB Legacy Storage Detection in BIOS, I know it doesnt make sense but with that enabled it doesnt work. Its very weird because PS/2 works when booting from the USB Drive but not when booting from the HD.

 

I'm using VoodooHDA for the audio, it works quite well though I'm not sure about the sound quality, it even detects the HDMI port as an audio output (though I havent tested if it works). Before I was using (slightly modded) ALC889A kexts from tmongkol from this thread and it also worked without any troubles. (not all jacks tested though).

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I had the same thing with the PS/2 - works from the USB drive but fails from the hd boot.

 

Thanks for suggesting VoodooHDA - I'll try that today. I eventually figured out how to use the patched ALC889a kext from tmongol yesterday.. it works on my end too.

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PS/2 works when booting from HD for me but only if USB Legacy Storage Detection is disabled in BIOS (USB Keyboard & Mouse support disabled too of course).

 

I updated the guide to include the modded OSInstall.mpkg to install into a MBR partitioned disk without reformating.

And added some warning about using voodoo kernel when booting from HD for the first. I'm not familiar with it, does Chameleon use the kernel from the boot drive or the root drive by default? Is it posible to make chameleon use a kernel file in a specific device (like: (hd0,1)/mach_kernel.voodoo ?

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  • 3 weeks later...

It sounds like you're still modifying the Retail DVD in a small way. I was hoping there was a way to make it work similar to the Boot-132 disk method. In that scenario you would boot from the Boot-132 disk, then insert the actual Retail DVD and it would continue booting and install Mac OS X in a very pure way.

 

I was wondering if you could make two partitions on the USB flash drive - one for a Boot-132 type disk and one for a pure Retail DVD copy. That would be ideal in my way of thinking.

 

You'd have an easily modifiable bootable USB flash drive that you could install from. It would be pure as in no OS X software is changed. And it would be FAST! I love how fast installs go from USB flash drives.

 

(I was able to boot from the Boot-132 CD and then select and continue booting from my USB flash drive that had iPC 10.5.6 installed to it. That flash drive is already bootable by itself.)

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The only modification would be the OSInstall.mpkg modded for MBR support, thats not required if you dont mind using GUID partitions. The chameleon files added to the USB Drive doesnt change the other files, even if the are in the same drive they are still the same pure retail install. Its the same as the boot132+retail on 1 DVD to save us from the disc swapping.

You should also be able to achiev what you suggest, u can make a small partition for just chameleon, extra extensions and kernel if needed, and another big one for the Retail install, boot from the 1st partition where chameleon is install and choose the 2nd in the chameleon menu to start the retail install. You would have the advantage of being able to update the 2nd partition with a newer copy of the retail install when it comes out, but thats it, in any case the installed files would still be the same.

If you really want to pursue the 100% pure route maybe you should try the booting from EFI System Partition approach, or keep chameleon and the extra files in the USB and the installed partition untouched, do all your mods in the USB and boot from there.

Myself I dont really see the need for that, even if I add extra files to the retail install, as long as I can do software updates more or less safely without breaking everything its ok to me, and as long as you dont replace system kexts you should be ok.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Awsome guide! Very discriptive and easy to understand.

 

...And because so I feel like an idiot asking such a basic question but I'm having problems installing Chameleon onto the flash drive. The restore of the install image went fine (although it took about 4 friggin hours because I used a physical DVD and the USB key I'm using boasts a god awful write speed) but when I try to use the installer, it gets stuck at "Installing Core" "Creating package list" (my setup is in a forgein language so that's a translation), and my CPU gets pinned. 100% to be exact.

 

I left it on for about 20 minutes, but I'm pretty sure 50 or so MB of data shouldn't take that long to transfer. Activity monitor shows that a "_runner' proccess is sucking up all the processor juice... Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? I apologize if this is something really basic that I should have known prior to following the guide.

 

Any clues in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

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Great guide thank you!

 

I do have one issue. My goal is to always boot Chameleon 2 from the USB thumb drive and select the HDD as the item to boot. However, there are some custom kexts that need to be installed to the S/L/E folder on the hard drive as well as an Extensions.mkext that goes in the S/L folder of the HDD.

 

Is there a way to have these items be installed automatically from the Retail Installation on the USB drive?

 

I am sure it involves editing packages on the USB, but I do not know how to go about it. Any help is appreciated. :D

 

Thanks,

 

Hernando

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Awsome guide! Very discriptive and easy to understand.

 

...And because so I feel like an idiot asking such a basic question but I'm having problems installing Chameleon onto the flash drive. The restore of the install image went fine (although it took about 4 friggin hours because I used a physical DVD and the USB key I'm using boasts a god awful write speed) but when I try to use the installer, it gets stuck at "Installing Core" "Creating package list" (my setup is in a forgein language so that's a translation), and my CPU gets pinned. 100% to be exact.

 

I left it on for about 20 minutes, but I'm pretty sure 50 or so MB of data shouldn't take that long to transfer. Activity monitor shows that a "_runner' proccess is sucking up all the processor juice... Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? I apologize if this is something really basic that I should have known prior to following the guide.

 

Any clues in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

 

It should not take that long at all, Chameleon install only a very small set of files, even if the drive is really slow, it should finish in less than 2 mins I think.

Are you using the official installer? Also you can try the .gz package and do a manual installation, its easy too, just follow the instructions in the readme.

Maybe something is wrong with that USB Drive that is preventing Chameleon installer from putting the MBR and boot sector in it. You can do a disk check with Disk Utility but I'm not sure if it will solve all the problems. Also you repartition it as MBR correctly? You can check it in Disk Utility or with command line:

 

hackintosh:~ thorazine$ diskutil list /dev/disk4
/dev/disk4
  #:					   TYPE NAME					SIZE	   IDENTIFIER
  0:	 FDisk_partition_scheme						*7.5 Gi	 disk4
  1:				  Apple_HFS Chameleon2			  128.0 Mi   disk4s1
  2:				  Apple_HFS Mac OS X Install USB	7.4 Gi	 disk4s2

 

 

 

 

Great guide thank you!

 

I do have one issue. My goal is to always boot Chameleon 2 from the USB thumb drive and select the HDD as the item to boot. However, there are some custom kexts that need to be installed to the S/L/E folder on the hard drive as well as an Extensions.mkext that goes in the S/L folder of the HDD.

 

Is there a way to have these items be installed automatically from the Retail Installation on the USB drive?

 

I am sure it involves editing packages on the USB, but I do not know how to go about it. Any help is appreciated. :censored2:

 

Thanks,

 

Hernando

 

If you mean installed automatically by Leopard Installer I think you could put them as .pkg files next to the other Apple retail packages and modify the Distribution but I dont know how to do it exactly.

Read the Distribution file (the one that needs to be modded for MBR installs), it seems to list all the packages and the choices that appear in the Customize section, you could add your own entry there that will install your own package, I guess you could also replace one package from the retail you dont need for a package with your needed extensions.

For creating the pkg files I think you can use PackageMaker or Iceberg.

 

 

It sounds like you're still modifying the Retail DVD in a small way. I was hoping there was a way to make it work similar to the Boot-132 disk method. In that scenario you would boot from the Boot-132 disk, then insert the actual Retail DVD and it would continue booting and install Mac OS X in a very pure way.

 

I was wondering if you could make two partitions on the USB flash drive - one for a Boot-132 type disk and one for a pure Retail DVD copy. That would be ideal in my way of thinking.

 

You'd have an easily modifiable bootable USB flash drive that you could install from. It would be pure as in no OS X software is changed. And it would be FAST! I love how fast installs go from USB flash drives.

 

(I was able to boot from the Boot-132 CD and then select and continue booting from my USB flash drive that had iPC 10.5.6 installed to it. That flash drive is already bootable by itself.)

 

I tried your approach and it worked, you can make two partitions in the USB Drive as you said, put Chameleon in the first one and OS X Retail DVD in the second, it boots and starts the installer without trouble (I didnt complete the installation but I'm pretty sure it wont be a problem).

Its actually a better idea than what I thought, even if you need to modify the OSXInstall.mpkg for MBR its still cleaner and better I think, thanks!

 

This is how I made it: split the USB into 2 partitions, I have an 8 Gb USB Drive so I used only 128 Mb for Chameleon boot partition and the rest for OS X Install DVD, current 10.5.6 release is about 7 Gb big, so it still fits in whole and still have room if you want to put a full 10.5.7 release that it takes more space for example. I think 128 Mb should be enough for Chameleon boot files, even if you put a few different kernels and kexts they would still fit I think. I didnt make it big because I dont mind putting non-vanilla kexts in S/L/E but you could also give 200 or 256 Mb for Chameleon and OS X 10.5.6 Retail DVD would still fit on an 8 GB Stick.

 

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My motherboard boots from the first partition in that USB Drive without troubles and Chameleon boots the Installation DVD copy on the second too without any complains.

Thanks for the hint! :P

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