[Guide] Vanilla Retail 10.6.x with Chameleon v2 for Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L

[blackosx]

@blackosx

 

EP45-DS3 user here.

Do you think BIOS update is necessary (i am on F8 atm) for this install to be successful?

I am thinking of buying new HDD and just install it there and keep my current rock solid 10.5.6 build, but i have no idea whether it's going to boot on F10 revision.

 

A bit unfair of me to post questions since i havent done my homework yet (read this thread entirely) and i know from previous experience that 99% of the problems occurring are likely already solved or have other work-around solution equal to the general fix of the problem.

Not using your motherboard I can't be certain, but I would have thought your current BIOS would work fine with Snow Leopard and also your current 10.5 system should work if you updated your BIOS. The benefits of the newer BIOS's for my motherboard brought faster boot options which are great but not essential. But it's completely up to you.

 

If I remember correctly, I think others in this thread have been using the DS3.

 

....and the guide for the GA-EP45-UD3L doesnt work at all. lol

...this method worked for my GA-EP45-UD3L

Really?

But thanks.

 

I have a working version of snow server 10.6.2.. things are working pretty good and even have ZFS up and running again. Only problem is I am trying to move the install over to an SSD and cant figure out how to copy both partitions, the Cham and Snow.. and activate the drive so it boots. Chameleon fails to install for some reason.. fails right towards the end...

 

Ideas appreciated!!

I have never used an SSD but I would have thought they would operate the same as a conventional HDD. You can use the excellent CarbonCopyCloner to duplicate your 10.6 install and it should be easy to create the cham partition from scratch. The original RC2 installer needs to be run from a 10.5 install, or your can install Chameleon manually by reading the README in the doc folder in the Chameleon RC4 binary download. Or you can choose the unofficial RC4 installer supplied by Dr.Hurt (but don't complain to me or voodooprojects if that option fails to work).

[dragonmel]

Thanks.. I have tried to copy both partitions with CCC. I have tried CCC on just the Snow part and then installing RC2 from both 10.6 and 10.5 to the Cham part but it fails towards the end.. Still cant figure out why?

 

I can boot with my working install and select the SSD and it works fine. Just cant get chameleon to install and activate the drive.

 

I might have to look into installing all the bootloader stages by hand then CCC the contents of my working Cham to the new one?

 

anywho.. happy new year to all... and thanks for the good work

 

edit.. looks like I have it worked out.. had to reformat as MBR to totally destroy the tables.. reformat as HFS and install chameleon from a 10.5 install.. then updated the boot and extras folders from the previous install...

 

now I have to look at applying the latest fixes... still using the bonjour enabler, and restart...

[waldo_pepperjack]

this method worked for my GA-EP45-UD3L. ...

Ditto that comment ... blackosx's guide worked for me as well ... I read other guides and saw some similarities/diferences, but mainly followed this one for the basic install.

[blackosx]

Happy New Year Everyone

 

edit.. looks like I have it worked out.. had to reformat as MBR to totally destroy the tables.. reformat as HFS and install chameleon from a 10.5 install.. then updated the boot and extras folders from the previous install...

Bingo!... Well done dragonmel. I'll be interested to hear how much faster your boot process and overall system performance is now you've entirely running on SSD.

[dragonmel]

Happy New Year Everyone

 

 

Bingo!... Well done dragonmel. I'll be interested to hear how much faster your boot process and overall system performance is now you've entirely running on SSD.

 

 

 

I did not get the fastest SSD on the planet, and it may be a first gen drive with a marvel controller which have not gotten good reviews.. but frys had a 32gig patriot warp on sale for 89 and could not pass it up.

 

I am not disappointed... the server seems more responsive, the drive itself says cold, and I am seeing disk activitys peak at over 200MB/s on occasion.. thats pretty good.. also took my xbench from the 170s up to over 200 just on drive performance !

 

I now have to decide if its worth going for the latest upgrade for the latest fixes.. I am running the latest Cham RC but I have not applied the UUID fix or the new reboot fix... and I am also still using the bonjour script fix... but for now all appears well.. I have not tried sleep.. as a server never sleeps.. but the display seems to time out ok and the server power usage in idle is just over 120 watts per the killawatt... I use your tables on my e8400 as I have been told they are the same at it appears to cycle well.

 

I had to do the dsdt fix by edditing my PCI0 to zero from one ...

 

again fantastic thread... I run a badaxe1 and badaxe2 and they are still stuck down in 10.5 as there is no one source yet for reliable solutions like you have brought together here. Buildsmart and bofors are running a great effort on their own site but it is taking them some time to get out a quality release but they are getting inside help from chipset manufacturers and have custom bioses as well as an installer.. their 10.5 stuff is great and from the features mentioned.. I have high hopes for the 10.6 release which is imminent..

 

snow server is not a trifle and will keep my busy while I figure it all out.. but so far so good.. and I think I have a good DNS service set up and that is more than half the battle... now to turn on and start configuring services!!

 

Thanks again all...

[RKmd]

Hey everyone, I have a bit of a problem which I *hope* has an extremely simple solution that I'm just overlooking.

 

I decided to upgrade to 10.6.2 from 10.6.1 on my EP45-DS3L earlier today (running PCEFI 10.5). I began the Software Update after I updated the SleepEnabler to the version which works only with 10.6.2, but then my power went out before the software update even finished. Now when I boot my system, I kernel panic everytime (complains that the kernel version doesn't match the processor version or something along those lines) because of the updated (10.6.2) SleepEnabler.kext I have in my Chameleon partition, but my system still being on 10.6.1 (since the update was never actually performed).

 

Is there a way to access the Chameleon partition and tell it to either a.) not load the current SleepEnabler.kext which is in the Extras folder, or b.) load extensions from a USB thumb drive?

 

I've tried using a Linux live boot, but found out that you can't write to an HFS partition if it's journaled (in this case, it is). I've also tried MacDrive 8 for Windows 7, but am unable to see my OSX partition (maybe because it's on another physical drive).

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

[blackosx]

I did not get the fastest SSD on the planet, and it may be a first gen drive with a marvel controller which have not gotten good reviews.. but frys had a 32gig patriot warp on sale for 89 and could not pass it up.

 

I am not disappointed... the server seems more responsive, the drive itself says cold, and I am seeing disk activitys peak at over 200MB/s on occasion.. thats pretty good.. also took my xbench from the 170s up to over 200 just on drive performance !

Thanks for the report dragonmel. I haven't been keeping my eye on the tech lately and it's good to hear the prices are coming down, though I will wait a while before I buy one. Still I like the idea of trying one... hmmmm

 

I now have to decide if its worth going for the latest upgrade for the latest fixes.. I am running the latest Cham RC but I have not applied the UUID fix or the new reboot fix... and I am also still using the bonjour script fix... but for now all appears well.. I have not tried sleep.. as a server never sleeps.. but the display seems to time out ok and the server power usage in idle is just over 120 watts per the killawatt... I use your tables on my e8400 as I have been told they are the same at it appears to cycle well.

If your server works as you want it then that's all that matters. It's up to you if you want to add the latest fixes. When you say you are using my tables for your e8400, I guess you mean for the P-States in your DSDT? If that's the case then even if someone has said they're the same I would still recommend you double check your own.

 

again fantastic thread... I run a badaxe1 and badaxe2 and they are still stuck down in 10.5 as there is no one source yet for reliable solutions like you have brought together here. Buildsmart and bofors are running a great effort on their own site but it is taking them some time to get out a quality release but they are getting inside help from chipset manufacturers and have custom bioses as well as an installer.. their 10.5 stuff is great and from the features mentioned.. I have high hopes for the 10.6 release which is imminent..

Thanks and I am sure your badaxe's can be brought up to date somehow soon

 

Is there a way to access the Chameleon partition and tell it to either a.) not load the current SleepEnabler.kext which is in the Extras folder, or b.) load extensions from a USB thumb drive?

You could try booting into single user mode and using the Terminal remove the SleepEnabler.kext from /E/E?

To do that, boot in to Chameleon and when on the device selection screen, press the down arrow and choose the Single User mode followed be return.

When at the command prompt, type something like

sudo rm -f /Volumes/Cham/Extra/Extensions/SleepEnabler.kext

[RKmd]

You could try booting into single user mode and using the Terminal remove the SleepEnabler.kext from /E/E?

To do that, boot in to Chameleon and when on the device selection screen, press the down arrow and choose the Single User mode followed be return.

When at the command prompt, type something like

sudo rm -f /Volumes/Cham/Extra/Extensions/SleepEnabler.kext

 

I tried all the recovery modes (safe mode, single user, etc.) but all of them get to a point where the log says: "System has been up for xxxxxxxxxxxxx nanoseconds." Then the system just halts.

 

I'm wondering if there's some sort of program one could boot where you can access HFS journaled partitions and modify them.

[blackosx]

I tried all the recovery modes (safe mode, single user, etc.) but all of them get to a point where the log says: "System has been up for xxxxxxxxxxxxx nanoseconds." Then the system just halts.

 

I'm wondering if there's some sort of program one could boot where you can access HFS journaled partitions and modify them.

I don't know of any programs that do what you want.

Another suggestion would be to boot from the BootCD found at the start of this thread and install a fresh copy of SnowLeopard from your retail DVD over the top of your existing install (without reformatting). The Apple installer will do a kind of archive install which puts a fresh system down, but leaves all your apps and user folder intact.

 

EDIT: Ooops. Sorry, No.... it's your Cham volume that's broken, so all you need to do is boot into your existing Snow Leopard install from the BootCD... Doh! Then you can fix your existing cham partition.

[titan4]

So I checked guides and stuff and made a lot of changes.

 

Finally updated to f11 bios (I know, I know...)

Used your latest fancy DSDT (Thanks ) and updated it with numbers for my CPU

Updated to patched RC4 Chammy with restart fix

 

What I like the most is that I now have only 3 kexts in /E/E...Maybe day will come when all will be supported from DSDT. That would be nice

 

Still I feel a lot confused by all that new stuff, but my Kitty runs awesomely for months and I hope she will for some more. She sends her thanks

 

 

EDIT: Only issue I have is that there are some installation packages that writes to me that I don't have Intel Mac. Usually it is enough to delete InstallationCheck from package, but I wanted to install Adobe Digital Editions for some ePub e-book checking and it still complains even after removing InstallationCheck file. So anybody knows how it detects Intel-based Mac ?

[blackosx]

Finally updated to f11 bios (I know, I know...)

Not F11c?

Used your latest fancy DSDT (Thanks ) and updated it with numbers for my CPU

Updated to patched RC4 Chammy with restart fix

 

What I like the most is that I now have only 3 kexts in /E/E...Maybe day will come when all will be supported from DSDT. That would be nice

Well done. I hope the instructions weren't too confusing?

And only 3 kexts isn't bad for a full system

 

Still I feel a lot confused by all that new stuff, but my Kitty runs awesomely for months and I hope she will for some more. She sends her thanks

As you have jumped back in after a while out then I can imagine it's a bit mad to get your head around every change. But there's no reason why your system won't be any less stable. She should keep purring away

 

EDIT: Only issue I have is that there are some installation packages that writes to me that I don't have Intel Mac. Usually it is enough to delete InstallationCheck from package, but I wanted to install Adobe Digital Editions for some ePub e-book checking and it still complains even after removing InstallationCheck file. So anybody knows how it detects Intel-based Mac ?

Have you upgraded to netkas' fakesmc v2.5? as that includes OldNapalm's CPU detection code. I think that should help you.

EDIT: I have just tried installing Adobe Digital Editions and I get the same error... hmmmm

[mm67]

Not F11c?

 

Well done. I hope the instructions weren't too confusing?

And only 3 kexts isn't bad for a full system

 

 

As you have jumped back in after a while out then I can imagine it's a bit mad to get your head around every change. But there's no reason why your system won't be any less stable. She should keep purring away

 

 

Have you upgraded to netkas' fakesmc v2.5? as that includes OldNapalm's CPU detection code. I think that should help you.

EDIT: I have just tried installing Adobe Digital Editions and I get the same error... hmmmm

 

No problems here with Adobe Digital Editions installation. I am currently using iMac10,1 as model instead of MacPro3,1. Don't know if that makes any difference.

[Johnny V]

.... I have just tried installing Adobe Digital Editions and I get the same error... hmmmm

 

Just tried it myself and get same error! Using "MacPro3,1"

[blackosx]

@Johnny V - I have been using 'MacPro3,1' also.

 

No problems here with Adobe Digital Editions installation. I am currently using iMac10,1 as model instead of MacPro3,1. Don't know if that makes any difference.

Thanks for the note mm67.

However, I have just tried it with iMac10,1 and it still failed for me.

 

EDIT: Going back to using an iMac identifier (albeit a newer model) has the benefit of Geekbench reporting my machine as and iMac and not a hackintosh which happened when I switched to a 'MacPro3,1' for speedstep. I remember reading in the Gigabyte DSDT thread that you had switched to the iMac10,1 as it still gave you correct stepping. I had not tried it until now. Thanks for the reminder.

[titan4]

Of course I have f11c. I just had f10 until morning

 

Regarding Adobe Digital Editions it is quite simple. It does not install with 64-bit kernel, however it works with it just fine. So I installed it with 32-bit kernel and it works fine. And I don't know if it is just me but 32-bit kernel mode seems a lot slower to me. Maybe I am just imagining things.

 

And your instructions were very easy and understandable to go with. Just have no idea what these numbers were supposed to mean (except frequencies of course).

 

And yes she is still very stable, but I must say that 10.6.2 helped a lot with stability.

[mm67]

Of course I have f11c. I just had f10 until morning

 

Regarding Adobe Digital Editions it is quite simple. It does not install with 64-bit kernel, however it works with it just fine. So I installed it with 32-bit kernel and it works fine. And I don't know if it is just me but 32-bit kernel mode seems a lot slower to me. Maybe I am just imagining things.

 

And your instructions were very easy and understandable to go with. Just have no idea what these numbers were supposed to mean (except frequencies of course).

 

And yes she is still very stable, but I must say that 10.6.2 helped a lot with stability.

 

Ok, now it makes sense. I have to use 32-bit kernel because my Sil3132 ESata board only has 32-bit drivers at this time.

[blackosx]

Of course I have f11c. I just had f10 until morning

Lol...

The Quick Boot BIOS option should give you a speed boost at boot now.

 

Regarding Adobe Digital Editions it is quite simple. It does not install with 64-bit kernel, however it works with it just fine. So I installed it with 32-bit kernel and it works fine.

Well worked out titan4. Thanks

 

And I don't know if it is just me but 32-bit kernel mode seems a lot slower to me. Maybe I am just imagining things.

I have thought that too on occasion but to be honest I can't really tell any difference.

 

And your instructions were very easy and understandable to go with. Just have no idea what these numbers were supposed to mean (except frequencies of course).

Good, thanks for confirming.

 

P-State numbers mean....

using for instance: Package (0x06) { 2670, 0, 10, 10, 0x0A1D, 0 },

 

2670 = Frequency(Mhz)

0 = Power(mW) (I have never filled this in as FormerlyKnownAs said these weren't used)

10 = Transition latency (us) (I think that's microseconds)

10 = Bus Master latency (us)

0x0A1D = value written to PERF_CTL; fid=0A, vid=1D

0 = P-State 0 (or no stepping)

 

You can find everything explained in FormerlyKnownAs' thread.

[titan4]

OK thanks, but I still have no idea what you are talking about. I am software guy remember ?

 

And yes booting is a lot faster now, but only time I need it is when I need to boot to Windows for something which is not very often these days I use sleep all the time.

[Goldi2001]

Hi, sorry for my english,

but i have no idea for this problem:

 

All work's perfect, but the sound is not working.

My Board GA-EG45M-DS2H Realtek ALC888) / Geforce 8800GT

 

I have try to install some some voodohda.kext, but nothing work,

 

Perhaps everybody can help me ?

 

 

Thank you

 

Goldi from Germany

[titan4]

Hi Goldi,

 

first of all your english is fine, but I am not the one to tell you that since I am not native speaker as well.

 

So you have ALC888 which is the same as GA-EP45-DS3L have. So do you have sound compiled to DSDT as shown in DSDT Guide ? If yes do you have LegacyHDA.kext on Chameleon partition in Extra/Extensions ? These are only things you need to do to make it work.

 

It should work with VoodooHDA.kext (You need to install it to /System/Library/Extensions tho), but I would recommend you to play with DSDT+LegacyHDA.kext, because it seems to be cleaner and nicer solution.

[blackosx]

OK thanks, but I still have no idea what you are talking about. I am software guy remember ?

Lol.. I understand.

As long as it works for you then that's all that really matters

Good to have you back here titan4

 

@Goldi2001 - it's exactly as titan4 said.

[Goldi2001]

Hi !

I looking...

 

the VoodooHDA.kext it in /System/Library/Extensions

i have install this withe the Kext Helper b7

 

and LegacyHDA.kext is on Chameleon partition in Extra/Extensions

 

Perhaps i have to much kext in /System/Library/Extensions ?

 

Witch VoodooHDA.kext / LegacyHDA.kex i need ?

 

Need i a alc888 kext ?

 

I have the same board with SL 10.6.1 and this works fine..

 

Do you have perhaps a good idea ?

 

It's works !

 

after 2 hours, it's works !

I'm happy (and my wife its happy to, because i have now time for ...

 

 

I use x64_audio_for_ALC888 driver, and this works fine !!

[Goldi2001]

ohh no !

 

another problem,

 

I cant install NTFS. after install Paragon (7.03) NTFS i cant write of my NTFS Disk (i can only read)

when i use Paragon (7.02) or tuxerantfs i cant activate my NTFS Disk

 

 

what can i do ?

[blackosx]

I cant install NTFS. after install Paragon (7.03) NTFS i cant write of my NTFS Disk (i can only read)

when i use Paragon (7.02) or tuxerantfs i cant activate my NTFS Disk

 

 

what can i do ?

I don't know as I have never used them. Maybe look for support on Paragon/tuxera's websites?

[titan4]

ohh no !

 

another problem,

 

I cant install NTFS. after install Paragon (7.03) NTFS i cant write of my NTFS Disk (i can only read)

when i use Paragon (7.02) or tuxerantfs i cant activate my NTFS Disk

 

 

what can i do ?

 

You are probably using 64-bit kernel, but these solutions are working only on 32-bit kernel.

 

Good to have you back here titan4

 

And I am happy to be back. I don't have a lot of time this month tho. I am studying software engineering alongside my job and I have some exams in January so it will be tough month