Sotirios Papakonstantinou Posted June 14, 2013 Share Posted June 14, 2013 Hello! Sorry if this has been asked before, please point me to the relevant thread. I was recently given an old server board with the following specs: m/b: Supermicro PDSG4 chipset: Intel 955X + ICH7R CPU: Intel Pentium D 945 3.40GHz (socket 775) RAM: 4x 1GB DDR2 667MHz VGA: nVidia Geforce 7300 HDD/DVD-RW IDE master/slave I have successfully installed Kalyway's 10.5.2 in another hard disk with many applications. The server's main hard disk contains Windows 8. I thought I will shrink the Windows partition by about 40GB, so I can create a Mac partition to clone the MacOS installation in order to free my other disk. I did it successfully, then I connected both disks and used Super Duper to clone the Mac installation on the 40GB partition. So far so good. But it could not boot into MacOS. So I booted again in the original MacOS installation and run the Chameleon installer (latest PKG version) to install it in the new 40GB partition. It didn't ask me for my password, so it failed since it didn't had root access rights! The result was that I could not boot in either MacOS or Windows 8! I tried in vain to revive Windows 8, but I abandoned hope, formatted the disk and reinstalled. I then cloned MacOS installation again on a second 40GB partition. In order not to mess with Windows 8, I created a new boot entry at the Windows bootloader and set it to c:\chain0 This file was copied into the root of Windows 8 from a MacOS installation DVD. When I try to boot into MacOS it states that file c:\chain0 not found and I probably have to repair my installation! What is the problem? I don't dare to boot into MacOS and install Chameleon in order not to lose Windows 8 again! Any ideas? I have latest Chameleon extracted in a folder on my MacOS installation desktop. Could I use the terminal from MacOS setup DVD and install chameleon? How? I hope it won't screw Windows again! Assuming I do it right and use Chameleon to boot both MacOS and Windows 8. How can I set Windows 8 as default? What I have to correct in the Windows bootloader shouild I like to use that instead? Thank you for your patience. PS: In MacOS if I connect my flash drive, it is recognised and show up in Profiler, but doesn't mount and is not detected in Disk Utility in order to mount it! If I boot with the flash drive connected it is mounted but when I open it I cannot see any files and the Finder stucks with the mutlicolor "processing" wheel! Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3.14r2 Posted June 15, 2013 Share Posted June 15, 2013 You can install retail Leopard (10.5.8) or Snow Leopard (10.6.8) with patched kernel on the hardware you have Chameleon can boot any disk connected to a PC, so you can install Chameleon to drive A (say a dedicated OS X HHD or USB pen drive) and boot drive B or drive C or any other HDDs/OSs you have installed including other OS X versions You can set the default OS to boot via Chameleon's org.chameleon.Boot.plist keys Kalyway 10.5.2 or any distro released at about the same time, have a different bootloader (it is not Chameleon yet), so it will not offer all the features current Chameleon versions are capable of. It would be a bad idea to use Chameleon with such an old distro as Kalyway 10.5.2, Chameleon is better suited for retail installs PS: In MacOS if I connect my flash drive, it is recognised and show up in Profiler, but doesn't mount and is not detected in Disk Utility in order to mount it! If I boot with the flash drive connected it is mounted but when I open it I cannot see any files and the Finder stucks with the mutlicolor "processing" wheel! Any ideas? The reason for USB pen drive not mounting unless a PC is boot with the pen drive attached, is kernel and system version mismatch. It may happen when version of kernel is newer/older then the version of system. For instance a kernel from 10.5.1 is used in 10.5.2 system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sotirios Papakonstantinou Posted June 16, 2013 Author Share Posted June 16, 2013 Thank you for your reply. Kalyway's 10.5.2 comes with Darwin bootloader, but I have successufully installed Chameleon inthe past and has no problem using it. I would like to install another version of MacOS, but now I have installed too many applications that I wouldn't like to start from scratch. Could I do an upgrade, using say, iATKOS S3 (10.6.3) I tried once to install iATKOS S3 on this hardware booting from the DVD-ROM. Installation completed successfully but it wouldn't boot into MacOS (black screen wating forever). I didn't take the time to troubleshoot it, so I erased the disk and installed Kaylway 10.5.2 instead that works for almost every hardware. but as already said is tricky to upgrade to 10.5.8 because of compatibility issues. Maybe I try on another disk to install Snow Leopard again (I don't think the hardware can support anything newer). Thank you again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3.14r2 Posted June 16, 2013 Share Posted June 16, 2013 I would like to install another version of MacOS, but now I have installed too many applications that I wouldn't like to start from scratch. OS X has a feature to migrate settings, user files/account, applications. You can install a fresh copy of OS X and migrate all the applications (and/or other stuff you find necessary) you have (on the existing OS X system), to the new system. No need to reinstall anything like in Windows. Could I do an upgrade, using say, iATKOS S3 (10.6.3) In short no. Although it is possible, but may not work like it would on Macs. It may not work even with OS X installed from a retail DVD, not to mention distro disks. Even if it would work (with distro), troubleshooting would be a PITA. As a person who used both distros (including Kalyway 10.5.2 my favourite one at the time) and retail installs (on the same hardware), I can assure you, that there is nothing better and easy to maintain, then a retail install. If properly configured, it would be 100% updatable without any issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sotirios Papakonstantinou Posted June 18, 2013 Author Share Posted June 18, 2013 I found the mistake in Windows bootloader. The path should be \chain0 since the disk has already be set to c:. I had set the path to c:\chain0 and the bootloader could not see the file. Now that I corrected it, it works when connecting both disks in the system and setting Windows 8 disk as default. When choosing to boot in MacOS Chameleon takes over and I have the choice to load Mountain Lion (when the disk is in my Core-i3 system) or Leopard (for this system), and of course Windows. I'm a little afraid to clone the Leopard again so as not to lose Windows 8. Maybe I'll just use the second disk for a while... As for Snow Leopard, I'm not sure if there is any trick to install it on my system, but iATKOS says anything from Pentium D or newer should be compatible (I have Pentium D), but the chipset should be at least Intel 945 or newer (my 955X I guess is older, that's explains the difficulty on booting). I could try some stuff such as create custom DSDT, use custom kernel etc, but since this setup is only for experimentation and not serious work, I don't think it's worth it. I could also try some tricks to upgrade 10.5.2 to 10.5.8 for better compatibility, but again I don't have time. I would rather user Mountain Lion on my Core-i3 computer... Thank you for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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