DD method question

[derdhal]

As It refuses to boot a from a phisical drive vmware installation but runs fine in vmware I will try to create an image file and then dd it to real partition.

All tutorials talk about the old deadmoo image (10.4.1) and and in dd parameter lines it says skip=63 to skip first 63 sectors of the image. But that 63: it is generic or only for deadmoo image? Should I keep that skip=63 with my 10.4.6 (goatsec) installation or change it to other number or eliminate it?

Thanks in advance

[macgirl]

63 is the number of sectors that boot loaders utilize, if you don't skip those 63 yo end with no boot sector.

[wmarsh]

As It refuses to boot a from a phisical drive vmware installation but runs fine in vmware I will try to create an image file and then dd it to real partition.

All tutorials talk about the old deadmoo image (10.4.1) and and in dd parameter lines it says skip=63 to skip first 63 sectors of the image. But that 63: it is generic or only for deadmoo image? Should I keep that skip=63 with my 10.4.6 (goatsec) installation or change it to other number or eliminate it?

Thanks in advance

 

DD is quite confusing and potentially dangerous if you don't know what you are doing.

 

The easiest way to do what you suggest is to add a physical drive (persistant) to your VMware machine, then boot your VMware machine with a Linux recovery CD and dd from your VMware partition to a physical partition of slightly larger size.

 

See my guide for 10.4.8.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mp;#entry253493

 

In the deadmoo days, people were DDing the deadmoo image directly to a physical disk, and had to use the skip=63 to avoid overwriting the MBR and partition table. That is of=hda (1st hard disk) as opposed to of=hda1 (1st partition).

 

My experience is that if you can't install to a physical partition, you won't be able to boot off the physical partition unless you modify the OS, such as by adding a kext to support your hardware. I've been trying to do this with ICH-R SATA without alot of success (yet!).

 

DD to a file is a great way to back up an installation before serious hacking so you can restore easily.

 

You can type "man dd" in console on most Unix OSs (except OS X's man page for dd is seriously deficient) and learn alot more about dd.

Edited January 1, 2007 by wmarsh

[The Creator]

if you just follow the osx86 installation guide at osx-x86 then you should be fine for the dd mothod or the jas install dvds