Lifehacker Guide with GA-EP45-UD3P Motherboard

[D-an-W]

I should get round to writing how I did it as we have similar hardware and it installs a treat, if you want more info let me know and I will try and do it tomorrow (Decorating atm)...

[0800damo]

How would one go about doing a clean lion install using tony mac's method?

[JTG78]

I just tried tonymac's method to install Lion to my TestDrive. And while I was able get as far as creating and booting from the Installer partition, I got stuck with the swirling rainbow ball once it went to the white screen, immediately following the verbose boot. Any idea what the problem might be?

 

Edit: Actually, I just had an idea as to that the issue might be. I'm using a version of fakeSMC that goes in S/L/E rather than E/E to enable more thorough system monitoring. Would the lack of this kext in my E/E (and subsequently in the installer's S/L/E folder possible cause this issue? I'm unsure, because I would have thought that if the lack of fakeSMC was an issue, it would prevent the Installer from getting as far as it did in the boot process.

 

D-an-W, if your system is as similar as you say and you were able to get things working, I (and I'm sure others here) would appreciate a rundown on how you were able to do so.

 

As for my earlier post, it seems the fakeSMC may have actually been the problem. I decided to go ahead and use a flash drive installer method. This seemed preferable to me over having to create a partition on my hard disk as per the tonymac method. After creating the flash installer partition, I updated to version 3.1 of the standard fakeSMC in my E/E folder on the flash drive's boot partition and I was able to properly boot the installer.

 

Just in case anyone want's to know, I used the instructions here to create my USB installer. My particular setup is a USB stick with two 8GB partitions, the first partition holds the 10.6 installer and a now updated Chameleon RC5 r1187, while the 2nd holds the newly created Lion installer partition (I previously had it as regular bootable 10.6 partition.) This way I have a single USB stick to for both installers.

 

Anyway, the installer registered my TestDrive as a "repairable" installation - I assume this is a left over from my previous attempt with tonymac's method. I was able to successfully perform the installation and boot to my drive. While the TestDrive was bootable, I had several issues.

 

First, I got a lengthy scrolling list of all my system extensions when I selected the drive from withing the bootloader. The last time I saw something like this was when I was using XPostFactor to run 10.4 on my old G3, however, on the G3 it went away after the initial boot following an update to the extensions. That doesn't seem to be the case here since it appears to be happening every time I boot into Lion on my flash installer or the test drive. Needless to say, I'd appreciate any ideas since this significantly extends the boot time.

 

Second, there were some issues with the system fans mentioned in the verbose boot (probably due to the system monitoring version of fakeSMC that was still present in S/L/E on the TestDrive). I'm not too concerned about this since I assume an appropriate update will fix the issue (I hope.).

 

Third, sound wasn't working (I fixed this quickly by reverting to the 10.6.7 AppleHDA.kext.).

 

And lastly, Fourth, I had no networking. I'm not sure why, however, I've read (and verified) that Apple removed the RTL8139 and RTL8169 kexts from the IONETWORKINGFAMILY kext, which may have something to do with it. I'm curious as to whether I should try reverting to an earlier version of this kext or try something else? Any ideas? Has anyone else run into this?

 

The first and last issue here are the biggest problems I'm currently encountering, and I'd appreciate any help.

[D-an-W]

"My" method is really steps taken from other peoples guides (People that know much more than me about this), but like you I used the USB stick method (I even ordered a 16GB stick this week to make a dual Snow / Lion installer...great minds eh!).

 

I wanted full manual control over the install and updates as through no fault of anyones things such Stell's v3 are now outdated so I found that using the very detailed install method by blackosx and tailoring it to the EP45-UD3P worked best, I also used the Lion USB method posted by the fantastic MaLd0n to create the install stick.

 

I have a 1GB Chameleon partition which can be easily updated and added to without worrying about permissions etc. For this, parts 1, 2 & 3 of blackosx's guide are really easy to follow (Using files specific for our hardware where applicable).

 

Once you have OS X up and running in this state, you obviously then need to create a Lion install stick. Thanks to MaLd0n this is easy, I just didn't run the two Installers (Extra Lion & Chameleon RC5) as all I needed was my own Extra folder and mach_kernel adding to the drive (You can also make it bootable but with the 1GB Chameleon partition, this isn't required).

 

I use exactly the same /Extra folder for Snow Leopard 10.6.8 as I do in Lion so if you want to dual boot it's easy to do, all that is required in System/Library/Extensions is RealtekRTL81xx.kext and you also need to patch AppleHDA.kext (In both 10.6.8 & 10.7) to enable audio and AppleRTC.kext (In 10.7 only) to prevent the BIOS from resetting after sleep.

 

I also have a DSDT.aml created by MaLd0n's tool which I strongly recommend.

 

I haven't spoken to blackosx or MaLd0n about using their work in this thread so have just linked to it for now but if they don't mind and it's needed I am sure this can be edited in the future.

 

If you fancy giving this a go, let me know via PM when I can send the files to as it would be good for someone else to test before adding them here.

[JTG78]

"My" method is really steps taken from other peoples guides (People that know much more than me about this), but like you I used the USB stick method (I even ordered a 16GB stick this week to make a dual Snow / Lion installer...great minds eh!).

 

I wanted full manual control over the install and updates as through no fault of anyones things such Stell's v3 are now outdated so I found that using the very detailed install method by blackosx and tailoring it to the EP45-UD3P worked best, I also used the Lion USB method posted by the fantastic MaLd0n to create the install stick.

 

I have a 1GB Chameleon partition which can be easily updated and added to without worrying about permissions etc. For this, parts 1, 2 & 3 of blackosx's guide are really easy to follow (Using files specific for our hardware where applicable).

 

Once you have OS X up and running in this state, you obviously then need to create a Lion install stick. Thanks to MaLd0n this is easy, I just didn't run the two Installers (Extra Lion & Chameleon RC5) as all I needed was my own Extra folder and mach_kernel adding to the drive (You can also make it bootable but with the 1GB Chameleon partition, this isn't required).

 

I use exactly the same /Extra folder for Snow Leopard 10.6.8 as I do in Lion so if you want to dual boot it's easy to do, all that is required in System/Library/Extensions is RealtekRTL81xx.kext and you also need to patch AppleHDA.kext (In both 10.6.8 & 10.7) to enable audio and AppleRTC.kext (In 10.7 only) to prevent the BIOS from resetting after sleep.

 

I also have a DSDT.aml created by MaLd0n's tool which I strongly recommend.

 

I haven't spoken to blackosx or MaLd0n about using their work in this thread so have just linked to it for now but if they don't mind and it's needed I am sure this can be edited in the future.

 

If you fancy giving this a go, let me know via PM when I can send the files to as it would be good for someone else to test before adding them here.

 

So far the files seem to be working okay, although I'll need to do more testing.

 

Anyway, regarding the behavrior I mentioned where after selecting the boot drive in Chameleon the system loads the E/E files and then instead of going to the verbose boot screen as per normal, it first loads all of the S/L/E kexts one after another, presumbly loading them directly rather than from the KextUtility compiled Extentions.mkext. I should note that I cannot find the Extensions.mkext in the Lion installation. It's present in S/L/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup as a 10.1 MB file (along with a 12MB kernalcache file) in 10.6, but it does not exist in the same location in the Lion installation. Instead there is just a 24.5MB "kernalcache" file as well as a couple of IOKitPersonalities and KextPropertyValue files.

 

I'm inclined to think the lack of an Extentions.mkext (for what reason I don't know) in the expected place in the Lion installation may be the reason for the boot behavior I'm seeing.

 

Does anyone else have any ideas?

[D-an-W]

Glad you got it going ok, Kext Utility seems to complain about the lack of mkexts too (Says it can't find it) when clearing the cache.

 

Does anyone use K-Stat-i here? It seems to struggle when reporting a CPU speed above 3.75GHz, above that it shows 630MHz!!!

[JTG78]

Glad you got it going ok, Kext Utility seems to complain about the lack of mkexts too (Says it can't find it) when clearing the cache.

 

Does anyone use K-Stat-i here? It seems to struggle when reporting a CPU speed above 3.75GHz, above that it shows 630MHz!!!

 

I found this, which seems to at least partially explain the kext problem. From what I've been able to gather so far, Lion prefers to use the kernelcache file rather than an Extensions.mkext. However, if you set the UseKernelCache flag for Chameleon to read the cache properly your E/E kexts will be skipped. Fortunately, the link I gave seems to provide a work around for this, though I have yet to test it.

[D-an-W]

Oddly enough, I just read this post too which says the same thing!

 

My 16GB Corsair stick arrived yesterday so I had time to make and test the dual install setup too, works a treat

[gopowergoh]

Thanks for the guide. I am also on the lifehacker build but when I try this method I can't boot the installer. It keeps saying it can't find the smbios. Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks, I appreciate it.

 

 

 

Dan,

 

Got everything to work. Maybe a long post, but here goes -

 

1) My config - Complete Lifehacker build, 10.6.8, Stell v3, Lion from Mac App Store.

 

2) Credits: tonymac, whose blog is brilliant, Stell and Adam Pash, without which this thread would not exist.

 

3) "This version of OSX cannot be installed on this computer..etc":

The problem is that the Lion installer does a Board ID check before installing. My version of smbios.plist did not include a board ID. Add this ID and no problems to download the Lion installer from the Mac App Store or installation.

 

4) Audio backup: Backup the AppleHDA.kext file to a safe location before you begin.

 

5) You need to download the Lion installer from the Mac App Store. Using the dmg file of "InstallESD.dmg" did not work for me.

 

6) Install as per http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/07/xmo...x-107-lion.html

Follow each step carefully.

 

7) You DO need xMove as per the instructions.

 

8) You DO NOT need Step 5. We already have the dsdt.aml installed from our Stell V3 installed. There is nothing to install at all. Restart the computer after Lion successfully installs.

 

9) You will need to install AppleHDA.kext that we backed up, using kext utility or equivalent.

 

Thats it! You should have a working install of Lion!

 

I have not had time to test in details - but everything seems to be okay!

 

Good luck all!

[sirlou]

According to step 8 of the referenced post you can completely skip step 5 of tonymac's method. This is because presumably you already have a perfectly valid dsdt and bootloader. However, you may want to update your bootloader beforehand. I assume tonymac's guide uses [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] because it's all-purpose and covers most-situations. However, those of us to already have perfectly functioning systems probably don't need to worry about [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]. (Actually, if you read step 4 of tonymac's guide, he basicly says as much - i.e. that if you already had a functioning system, you should be ready to go.)

 

In a week or two, I plan on testing the Lion update on a test disk. So yesterday I decided to update my copy of Chamelon RC5 from r518 to r1187. This only involved me copying over the updated boot file (sudo cp /Volumes/<TargetDisk>/boot), duplicating/renaming the com.apple.Boot.plist file to org.chameleon.Boot.plist, and giving the plist parameters a once over to see if I needed to change anything.

 

D'oh! Guess I didn't read that clearly enough. Thanks for pointing that out to me, glad I an skip that step as it seemed more involved, and thus created more room for error.

 

But it got me looking and your post (and others) got me thinking about my bootloader situation. I looked and realized I am using RC3, which is what must have come with the Stella v.3 installer.

 

So I looked into how I go about upgrading to RC5, and I found this info on the tonymac site:

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/02/cha...-installer.html

 

He includes an OS X installer and everything to make it easy. Just wondering if anyone has tried this out on our systems, before I take the plunge.

 

thanks!

[HAVEC]

Heads up on the new 10.6.8 Supplemental Update. I installed it and it took out the audio output. I replaced the LegacyHDA.kext in the Extra/Extensions with a working one from my cloned drive and ran kext utility and still no sound.

 

Ended up going back to the pre-Sup 10.6.8.

 

Please let us know if anyone can get this update to work.

[D-an-W]

Were you using the method from here previously?

 

If not, give it a go...it worked for me when moving from 10.6.7.

 

There was also a 10.6.7 kext from I could use but this way was the same method required for Lion so I used that to test with.

 

 

@sirlou, I update Chameleon every few days to the latest build (I have also used Chimera) and they all work fine.

[themerk]

Heads up on the new 10.6.8 Supplemental Update. I installed it and it took out the audio output. I replaced the LegacyHDA.kext in the Extra/Extensions with a working one from my cloned drive and ran kext utility and still no sound.

 

Ended up going back to the pre-Sup 10.6.8.

 

Please let us know if anyone can get this update to work.

 

I upgraded to the 10.6.8 Supplemental Update the day before I installed Lion. All I had to do to make audio come back was reinstall my old AppleHDA.kext.

[RocketLynx]

Heads up on the new 10.6.8 Supplemental Update. I installed it and it took out the audio output. I replaced the LegacyHDA.kext in the Extra/Extensions with a working one from my cloned drive and ran kext utility and still no sound.

 

Ended up going back to the pre-Sup 10.6.8.

 

Please let us know if anyone can get this update to work.

I upgraded to the 10.6.8 Supplemental Update the day before I installed Lion. All I had to do to make audio come back was reinstall my old AppleHDA.kext.

 

Same Thing! Other things seem to work OK but since part of the 10.6.8 Supplemental Files Update had to do with audio (particularly on the HDMI output), it also affected the AppleHDA.kext and I too had to once again replace my AppleHDA.kext with the one in use prior to the 10.6.8 update.

[CAPTBob]

So for those of us with standard Lifehacker/Stella installs it seems the best way to get to Lion would be to take our extra B/U HD, reinstall OS 10.6 using the Tony Mac X86 method on it, update it it 10.6.8 and then follow the latest "install Lion" guide on Lifehacker.

 

Does that sound about right guys?

[HAVEC]

Same Thing! Other things seem to work OK but since part of the 10.6.8 Supplemental Files Update had to do with audio (particularly on the HDMI output), it also affected the AppleHDA.kext and I too had to once again replace my AppleHDA.kext with the one in use prior to the 10.6.8 update.

 

I have the LegacyHDA.kext file in my Extra/Extension Folder. Are you talking about the AppleHDA.kext in the System/Library/Extensions folder or do you have the AppleHDA.kext in your Extra/Extension?

[bigdsinferno]

I now have everything working properly in Lion, including the app store.

 

I copied this post over from tonymacx86 it's how I finally got audio working...

 

 

"I removed files from /System/Extensions and /Extra/Extensions :

- ALC8xxHDA.kext in /Extra/Extensions

- AppleHDA.kext in /System/Extensions

- HDAEnabler889.kext in /System/Extensions

On a Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 motherboard with the ALC889 audio chip.

During the [url=&quot;http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/&quot;]#####[/url] (re)install I checked HLC8xxHDA and AppleHDA Rollback options as marques0 wisely recommended."

[tastic]

So for those of us with standard Lifehacker/Stella installs it seems the best way to get to Lion would be to take our extra B/U HD, reinstall OS 10.6 using the Tony Mac X86 method on it, update it it 10.6.8 and then follow the latest "install Lion" guide on Lifehacker.

 

Does that sound about right guys?

 

I'm going to give it a go tomorrow night and will report back. I'm not doing to mess with the supplemental 10.6.8 update, just going right to 10.7.

[jas819]

Thanks for the guide. I am also on the lifehacker build but when I try this method I can't boot the installer. It keeps saying it can't find the smbios. Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks, I appreciate it.

 

Can you still access your Snow Leopard install?

The smbios.plist should be in /Extra

You will not be able to install if you don't have this file.

[gopowergoh]

Yea I still have access. I have a cloned drive and can still boot in both. I have the smbios in extras for both. I've tried just xmove, installing chimera, running stells ep45ud3p installer on the installer partition and amd just having no luck at all. Any thoughts? I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

 

Can you still access your Snow Leopard install?

The smbios.plist should be in /Extra

You will not be able to install if you don't have this file.

[bigdsinferno]

Yea I still have access. I have a cloned drive and can still boot in both. I have the smbios in extras for both. I've tried just xmove, installing chimera, running stells ep45ud3p installer on the installer partition and amd just having no luck at all. Any thoughts? I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

 

Are you still having the problems booting installer? To get my installer disk to boot, I just booted the regular way to get to chimera. Once the chimera screen popped up I selected the Installer partition and it worked. Since you were messing with the partition, i'd reformat and redo xmove. I assume you are getting a successful completion running xmove?

[D-an-W]

I find the best way is to manually install everything (Not as hard as it sounds).

 

Using a method by blackosx I use a 1GB Chameleon partition on my main HD which can remain untouched throughout the install and enables you to run both Snow Leopard and Lion should you wish to.

 

I created a USB stick from my App store bought Lion installer using the method by MaLd0n but didn't run the two installers he talks about as all that is required is a "mach_kernel" in the root of the drive (Using the about method).

 

You can even go a little further if your memory stick is big enough (16GB), creating a 1GB and two 7.5GB partitions on it to give you a bootable installer for both Snow Leopard and Lion.

 

As far as I know all my kexts are current and it is very easy to update them with this method (No mkexts to worry about).

[gopowergoh]

I am successfully completing xmove. I have deleted and created that partition many times. I did notice that When I use the chimera bootloader, my regular snow leopard drive is still missing the smbios but if I use Stells bootloader I can get into my own snow leopard installs. Ive tried using the chimera and stells bootloader to get into the installer partition but still no luck. Thanks for the help.

Are you still having the problems booting installer? To get my installer disk to boot, I just booted the regular way to get to chimera. Once the chimera screen popped up I selected the Installer partition and it worked. Since you were messing with the partition, i'd reformat and redo xmove. I assume you are getting a successful completion running xmove?

[tastic]

Havec,

 

Sorry for the delay - having all sorts of issues accessing the site.

 

1) Open smbios.plist located in /Extra

2) Add the following:

<key>SMboardproduct</key>

<string>Mac-F42C88C8</string>

3) Save

4) Repair permissions

5) Reboot

 

Try to download Lion / install Lion again.

 

This should work!

 

Cheers

 

I ran into a permissions problem trying to edit smbios.plist. No matter what I did to give myself read/write access from "Get Info," and even after authenticating as Admin, the OS would not let me save changes. This is true even when I rebooted from my main hard drive and attempted to edit the file on my backup (non-booted, but bootable) one. Any ideas?

 

There's probably some terminal voodoo (chmod 777 smbios.plist ?) That might fix this, eh?

 

Tried "chmod 777 smbois.plist" from the directory, and was informed that "chmod: Unable to change file mode on smbios.plist: Operation not permitted" WTF? The command appears to work using "sudo chmod 777 smbios.plist", but I still am denied access to save after editing.

 

Let me back up a step and ask a really dumb question - is it cool to edit this plist using TextEdit?

 

I'm the admin, so I'm baffled as to why this operation is not permitted.

 

Success!

 

I copied smbios.plist to the desktop, edited it there, dragged it back to /Extras and authenticated.

Repaired permissions and rebooted, but unfortunately, I get the same message from Lion that installation is not authorized on this Mac (have a EP45-UD3P mobo). I'm stumped. Does it matter where in the plist you put the additional code (I put it in the beginning, vie text edit). Should I delete something else?

[HAVEC]

Anybody have any luck installing the 10.6.8 Supplemental update and still have their onboard sound work? One workaround I have is to use a USB DAC device. I'm not in any rush to get to Lion.