Dell E520 Snow Leopard 10.6.2 Install Guide

[wmarsh]

Fixed slow disc access with this DSDT fix: http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=564

Maybe you could post your dsdt.aml?

[blkhockeypro19]

Maybe you could post your dsdt.aml?

http://www.sendspace.com/file/76unol

[dr.vox]

@blkhockey & wmarsh: Reckon that'll work with Leopard too?

[wmarsh]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/76unol

Thanks, I'll post if it works for me.

 

[EDIT -- blkhockeypro19's dsdt.aml works very nicely. All the SATA disks are faster. Disk Utility no longer crashes.

It also fixed the shutdown/reboot problem and the BIOS problem. THANKS!]

 

@blkhockey & wmarsh: Reckon that'll work with Leopard too?

It should as its not version specific.

 

[EDIT -- confirmed working in 10.5.8]

 

But I don't need a dsdt patch to make 10.5.5 work. Or 10.5.8 either, although I have not played with it enough to be certain I don't have a problem with SATA ports.

[blkhockeypro19]

Thanks, I'll post if it works for me.

 

[EDIT -- blkhockeypro19's dsdt.aml works very nicely. All the SATA disks are faster. Disk Utility no longer crashes.

It also fixed the shutdown/reboot problem and the BIOS problem. THANKS!]

 

 

It should as its not version specific.

 

[EDIT -- confirmed working in 7.5.8]

 

But I don't need a dsdt patch to make 7.5.5 work. Or 7.5.8 either, although I have not played with it enough to be certain I don't have a problem with SATA ports.

i didnt realize system 7 supported DSDT loading =P

[dr.vox]

Don't wanna {censored} anything up here — it's fine to simply copy/paste and overwrite the DSDT.aml in /Leopard\ HD? No permissions needed..?

And that's the only one?

 

Gonna give a go at Snow Leo if this DSDT works, because I've gone and put all my stuff on a bloody MBR with two HFS+ partitions, daren't resize in case I lose all my Media HD or Leopard.

[blkhockeypro19]

Don't wanna {censored} anything up here — it's fine to simply copy/paste and overwrite the DSDT.aml in /Leopard\ HD? No permissions needed..?

And that's the only one?

 

Gonna give a go at Snow Leo if this DSDT works, because I've gone and put all my stuff on a bloody MBR with two HFS+ partitions, daren't resize in case I lose all my Media HD or Leopard.

yup just drag it over to the root of the partition.

[wmarsh]

i didnt realize system 7 supported DSDT loading =P

Typo, sorry. Fixed above.

[blkhockeypro19]

Typo, sorry. Fixed above.

haha no problem =)

[Mr Giggles]

This is a bit off topic - and may be deserving of a separate post - but as all the e520 crew is here I thought id' give it a shot.

 

Has anyone had any success with installing a vanilla SL on a GUID ICH8R AHCI Drive?

 

I have SL installed (and functioning) on a external USB HD. All things being simple, Id love to boot into my SL external, and install SL to a blank internal drive, but no dice. My dev. manager shows no SATA devices OR ATA devices.

 

I've discussed with Karo modifying the AppleAHCIPort.kext to include a ICH8RAHCI section with the IOPCIPrimary values from 10.5.8, but that doesn't seem to work. (see screenshot for my version)

 

SO: has anyone had any luck with a non-mbr install of SL on the e520?

[dr.vox]

I was planning on attempting a GUID single-partition install in the next few days...

I take it this isn't going to happen?

 

Sigh. Might go the easy route and go MBR depending on how difficult it is.

[wmarsh]

Has anyone had any success with installing a vanilla SL on a GUID ICH8R AHCI Drive?

Well, its actually no harder to install GUID than MBR. Probably easier because you can use an unmodified Snow install DVD. I had bought a new HDD, with the intention of setting it up GUID and sharing it between OS X and Windows 7. Snow installed fine. And while I read Windows 7 would boot off GUID, the Win7 installer objected (even though I had used Vista to set up the disk) so I reformatted it MBR, then installed Snow per this guide.

 

With an existing Snow Install on a USB disk, I think you could move your install either to MBR or GUID internal disk easily.

 

1) Your BIOS can be in the RAID setting.

 

2) Make sure you installed Chameleon 2 RC 3 to your USB disk in the standard way. You need it to boot /Extra/Extensions.

 

3) Make sure you put the kexts from the Optional folder of Chameleon 2 RC 3 in /Extra/Extensions on your USB disk.

These work as injectors so you don't have to modify AppleAHCIPort.kext

 

4) You might want to use blkhockeypro's dsdt file. It vastly improved access to internal SATA ports, and it allows you to use Snow's disk utility. Otherwise it times out getting disk info. Before I did this I had to use Leopard's disk utility. (I have both installs on my USB.

 

5) Partition your internal disk however you want. It has to be SATA1, or OS X won't boot. And, if you use Windows or Linux partitioning tools, you need to manually edit the partition type to AF (as in the install guide.)

 

6) Boot your working Snow install off your USB drive. Start disk utility. It should see your SATA disks. Use it to "restore" your USB install to the partition you made.

 

7) To boot the partition, either use the Grub method I use, or if you want to use Chameleon 2 RC3 installed in the standard way, you need to use the fix for our BIOS posted above.

 

Good luck

[syncburst]

Has anyone had any success with installing a vanilla SL on a GUID ICH8R AHCI Drive?

 

 

I'm successfully running SL on my e520 with AHCI mode. I installed SL to an external USB drive and got that working first and then installed to the internal drive.

 

The process I followed was a combination of wmarsh's guide and also followed Heliacal's guide in regards to creating mkext archives before booting SL for the first time. I also used the first boot1h file mentioned in wmarsh's guide.

 

One thing to note is that this is running from SATA-0 (GUID and the only OS on that drive) as I saw mentions from theStevo that there were problems with SL running from anything but SATA-0.

 

All upgrades were done via Software Update and haven't run into any issues with the system so far.

[blkhockeypro19]

Almsot everything is perfect, unfortunetly, soemtimes my DVD drive stops responding.

 

10/29/09 12:03:34 AM	kernel	SerialATAPI device reconfiguration did not complete successfully.  (failedCommandInfo = 0x1)
10/29/09 12:03:44 AM	kernel	SerialATAPI device reconfiguration did not complete successfully.  (failedCommandInfo = 0x1)
10/29/09 12:03:55 AM	kernel	SerialATAPI device reconfiguration did not complete successfully.  (failedCommandInfo = 0x1)
10/29/09 12:04:06 AM	kernel	SerialATAPI device reconfiguration did not complete successfully.  (failedCommandInfo = 0x1)
10/29/09 12:04:17 AM	kernel	SerialATAPI device reconfiguration did not complete successfully.  (failedCommandInfo = 0x1)
10/29/09 12:04:28 AM	kernel	SerialATAPI device reconfiguration did not complete successfully.  (failedCommandInfo = 0x1)
10/29/09 12:04:28 AM	kernel	SerialATAPI Terminating due to unrecoverable Reset error - drive has stopped responding.  (resetType = 0x0, newPowerState = 0x1, failedCommandInfo = 0x1)

 

Also, shutdown works once in a while, reboot always shuts off my monitor but the system never fully reboots, sleep works just fine, and for some reason log off is the same result as when I reboot, it just turns off my monitor and it hangs there. Anyone else with these problems?

[dr.vox]

Hah, oh wow, I forgot the Snow Leo image is 6GB…

I have no Dual Layer DVDs. Does the TSSTcorp H553A even support DVD DLs? I think it does, after some googling, but would prefer a first-hand source too.

[Mr Giggles]

EDIT - 10/29

 

After adding all of the Additional kexts from the Chameleon 2 RC3 folder described below I was able to get ICH8R support - but with RAID ONLY. So far I get a kernel panic/crash with Raid off/AHCI mode.

 

Is there any advantage to using AHCI v RAID ? I'm going with RAID for now, well, because it works.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

 

------------------

 

 

Hah, oh wow, I forgot the Snow Leo image is 6GB…

I have no Dual Layer DVDs. Does the TSSTcorp H553A even support DVD DLs? I think it does, after some googling, but would prefer a first-hand source too.

 

bah just image & restore to a flash drive.

 

3) Make sure you put the kexts from the Optional folder of Chameleon 2 RC 3 in /Extra/Extensions on your USB disk.

These work as injectors so you don't have to modify AppleAHCIPort.kext

 

7) To boot the partition, either use the Grub method I use, or if you want to use Chameleon 2 RC3 installed in the standard way, you need to use the fix for our BIOS posted above.

 

 

That's what I was curious abt. Looking at my OP I can't get the flash drive OS to "see" the HDD .. making my think I dont have a kext that supports ICH8R in AHCI mode.

 

I'll try the 'optional' kexts from the Chameleon project tonight. I feel quite silly for not doing that from the get-go.

 

I'll report later tonight-

 

Thanks!

Edited October 29, 2009 by Mr Giggles

[dr.vox]

Yeah, I've restored to an 8GB SanDisk cruzer.

No changes (i.e. right after restore, vanilla image) = no boot at all. Just hangs at the boot menu with 'USB Device' highlighted.

 

Downloaded an ES2L kit from InfiniteMac which adds some stuff like Chameleon 2. It boots now, but as soon as it's finished loading kexts (and, I assume, when it's trying to go into GUI) it just stops, the computer restarts and I see the blue Dell boot logo again.

Any help?

 

EDIT: Trying an OSInstall.mpkg install for now. Not happy about it. Would appreciate info on how to get it booting via USB.

 

EDIT2: Ok. actually installed Snow Leo to HDD (via OSInstall.mpkg), but it does exactly the same as the USB installer did (loads all kexts, attempts to start GUI (I think) and then reboots).

Had boot1h: error, but fixed it using the boot1h wmarsh provided in the first post.

 

EDIT3: posting from my iPod. Broken my leopard install. Think it's a boot1 error but I'm not entirely sure. Not too sure if how it happened either. Hopefully I can just reinstall chameleon but I don't know if that will solve it. Can anyone help? I don't have too much time left for holiday and I don't want to have to run Win7 for the next few months.

[wmarsh]

Can anyone help? I don't have too much time left for holiday and I don't want to have to run Win7 for the next few months.

I found getting the Snow Leopard installation DVD to boot was annoyingly difficult.

That's why I booted my working Leopard install, then ran OSInstall.mpkg from there.

 

If you are doing a GUID install, you can just put the retail Snow Leopard DVD in your drive while Leopard is running, and install to another partition. (You can even install it to an unbootable partition on SATA5 or SATA6, then use Leopard's disk utility to "restore" it to where it goes. You can install to a GUID partition, and use disk utility to "restore" to an MBR partition. You can install to your USB drive and "restore" to your internal drive.)

 

The only reason I didn't stay with GUID is I wanted to share a disk with Win7 and the Win7 installer didn't work for me onto the GUID disk.

 

Almsot everything is perfect, unfortunetly, soemtimes my DVD drive stops responding.

 

Also, shutdown works once in a while, reboot always shuts off my monitor but the system never fully reboots, sleep works just fine, and for some reason log off is the same result as when I reboot, it just turns off my monitor and it hangs there. Anyone else with these problems?

My DVD drive works fine; could your drive be getting worn out?

 

and its odd you have the shutdown issues; your dsdt.aml fixed all that for me. (Thanks again)

 

Is there any advantage to using AHCI v RAID ? I'm going with RAID for now, well, because it works.

Over the years most people have suggested the compatibility setting (I think it may be ATA not AHCI).

I believe that's what blkhockeypro19 uses, or at least suggested in his Leopard guide.

 

The advantage used to be you didn't have to hack the disk drivers by adding the ich8r device ID to the info.plist files in the kexts every time software update changed them.

 

Now we have those injectors in /E/E from Chameleon 2 RC 3, I don't believe that advantage is relevant any longer.

 

I always thought it was easier to add device ids than reinstall Vista/XP.

[blkhockeypro19]

I found getting the Snow Leopard installation DVD to boot was annoyingly difficult.

That's why I booted my working Leopard install, then ran OSInstall.mpkg from there.

 

If you are doing a GUID install, you can just put the retail Snow Leopard DVD in your drive while Leopard is running, and install to another partition. (You can even install it to an unbootable partition on SATA5 or SATA6, then use Leopard's disk utility to "restore" it to where it goes. You can install to a GUID partition, and use disk utility to "restore" to an MBR partition. You can install to your USB drive and "restore" to your internal drive.)

 

The only reason I didn't stay with GUID is I wanted to share a disk with Win7 and the Win7 installer didn't work for me onto the GUID disk.

 

 

My DVD drive works fine; could your drive be getting worn out?

 

and its odd you have the shutdown issues; your dsdt.aml fixed all that for me. (Thanks again)

 

 

Over the years most people have suggested the compatibility setting (I think it may be ATA not AHCI).

I believe that's what blkhockeypro19 uses, or at least suggested in his Leopard guide.

 

The advantage used to be you didn't have to hack the disk drivers by adding the ich8r device ID to the info.plist files in the kexts every time software update changed them.

 

Now we have those injectors in /E/E from Chameleon 2 RC 3, I don't believe that advantage is relevant any longer.

 

I always thought it was easier to add device ids than reinstall Vista/XP.

Fixed DVD drive. If you have "Put Hard Disks to sleep when possible" checked in Energy Saver Preference Pane, it treats the optical drive as a hard disk. Keep that setting off! Also, after turning that off, shutdown now works as does logout which previously would cause the system to hang. No reboot though...

[dr.vox]

Already done that, wmarsh (OSInstall.mpkg install.) but like I said, it won't boot, and now I've broken my Leopard install, I have no working OS at all.

 

Edit: ok let ne go into detail.

I have two HDDs.

WD5000 - 500GB - MBR - 2 HFS+ partitions; Leopard HD, Media HD.

ST13something - 160GB - GUID - 2 HFS+ partitions; Snow Leopard, Untitled 2.

 

When booting the WD, I get (very quickly, reboots instantly.):

boot0: MBR

boot0: done

boot1: /boot

 

When attempting to boot into snow Leo via the St13:

boot0: GPT

boot0: testing

boot0: testing

boot0: done

boot1: error

 

The problem now being that I have no OS to boot into to fix either.

[blkhockeypro19]

Already done that, wmarsh (OSInstall.mpkg install.) but like I said, it won't boot, and now I've broken my Leopard install, I have no working OS at all.

 

Edit: ok let ne go into detail.

I have two HDDs.

WD5000 - 500GB - MBR - 2 HFS+ partitions; Leopard HD, Media HD.

ST13something - 160GB - GUID - 2 HFS+ partitions; Snow Leopard, Untitled 2.

 

When booting the WD, I get (very quickly, reboots instantly.):

boot0: MBR

boot0: done

boot1: /boot

 

When attempting to boot into snow Leo via the St13:

boot0: GPT

boot0: testing

boot0: testing

boot0: done

boot1: error

 

The problem now being that I have no OS to boot into to fix either.

I can fix your second hard drive with snow leopard. You need to boot into a leopard installer or snow leopard installer, however you wish, just get into a working OSX installer. Download http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...st&id=59185

to a flash drive, plug it in. Open disk utility and click the snow leopard partition. Click "info" button at the top and note the disk identifier. Exit disk utility and open up terminal. In terminal, type "cd /Volumes/FLASHDRIVE/" and then "sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXsY" .... Both of those should be typed with no quotes. Make sure you replace "FLASHDRIVE" with the partition name where you saved the boot1h file from that link. Also make sure "diskXsY" is the snow leopard partition's disk identifier. Good luck!

[dr.vox]

I already erased the Snow Leo part.

trying to install Kalyway 10.5.2 or iAtkos 10.5.7, but neither are playing nice anyway. Might be due to the graphics card (XFX 9600GT). :/

really not happy.

If the install I'm doing now doesn't work, I'll try putting the old 7300LE back in temporarily.

 

EDIT: Ok, finally back on my E520. Kalyway 10.5.2 (w/ 9600GT) as a temporary measure.

I guess now I download Chameleon 1 and try fix Leopard HD with that

and I might as well install Snow Leo on one of the free parts I now have.

[wmarsh]

Already done that, wmarsh (OSInstall.mpkg install.) but like I said, it won't boot, and now I've broken my Leopard install, I have no working OS at all.

 

Edit: ok let ne go into detail.

I have two HDDs.

WD5000 - 500GB - MBR - 2 HFS+ partitions; Leopard HD, Media HD.

ST13something - 160GB - GUID - 2 HFS+ partitions; Snow Leopard, Untitled 2.

 

When booting the WD, I get (very quickly, reboots instantly.):

boot0: MBR

boot0: done

boot1: /boot

 

When attempting to boot into snow Leo via the St13:

boot0: GPT

boot0: testing

boot0: testing

boot0: done

boot1: error

 

The problem now being that I have no OS to boot into to fix either.

Sounds like you are using Chameleon to boot, and you have the boot1 error because E520 has a screwy BIOS.

 

I would boot a Linux live DVD, and use the dd utility to copy the boot1 fix posted above to your drive.

 

Then try to reboot.

[dr.vox]

Tried installing Chameleon 1 on the MBR/Leo HD drive via the 10.5.2 I set up, using an installer pkg (Dr. Hurt's?).

Now I don't even get the boot0 error, it just hangs on the boot menu, with WD5000 selected. :\

I always manage to screw things up further.

 

And I tried installing Snow Leo on Untitled 2 on the ST31, alongside the temp Kaly install, which resulted in me not being able to boot either Kaly or Snow Leo.

something along the lines of boot0: GPT; boot0: done; boot0: done; boot0HF00000; HFS+ PARTITION ERROR.

 

This isn't the first time I've seen the HFS+ Partition Error today, either.

Repartitioned the drive, now have Kaly reinstalled, no Snow Leo as of yet, and a broken Leopard on the other drive.

 

EDIT: Ahh jolly good. Very relieved to be back on my working 10.5.7.

Reinstalled Chameleon 1 via iAtkos 7 DVD. Must remember to do that in future.

Also, using Kalyway somehow reset my Network settings, which started my Bluetooth dongle working again. Now I can access my phone through iAtkos. (Y)

 

Now back to Snow Leo. Inb4 I break my Leo bootloader again.

[dr.vox]

Don't worry about reading this if you don't feel like it and skip to the next post, fixed all the problems myself.

Just keeping it here for reference purposes.

 

_{Right, I'm gonna write down everything I'm doing and log it, so you can see where I'm going wrong.}

_{So I have:}

_{160GB (ST31) - GUID/GPT - 3 Partitions}

_{s1 = temp Kalyway 10.5.2, with Chameleon 1 installed (just remembered Cham1 is installed on that drive already. Maybe a problem. We'll see.)}

_{s2 = Snow}

_{s3 = Untitled 3}

 

_{OSInstall.mpkg installed. No printers or additional languages. Just Necessary System Files, X11 and maybe additional fonts, I can't remember.}

_{Create /Extra and /Extra/Extensions on /Snow}

_{Drag the kexts from 10.6 and Common folders to /Extra/Extensions (not the folders, just the kexts into the Extensions folder, is that right?).}

_{Drag Heliacal's extensions (dsmos, OpenHaltRestart, NullCPUPowerManagement, PlatformUUID) to /Ext/Extens.}

_{Copy boot plist; edit to use mach_kernel instead.}

_{No EFI string added (there isn't one for the 9600GT, afaik. Might try swapping out for the 7300LE, but that might cause a bit of unwanted kerfuffle with Leopard).}

_{DSDT.aml dragged to /Vol/Snow/}

_{Repair permissions on /Extra.}

_{Drag Intel82566MM and VoodooHDA kexts to /Snow/Sys/Lib/Ext (Note: mine is Intel82566MM.kext; is this right? wmarsh's guide has no MM on the end. Can someone please link me to the exact kext, considering there are three or four on that page)}

_{Repair permissions on /Snow/Sys/Lib/Ext}

 

_{Install Chameleon 2:}

_{Open Terminal, use diskutil list to find Snow's location. (disk1s3)}

_{cd /Media\ HD/Downloads/Snow\ Leo/Chamel../i386/}

_{sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk1}

_{sudo cp boot /Volumes/Snow}

_{Then install the corrected boot1h}

_{cd /Vol/Med/Downloads/Snow\ Leo/}

_{sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk1s3}

 

_{And that should be all, as far as I can tell. So rebooting now. inb4 it doesn't work.}

 

_{Yep, no dice. boot0: GPT; boot0: tesitng; boot0: testing; boot0:doneH00000000; ; HFS+ partition error.}

 

_{Gonna repartition ST31, install Snow Leo with no other OSes on that drive, i.e. no Chameleon 1.}

_{Hm, weird, getting slow access to SATA1 (ST31), WD5000 (boot drive) is on SATA0.}

_{Rebooted. No such problems. Weird.}

 

_{Second attempt: boot1: error.}

_{Fixed using the boot1h blkhockey posted a few posts up.}

_{Again, reboots as soon as it tries to go into GUI. Just realised how stupid I'm being trying to boot with no extra graphics kexts/EFI strings. Gonna try getting the 7300LE in.}

 

_{No luck with the 7300LE kexts I used to use.}

_{Now I've used OSX86Tools to generate an EFI string. Let's give that a go.}

 

_{Ugh. No matter what I do, it still reboots after pages and pages of verbose loading kexts.}

_{I've been taking videos on my {censored} phone, and these are the last few lines, as best I can make them out:}

_{efi_inject_get_develop_string [indistunguishable]}

_{Loaded HFS+ file: [Extra/smbios.plist] [indistinguishable]}

_{Patched [DNS? 3 or 4 letters, D looks to be the first one] table.}

_{Loaded HFS+ file: [DSDT.aml] 1.92 [indistinguishable]}

_{Fetched ACPI [variation?] 2 DSDT}

 

_{And then that's where it reboots. Makes the clicky noise and goes straight back to the blue Dell boot logo.}

_{Been trying to find some logs but all the ones I can find are empty.}

 

EDIT: Oh for goodness sake, I really should pay more attention to what I'm reading.

Just re-read the first page and discovered cullumsmith, who was also on a Pentium 4, had issues. wmarsh is on a C2D.

So I tried a custom kernel, it now boots and I can get into verbose, but it hangs after a few minutes.

There's a mention of CPUPowerManagement, which might be what cullumsmith saw too, so I've PMed him.

(The exact line is

ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin::start - WaitForService(resourceMatching(AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement) timed out. )