Burning and other issues

[nemesis_SS]

[EDIT: Issue resolved. burned with Nero, and the original CDs were good. For those with "still searching for root device" error i suggest trying LawlessPPC]

 

My first post, and yea, its a question. I dont like people like me, but hopefully when i get into this ill be some help,

cause im not new to messing with computers

 

I have burned Leo4all 4 times. I've used ImgBurn, DeepBurner, and PowerIso. With Power ISO i tried two different downloads of the Leo4all. Burn speed is at the lowest possible for each program (only my copy of PowerIso actually allows 1x)

 

Every time I burn the iso, i get a disk with 8 files and names like "boot.ini" or "cdboot" and "chain0," and nothing else

 

Weird thing is that the disk size is 486 k each time, instead of the 4.6 gig .iso size. It is not because Windows doesn't recognize the HFS files. The data simply isnt being written to the disk, and I know this just by looking at the DVD to see that very little of it has been written too.

 

Weirder still, the files being written arent even on the leo4all iso image as far as i can tell. In case of any confusion, the disk doesnt work.

 

I tried extracting the iso into a folder and burning it as a data disk, but I get the "over 8 folders deep" error.

So I took the extracted ISO and put it onto an old XP drive (freshly formatted to FAT32) and tried to boot from that (i also copied the 8 mysterious "boot" files from the DVD.) I get the "NTLDR not found" error - which is weird, cause that drive should be empty (i will do a "format mbr" and retry)

 

And thats where I am at. Anything that will help me burn the iso or boot from HD would be great. I have an old iBook running Tiger but it can only burn CDs, but it might help?

 

-eric

 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Black Edition running at 3 ghz

on an ASUS m3a mobo

with Nvidia 8800GT

and 3 gigs ram

[srs5694]

I'm not sure about Leo4All specifically, but many Mac CD/DVD images are in a weird multi-filesystem format, with both ISO-9660 and HFS or HFS+ components. You'll normally only see the ISO-9660 side from Windows, not the HFS/HFS+ side.

 

Despite your belief that you've burned four coasters, I suggest you try booting all of them; it's conceivable you're mistaken and that at least one of them will work. If not, then I suggest you re-examine your CD/DVD burning software for options to do a "raw" burn of the image file. It could be your software is set to try to interpret the data to one extent or another; it could be seeing the ISO-9660 filesystem, interpreting the HFS/HFS+ filesystem as corruption, and burning just the ISO-9660 side. If you turn off whatever "smart" features are causing this problem, you should be OK. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with Windows CD/DVD burning software to give you more specific pointers on this.

[nemesis_SS]

thanks for th reply.

 

After bieng up most of the night I think i may just need better or different burning software. Even when I mount the image in PowerIso the virtual drive it creates is the same coaster. I tried booting from these DVDs long before I started to whinning on this forum. I am positive that they have hardly any data on them, after comparing to a blank disk and a full disk, this one clearly has just a bit of data on it.

 

ill keep trying though. ive notice a few others with this problem on other threads and boards. None of them have recieved answers so I never had my hopes up. But if any results emerge on this end and if figure it out ill be sure to post.

 

-e

[nemesis_SS]

have you guys been burning to ISO or UDF file system? i tried both but mostly ive been using ISO9661 (or watever it is)

 

im running out of DVDs trying to get this to work. Should this be so wierd? I burn everything from .daa images to video in every format imaginable on my setup. I have been ripping OSes since the 3.5 inch floppy days (Win 95, 13+ diskettes!)

 

i just feel like i cant get it up on this one. i never wanna see 486 kb again.

[srs5694]

You shouldn't need to specify the filesystem at all; that's encoded in the image file that you download, so the burning process should just be a straight dump from the image file to the DVD media.

 

Assuming you're using Windows, you could try growisofs for Windows. I use this software in Linux, but I've not used the Windows version. It's a simple text-mode tool, so it's scary to the uninitiated; but I know for a fact that it'll do the job. Under Linux, the command to burn an image file looks something like this:

 

growisofs -Z /dev/dvdrw=foo.iso

 

It looks like you'd change /dev/dvdrw in the above with your burner's drive letter, but it's unclear from the Web page whether that would be with or without the colon. You would also, of course, change foo.iso to the name of your image file. There are various other options you can use to control the burn speed, etc. Read the manual page for details.

 

Also, a generic tip: Use rewritable DVDs whenever you're not sure if something will work or if you think you won't be keeping something for long. That'll help keep your costs down, despite the fact that rewritable media are more expensive to begin with.

[nemesis_SS]

ok. ill fire it over to my linux pc and try it there. ive never used that particular program, but my dad keeps telling me "stop wasting my damned DVDs and burn that file with a linux program"

 

lol. so you make two thats good enough.

 

for the record, i had a little success with nero. I still only see a 486kb DVD, but it does boot. It hangs in Darwin at "still searching for root file" - searching forever, i imagine, because it isnt on the DVD at all. Im gonna look into that error though

 

 

 

-thanks

[srs5694]

If you're judging the size of the DVD based on what Windows says when you insert the DVD into a Windows drive, don't. Windows can't see the HFS/HFS+ side of the disc, so it will report an incorrect value. It's possible that your Nero burn was successful and that you've run into some other problem, but I can't be 100% sure of that.

[nemesis_SS]

If you're judging the size of the DVD based on what Windows says when you insert the DVD into a Windows drive, don't. Windows can't see the HFS/HFS+ side of the disc, so it will report an incorrect value. It's possible that your Nero burn was successful and that you've run into some other problem, but I can't be 100% sure of that.

 

 

yea it had occured to me that windows wasnt seeing the HFS. In my burning programs it even called the DVD a "hybrid" which i figured meant it was iso and dmg or something. When i compared it to a blank CD it looked the same colour. I mean i figured id been burning CDs long enough to tell a burnt from a blank. Well i was wrong, and yea im a dumbass.

 

 

As for the "still waiting for root device" error i did lots of reading. I got all sorts of wierd advice, including:

 

set jumpers on HD to primary master and DVD reader to primary slave

set jumpers on HD to primary slave and DVD reader to primary master

Put the HD on an IDE ribbon and use a SATA optical drive

boot from a USB

Load a cetain set of ktext before booting (the commands to do that were online somewhere)

and a tons of wierd configurations - basically ppl went plugging and unpluggin every drive they had until it worked.

 

Obviously it is a hardware issue - Darwin cant see or speak to your hard drive. So it makes sense that one of these solutions might work for you (by switching you HD, ie your root device, or maybe by fluke darwin can talk to it via IDE but no SATA or watever along those lines).

 

In the end, i gave up on Leo4All and went with LawlessPPC because one forum recommended it for its broader hardware support thanks to some stuff that is over my head. i am watching the install bar creep along nicely.

 

if you got the same issues as me, theres ur answer fishbulbs.

 

thanks for the help. if you hadnt recommended that i just try the DVD again woulda given up all together

[nemesis_SS]

More Problems and more solutions and still more problems:

 

after installing nicely I got stuck on the Grey apple boot screen with the O and a slash through it. It would hang there. Booted with -v and got "waiting for root device." I dont get how OSX can see the #$@%ing HD and install install itself there but not then not see itself there either.

 

but something nobody has pointed out: Hanging on the Grey apple boot screen with the O and a slash through it IS very probably the "waiting for root device" error. so when you go looking for solutions to either problem, check both. It is an issue with your harddrive. Some threads say video card - but any root device error is probably not video card related, and the O with a slash it signifies no root device to read from. Before you flame me, what im saying is that there are grey screen hangups which are video card issues, but probably not when the O with a / is there

 

How I solved it:

just dicked around, really. Played around in CMOS and flicked all the switches having to do with hard drives. Ive got 1 HD and 1 DVD burner both one cable, with the HD jumpered to primary master. The DVD is boot priority one. Then i tried booting from the HD with these commands:

 

-v

-x

cpus=1

rd=disk*s* (the one i think fixed it)

 

you replace the first * with the HD number you put macOS on, and the second * with the partition number. youll see it all in fornt of you when you go to boot. But for simplicity sake i would remove all but the OSX drive and the optical. A single disk defaults to disk #0 and the partitions (if you have any) will be listed in front of you as boot options. Mine was disk0s2. booted agian and did not get the O with a /, but i still hang at the grey apple boot screen,

 

-v gives a new error

 

"using 10485 buffer... ...4096 cluster"

 

ive just begun searching, there is a walkthrough for fixing this on a Tiger install but i requires resources i dont have (ie, a working computer with a DVD burner. my iBook is cd burner only).

 

so thats where im at