tomster2300 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 When a kext conflicts and prevents a drive from booting, what is the best way of accessing the drive to remove the kext? I am turning my desktop into a hackintosh and it only has one internal hd - when it bricks I end up having to reinstall SL vanilla onto the partition, reinstall all updates, and then attempt to fix my problem once again. This is getting really old, especially when it's one little kext that needs to be removed. Is there an easier way to do this? I dual boot with Windows 7, but it won't let me access the hackintosh partition within it. I also have a Macbook and an external hd. Is there a way to create an installation on my external hard drive and virtually boot into it? That way when something goes wrong I can simply access the drive via my Macbook and remove the offending file? If I were to do that, how would I take the final image (after I got everything working) and add that to the desktop? Would it be something like the restore tab in disk utility? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/203100-easy-way-to-access-a-bricked-hackintosh-hard-drive/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 The OS X installer gives you access to a Terminal window. You can use that to access the files in text mode. In some cases a safe-mode boot of the system will work. IIRC, this is done by passing "-x" on the boot loader's options line. Another option is to use a Linux emergency disc, but not all of these include HFS+ support. For those that do, you'd mount the partition with a filesystem type of "hfsplus" (e.g., "mount -t hfsplus /dev/sda3 /mnt/foo"), and you can then access the files in text mode, much as you would from Terminal. It's probably safer to use an OS X-based solution, though. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/203100-easy-way-to-access-a-bricked-hackintosh-hard-drive/#findComment-1364322 Share on other sites More sharing options...
will1384 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 When a kext conflicts and prevents a drive from booting, what is the best way of accessing the drive to remove the kext? I am turning my desktop into a hackintosh and it only has one internal hd - when it bricks I end up having to reinstall SL vanilla onto the partition, reinstall all updates, and then attempt to fix my problem once again. This is getting really old, especially when it's one little kext that needs to be removed. Is there an easier way to do this? I dual boot with Windows 7, but it won't let me access the hackintosh partition within it. I also have a Macbook and an external hd. Is there a way to create an installation on my external hard drive and virtually boot into it? That way when something goes wrong I can simply access the drive via my Macbook and remove the offending file? If I were to do that, how would I take the final image (after I got everything working) and add that to the desktop? Would it be something like the restore tab in disk utility? myHack Installer installed to a thumb drive, just make sure to keep your kexts and mods in the "/Extra" folder on your hard drive, by doing that, the thumb drive will bypass them when it boots Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/203100-easy-way-to-access-a-bricked-hackintosh-hard-drive/#findComment-1364324 Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 I also have a Macbook and an external hd. Is there a way to create an installation on my external hard drive and virtually boot into it? That way when something goes wrong I can simply access the drive via my Macbook and remove the offending file? If I were to do that, how would I take the final image (after I got everything working) and add that to the desktop? Would it be something like the restore tab in disk utility? There is the solution to your problem the external drive. You can use diskutil to clone your existing install to it then when you want to test changes boot from the USB (at least I assume it is) make your changes reboot for testing purposes. If anything goes wrong then you can always reboot into your main install fix the problem and try again. To clone to the external you would , as you ask, use the restore function in diskutil your internal as the source the external as the destination then you would need to reinstall the boot loader onto the external. You can also do the reverse copying from external to internal with diskutil but that takes more time than just copying the the files you changed to the internal from external. For example you will most likely be testing a .kext so all you would need to do it copy the changed .kext(s) and Extensions.mkext files back to internal to have the exact change you just tested put in place for next internal boot. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/203100-easy-way-to-access-a-bricked-hackintosh-hard-drive/#findComment-1364341 Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomster2300 Posted December 20, 2009 Author Share Posted December 20, 2009 Thanks everyone for your advice. I'm going to try macdrive first for the convenience, then install on the external for the long run. This is going to be a dumb question, but what's the difference between the extra/extensions folder and the system/library/extensions folder? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/203100-easy-way-to-access-a-bricked-hackintosh-hard-drive/#findComment-1364360 Share on other sites More sharing options...
will1384 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 Thanks everyone for your advice. I'm going to try macdrive first for the convenience, then install on the external for the long run. This is going to be a dumb question, but what's the difference between the extra/extensions folder and the system/library/extensions folder? "extra/extensions" gets loaded buy the boot loader 1st, and then OS X starts up, and loads up "system/library/extensions" Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/203100-easy-way-to-access-a-bricked-hackintosh-hard-drive/#findComment-1364367 Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 Thanks everyone for your advice. I'm going to try macdrive first for the convenience, then install on the external for the long run. This is going to be a dumb question, but what's the difference between the extra/extensions folder and the system/library/extensions folder? The /E/E folder was created so that the changes we make are kept in one location away from the main system files. This allows upgrading without interference of an update that may overwrite a change you have made to a system file. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/203100-easy-way-to-access-a-bricked-hackintosh-hard-drive/#findComment-1364368 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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