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OSx86 install with no previous Intel Mac around?


Thymox
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Hi all,

 

I have tried to follow numerous guides and video tutorials, and they all seem to lead back to the same couple of problems:

 

Most "it'll install on anything, just do this" guides seem to presume that you have access to a Mac running OSX. I do! However, it's a G4 eMac running 10.4.something. Seemingly the tools to make a USB drive (HDD or pendrive) work have all been written for Intel Macs only, so although I can "restore" a disc/image to my USB device, I can then not run the tools to make it do its magic.

 

Most "stick this disc in, and swap discs when it says so" guides seem to presume that the destination Hackintosh will be an Intel. It is not - I have 2 spare laptops hanging around, both are AMD.

 

Can anyone point me in the direction of how to get OSx86 onto one of my spare AMD laptops, either from a completely fresh install point of view (ie from DVDs) or by using a PPC Mac to do the initial donkey work?

 

I'm quite comfortable getting my hands dirty - been a Linux-on-everything-I-get-my-hands-on person since the late 90s - so I'm happy to pull my sleeves up and build images and mess about with low-level disk tools, if necessary.

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I can't think of any reason you couldn't follow most guides using a G4. Once you have a copy of OSX, Diskutility and Terminal (or just Terminal really) is all you really need. AMD can be a pain, and as a first install when just learning, even bigger pain and I always recommend against it. There are others here who will disagree (because the have AMD :) ) but there's no doubt it doesn't make things easier.

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Disk Utility, sure.

Terminal, not a problem.

Tools that modify your USB for some reason (to change the permissions on the additional kexts (etc))... nope. Intel only. Yes, they'll run on 10.5 (and I *can* get 10.5 on my machine if I do some OpenFirmware shuffling), but only on a 10.5 Intel Mac.

 

I would be quite happy to follow any command-line-fu instructions on doing this - Unix-like permissions is hardly taxing - but so far the only full-on instructions I've found that detail what to do with permissions, etc, are quite sketchy because they're for Intel machines (not AMDs) and so there's limited need for changing things.

 

If I had a spare Intel machine, I would definitely give that a go for my first Hackintosh, however none of the Intel machines in the house are "spare". :(

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Enable showing of hidden files. On install OSX app, RT click and show package contents. Go to Contents/Resouces and mount InstallESD.dmg. Inside it mount BaseSystem.dmg. Use diskutility to restore BaseSystem.dmg image to USB. Eject the mounted BaseSystem.dmg image since USB will now have same name and be confusing(the name of the mounted BaseSystem.dmg is Mac OS X Base System. Use terminal to copy packages and a few other files that don't get restored, along with bootable kernel and any kexts. I don't know all the exact file path names of the top of my head so don't copy and paste this as gospel, but Terminal supports drag and drop. Packages would first delete alias at /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/Packages and then:

cp -R "path to packages folder" /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/

kernel would go to /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System which is root of mounted USB

 

kexts:

cp -R "drag and drop kext here" /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Library/Extensions/

 

Repeat for any you need. Keep in mind goal is to make bootable installer, not perfect system yet.

 

chown -R root:wheel /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/"your AMD kernel"
chmod -R 755 /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/"your AMD kernel"

 

chown -R root:wheel /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Library/Extensions/
chmod -R 755 /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Library/Extensions/

 

You'll need a sudo in there along the way

 

to install bootloader, say Chameleon, download source files from Voodoo team's sourceforge instead of pkg installer, in it you'll find the 3 needed Chameleon boot files, manually copy them onto your current desktop. They are; boot, boot0 and boot1h.

 

Then again in terminal:

 

diskutil list

 

and get disk # for your USB and make not of partition #'s

 

cd ~/Desktop

 

sudo -s

 

assuming your USB is disk1 from above diskutil list (which it may not be)

 

fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk1

 

dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk1s2

*the above may require first: diskutil unmount rdisk1s2 and assumes Mac OS X Base System is partition 2*

 

 

cp boot /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/

 

Now create "Extra" folder at root of dmg

 

mkdir /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/Extra

 

In here you ill put org.chameleon.Boot.plist and smbios. Other modules are also options which would go in sub folder /Extra/Modules/

 

I would browse the AMD development forums for compatible Kernel with whatever version of OSx you plan to instal along with what will be best smbios and org.chameleon.Boot.plist options and kexts that may be needed

 

Nothing real fancy here, all any "tools" are really doing is copying files from one spot to another.

 

to boot from USB, you'll probably need to use at least -f boot flag. There will not be a bootloader GUI, just text version, unless folder is created and files added to it at /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/Extra/Themes/

 

Finding the few files you need for your hardware is up to you now :)

The individual file permission will not change if using AMD/Intel/PPC and aren't specific to architecture. When restoring image via diskutility, all the file permissions of the orig image are applied to the target, so it would only be the few kexts(expect at least FakeSMC.kext and NullCPUPowerManagement.kext) and kernel you copy over yourself that would need to be set manually. You may also need to apply similar method to the completed installaltion's HD before it will boot for the first time(kexts, kernel and Extra folder, can use USB's bootloader again and just pick different drive at Chameleon prompt)

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Yay! The installer boots and I get to the bit where I can choose my destination drive... and none are listed. I'm guessing I'm missing a kext or 2 for the underlying hdd tech (one laptop is PATA, the other is SATA - not sure of the controllers on either at this moment).

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Hell yeah! With a quick tutorial off the top of my head even, can't beat that!

 

Not to mention it looks like you got as far in a few hours as some people in a few days. This is why making your own is better than a distro, you can quickly and easily change/add a few things if needed, and you know how to do it.

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Thank you, I will take your comments as a compliment!

 

Come up against a slight snag, but I shall persevere - one of the laptops, with the PATA drive, has an ATi Radeon Xpress 1100 (x200m chipset)... which, it would seem, is a lost cause. The other laptop has an nVidia chip (can't remember which at the moment - not got it to hand) but an SATA drive which I can't (yet) get the installer to identify.

 

I will get there. I will have a fully, shiny AMD OSX laptop!

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Unfortunately, the laptop with the SATA drive (an HP/Compaq Presario CQ60) has a ridiculously featureless BIOS - HP's default BIOS for this machine allows you to change nothing! I will try getting it to see the SATA first, and if that fails I'll look at flashing to BIOS with a newer version (if HP have one available).

 

Now that I have the bug, I'm going to try getting it to install on my netbook (Acer Aspire One Happy 2DQuu PAV70 214) - I've already shrunk the ext4 filesystem & partition to make room. :)

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And which version of OSX exactly(i.e. 10.8.2, 10.7.4)? Also is there anyway to switch it to AHCI mode? Maybe it called RAID mode or Advanced mode in BIOS, but it will cause the device ID to change if you switch it, so if you can switch it, get the new ID

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Trying to install:

Mac OS X 10.6 (10A431)

Kernel 10.8.0

 

The BIOS is severely crippled, however I would prefer to avoid flashing the BIOS if I can... not that I'm concerned about bricking the machine (been a while since I've done that through a BIOS flash), but HP's flashing tools tend to come wrapped up in a lovely Windows application. This machine is not currently running Windows, and I'm not well placed to install Windows Vista (what it came with) so I can flash the BIOS so I can see if there's an option to change the SATA to AHCI-mode (no guarantees - HP don't like to make it easy to find the errata and changes between BIOS versions) and hopefully change it, so I can then install OSX! Seems like a lot of messing around!

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OK, a little unorthodox I'll admit, but...

 

I just downloaded the "latest" HP BIOS update file, unzipped it and found the BIOS flash file itself; opened it in a Phoenix BIOS editing tool (running under WINE on my main Debian Linux machine) and (sad news) although there is plenty of mention of AHCI in the "strings" section, there are no menus (hidden or otherwise) that will allow me to change the AHCI setting.

 

So, even if I did install Windows so I could flash the BIOS, it definitely looks like I won't be able to change the AHCI setting. :(

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OK, your pretty close to being screwed on this one. Have not seen a single report of that controller working in OSX in IDE mode or that device ID present on any kext by Apple or by hackers. Best I could come up with was binary source files for kext which includes a different Nvidia SATA controller also in IDE mode. So I built it in xcode and added your device to it's plist. It's a long shot but best I could do. If were set to AHCI, shouldn't be a problem. Or you can alway use USB HDD too. Anyway, try this first.

AppleNForceATA.kext.zip

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I don't think it may even support support AHCI.For what its worth.

 

http://www.insanelym...intel-cpu-mobo/

 

Whats your Laptops Model again?

Good find on that old forum topic! I wish I'd found that in my search, but at same time am kinda glad I didn't, that's way too much for me to read for some one else's hardware :) For that DevID # there just doesn't seem to be much info about it, usually if incompatible you'll find posts from the people who have tried.. but for this-very little info.

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