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Has anyone attempted to boot with stock Apple bootloader?


qrzx
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Just curious.

 

One of the drawbacks for me (as a perfectionist I guess) of building a Hackintosh is having to use a third-party bootloader to start the system. I know, this isn't bad, it isn't going to make it much slower, but for me it's just a thing.

 

I've been doing a little bit of research into the stock Apple bootloader and stumbled onto this Wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BootX_(Apple)

 

Of course this is the older version (PowerPC), but it does have a reference to the new Intel EFI bootloader (reference #4: https://web.archive.org/web/20080706145146/http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Articles/BootProcess.html

 

I have searched this forum and haven't found anything definitive. So I just wanted to ask: has anyone attempted to boot from a modified Apple bootloader? If not, what are the main reasons this won't work?

 

 

More notes:

 

I've heard that one of the reasons this is not possible is because motherboards lack HFS+ support. Is it possible however to have the bootloader load the HFS driver?

 

No, I don't have good access to an actual Mac, so I haven't done any experimentation myself.

 

Yes, I have a satisfactory knowledge of operating systems, I know generally what a bootloader does, and if you throw jargon at me I'll understand it, or at least try to - so don't be afraid to post very technical comments

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I think this topic has learning purpose :)

 

Bootloader is a step from BIOS to OS.

BootX is a step from PowerPC BIOS (Firmware) to PowerPC MacOS.

Darwin bootloader is a first Apple's loader for Intel Macs. It was modified for Hackintosh use and got a name "Chameleon v1".

New Macs started directly from EFI BIOS. Like Oz.

Clover has EFI modules to adopt UEFI PC BIOS for booting MacOSX on non-Mac hardware.

UEFI PC BIOS has lacks of:

1. Some EFI protocols needed for boot.efi.

2. Serial numbers accepted by MacOSX

3. HFS+ support

4. Device Properties needed for graphics, sound, LAN etc.

and more.

(Oz is reduced Clover to fit into BIOS chip)

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I've heard that one of the reasons this is not possible is because motherboards lack HFS+ support. Is it possible however to have the bootloader load the HFS driver?

 

Beside that would be against any good UEFI practise, the bootloader itself is on a HFS+ drive, so letting it load the HFS+ driver would be quite a challenge. ;)

 

Darwin bootloader is a first Apple's loader for Intel Macs. It was modified for Hackintosh use and got a name "Chameleon v1".

 

Nah, boot-132 was never used on Macs, it came from the Intel Transition Kit they shipped to devs. Old Macs used BootX, new Macs always used boot.efi

 

And as joe said, Oz is not [just] ("just" is from the quote, but it isn't at all) a reduced Clover... Slice, I'm gonna give you "EBL" as a hint, should ring some bell.  ;)

 

Also, the only actively developed "boot loader" now is Chameleon. Ozmosis is a Platform Driver and Clover a... well, in the UEFI world there is no name for it, I would call it a Boot Manager with driver characteristics? Anyway it is not an "OS Loader" - UEFI's word for bootloader.

Oz is the closest you will get for now. 

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I bet  OP mean boot picker.. However to implement boot picker need to add many of efi protocols and resources, so this is irrational idea at all. Also apple products uses uga console to draw graphics, and I'm not sure that GOP will compatible with internal graphics applications from apple fv

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By OP he means the thread creator.

 

@topic Apple's BootPicker is nothing but a dull GUI, it has nothing to do with protocol exposure. Next, the idea is not irrational but already happening as OS X is obviously booting fine. Finally, Apple doesn't use UGA for quite some while now, even though there still is support.

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 and Clover a... well, in the UEFI world there is no name for it, I would call it a Boot Manager with driver characteristics? Anyway it is not an "OS Loader" - UEFI's word for bootloader.

 

Strictly speaking Clover just call boot.efi that is topic question "stock Apple bootloader"  B)

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Thanks everyone for the replies  :yes:

I'll look into all the references and links.

 

Slice - I'll take a closer look at Clover and how it works when I have the time... really interested in what kind of adaptations are necessary to boot OS X.

 

Also, do you think it's possible to build some kind of bootstrapper that will launch the native OS X bootloader from UEFI?

Does Clover already do this? If so, would it be possible to boot the native OS X bootloader from Clover?

 

Again, just curious. Will play around with the idea more seriously when I have good hardware  :rofl:

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Why would the boot disk selector be part of the local OS X bootloader? That wouldn't make any sense and would mean an OS X installation is required to boot any OS... BootPicker is just Apple's equivalent of the Boot Manager on UEFI boards.

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Well my original intent was to figure out how much stock Apple software could be used... including boot selector, bootloader, etc.

But I guess it's impossible (or nearly impossible) to extract code from Apple's BIOS...  :blush:

 

I'm sure there are Clover themes that mimic Apple boot selector?

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