My Leopard Success Story!

[Foodie Monster]

Hey folks! Just wanted to throw in my experience with the recently released "Flat Image" method for installing Mac OS X Leopard 10.5! You all know the method (if not, it's on the first page of this same forum ), so I won't bore you with that.

 

Basically, I just wanted to tell you guys what works and what doesn't of my system, so that other people will know! Here goes!

 

Specs:

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2Ghz (Works Perfectly, Detected Correctly in System Profiler)

Motherboard: ASUS P5GC-MX i945G/GZ Chipset (Everything works except onBoard LAN - Atheros - , but everything else detected, no hacking needed!)

RAM: 2GB DDR2 (No problems here!)

Graphics Card: ASUS EN7300GS 256mb PCI-e (QE/CI and all that supported! Detected NATIVELY, no hacking/Natit/Titan/Modified Kexts needed!)

HDD: 80GB HDD SATA with OSX Installed, 250GB HDD IDE with Windows XP Installed

Sound: Not sure, because I'm using my Logitech Headset at the moment (USB) and it works like a charm.

 

So there you have it! The Flat Image installing worked perfectly. Another thing is I did it using the .bat file from Windows XP and all that, and then I used zuza's method for merging the 15GB Partition you get from this method with the rest of the space of the drive - which worked without any hiccups.

 

Soon, I'm hoping to get EFI support on this so that I don't have to deal with any {censored} when updating the OS

 

Well, I hope my success inspires someone and it helps someone else with a similar setup to get running with the Big Cats And of course, here's the obligatory Screenshot of success

 

 

EDIT: A quick followup:I'm reinstalling it now! I ran Software Update, UNCHECKED the 10.5.1 update but let it install the Apple Remote, Quicktime and iTunes updates. I dunno which one did it, but upon restart, I got the blinking cursor of death. Anyone has any ideas as to why this appened? Or should I just not use Software Update for now?

[superfaen]

I updated with the automatic update and it worked just fine. I used digitmemo's guide for installing EFI. I installed the updates right before I rebooted to apply the EFI patch.

 

Easy enough when you can just copy and paste the terminal commands.

I have ASUS p5b.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

what is the method of merge the two partitions together?

[Foodie Monster]

what is the method of merge the two partitions together?

 

It's a DiskUtil native command, only that it's available exclusively through Terminal and not from the GUI. Basically, it goes like this:

 

Go to Windows, and format the remaining Unallocated Space from the Drive, but don't give it any File System (meaning, leave it unformatted, but partitioned). Then, boot back to Leopard. Open up Disk Utility, and Erase the new Partition that will appear there, format it to Journaled HFS+ .Now, open up Terminal, and then check the proper names for the partitions:

 

diskutil list

In my case, Leopard was installed on disk1s1, and my extra HFS+ Partition was disk1s2. Then, just execute the following command:

 

sudo diskutil mergePartitions "Journaled HFS+" New disk1s1 disk1s2

And that's it! About 5 seconds later, you'll be able to close Terminal, and you'll have your Leopard volume taking up all of the HDD's real space Hope that helps!

[dhomi]

Drop "sudo" in sudo diskutil mergePartitions "Journaled HFS+" New disk1s1 disk1s2 if it doesn'twork...

Does anyone know if one can install EFI from a flat image install or do we absolutely need a Leo Toh install?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Oh I have heard that method ONLY the formatting with no file system is new to me

 

I will try the flat image approach again as the AMD DVD out is of no use to me

[Foodie Monster]

Oh I have heard that method ONLY the formatting with no file system is new to me

 

I will try the flat image approach again as the AMD DVD out is of no use to me

 

Well, I'm pretty sure you could format it to FAT32 and then re-format it to HFS+ in Disk Utility, but why bother formatting twice when you can format once? Plus, I've tried this method twice and worked perfectly both times

[Rufus T. Firefly]

slip-kids-computer:~ slipkid$ sudo diskutil mergePartitions "Journaled HFS+" New disk1s1 disk1s2

Password:

Merging partitions into a new partition

Start partition: disk1s1 Untitled 1

Finish partition: disk1s2 Untitled 2

 

Merging partitions encountered error No Error (0) on disk disk1s1 Untitled 1. The erase will not occur.

 

and the end result was a formatted disk.

 

I tried it ur way first, then I partitioned it with two HFS+ partitions and it gave the same error

[Foodie Monster]

That's odd. I don't know how the process goes when you have also a 3rd partition with Windows in it or anything though. In my case, I have Leopard on it's own HDD. After doing the Flat Image, I am left with my 80gig HDD being 15 gigs total. So I boot into windows, go to the Computer Management part, and I make a New Partition on the unallocated space. Then I go back to Leo, use DiskUtil to erase it, verify the names of the partitions (you know, diskXsY, etc) by using the diskutil list in Terminal, and then that command that I gave you, and it works for me. I tried it more than once, so I know it's not a fluke.

 

Also, if it helps, this 80GB HDD is SATA, not IDE. Maybe that has something to do with it?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Well I did this in Tiger, I will however try it in Leo after a re-install

[Foodie Monster]

Yea, maybe it's a Leo only thing? No idea.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Alright I finally have Leo.

 

Disk utility won't let me erase the Windows created partition

 

I didn't give it a file system,..

[Foodie Monster]

Then I have no idea. The only thing I can think of is that it has something to do with your drives being IDE, while mine is SATA. I actually blew up my Leopard partition again, so I'm performing the procedure yet again. I'll post if it works like it did the two times before.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

deleted in Tiger booted back into Leo

 

it sees it and mounted

 

now to either F#ck it up or hopefully it works

[Foodie Monster]

I don't know what keeps killing my Leopard install. I've booted into it and rebooted at least twice, and all works. But then, I might be installing SOMETHING that kills it, because it gives me the blinking cursor of death. All I can think of is iTunes? I know I downloaded 7.5 of that. And I installed iWork 08, Skype and Colloquy. Does any of that sound like it could kill the install?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

it worked!!A very long way to go about it but it worked!thanks!Maybe iWork? although iTunes did screw up my audio in Tiger. did u fix permissions after each install?

[Foodie Monster]

No, I didn't fix permissions after any install, I never thought that'd be an issue to be honest. I'm going to try and get PC EFI running before installing anything, and if that works, hopefully all the other installs will work too. I'll make a point of repairing permissions after installing both things.

 

In the meantime, any other ideas?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

let me know if installing EFI works, then I can do the same. I fiddled with EFI and it screwed my Tiger install up

 

perhaps a kernel issue?

[Foodie Monster]

Ok, I know what's killing my system: mergePartitions. I got EFI running thanks to the ToH kernel, rebooted all was fine, then did merge partitions, rebooted: Blinking Cursor.

 

Any ideas?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

i'm in the same boat actually. i'm pretty sure you put boot0 in /usr/standalone/i386

 

I don't have that file and I've used one from Tiger and DON'T DO THAT

 

it boots into tiger..

[Foodie Monster]

I didn't put a boot0 in nowhere. I just tried merging the partitions and that keeps hosing my install.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I know that, Im not sure how to fix this. I tried writing a new MBR and fdisk -e nothing works

[Foodie Monster]

I guess the easiest would be to just take the other chunk of the HDD in Windows, make it a new unformatted partition, and format it in OS X with HFS+ and store your stuff there... sure, it's not as comfortable as having everything on one drive but it'd work, right?