Which KEXT is for what?

[Agent]

Share your knowledge of KEXT files - let's put them all in one place. What you have seen, what you know - just post a reply

 

Updated: January 7, 2007:

The list below comes from a Kalyway Leopard. descriptions are compiled from posts of users sharing their own experiences. It is in no way representative or complete. Use at your own discretion!

 

If you experiment with replacing/editing KEXT files and for some reason you get the message:

The system extension /system/library/extensions/[i]whatever-you-played-with[/i].kext was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try re-installing it or contact the product's vendor for an update"

You could try of of several possible solutions:

1 = Run diskutility to repair permissions then reboot

1a = in console type sudo -s then diskutility repairpermissions / [does not always "catch" all permissions, especially new kext files]

1b = follow Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and navigate to your MacOS drive, then select Repair Permissions [easy but as 1a, sometimes not working for new kext]

2 = open Terminal and type in sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions && sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions [covers all kext files, does better job than 1a and 1b]

3 = Use Delish's kexthelper (drag and drop the kext you wish to install in kexthelper). Then do a repair permission in disk utility. [read this to know why]

 

If you do not find the answer to your question in the list below you could do a few things on your own:

1 = Google some basic UNIX commands. Learn how to navigate and read within console (ls, cd, cat, less, cp, mv, grep, nano, pico, etc). If you are coming from the world of Linux, you are at home

2 = Read what is inside the info.plist files contained in each KEXT; quite often you will see Vendor_IDs, Product_IDs, or even descriptions. Keep your eyes and mind open.

3 = Use the forum Search

 

 

Now on to the list of known/reported KEXT files: Who is in charge of what?

FileName = [group] Description

ACard6280ATA.kext

ACard62xxM.kext = [sATA] driver for sata adapters made by ACARD using AEC-62XX series chipset, the M stands for Mac

ACard67162.kext

ACard671xSCSI.kext

ACard6885M.kext

ACard68xxM.kext

ALCinject.kext

ALF.kext

Apple02Audio.kext

Apple16X50Serial.kext

AppleAC97Audio.kext

AppleACPIPlatform.kext

AppleAD741x.kext

AppleADBButtons.kext

AppleADBKeyboard.kext

AppleADBMouse.kext

AppleADM103x.kext

AppleADT746x.kext

AppleAHCIPort.kext

AppleAirPort.kext

AppleAltiVecDVDDriver.bundle

AppleAPIC.kext

AppleAzaliaAudio.kext = [AUDIO] driver for Intel Sound Cards

AppleBacklight.kext

AppleBlower.kext

AppleBMC.kext

AppleCore99NVRAM.kext

AppleCPUThermo.kext

AppleDallasDriver.kext

AppleEFIRuntime.kext

AppleFan.kext

AppleFCU.kext

AppleFileSystemDriver.kext

AppleFlashNVRAM.kext

AppleFPButton.kext

AppleFWAudio.kext

AppleGenericPCATA.kext

AppleGPIO.kext

AppleGW.kext

AppleHDA.kext = [AUDIO] Apple High Definition Audio, related to Intel and Sigmatel Sound Cards

AppleHIDKeyboard.kext

AppleHIDMouse.kext

AppleHPET.kext

AppleHWClock.kext

AppleHWSensor.kext

AppleI2C.kext

AppleI2S.kext

AppleI2SModemFamily.kext

AppleIntelGMA950GA.plugin

AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle

AppleIntelGMA950.kext

AppleIntelGMA950VADriver.bundle

AppleIntelGMAX3100FB.kext

AppleIntelGMAX3100GA.plugin

AppleIntelGMAX3100GLDriver.bundle

AppleIntelGMAX3100.kext

AppleIntelGMAX3100VADriver.bundle

AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext

AppleIRController.kext

Apple_iSight.kext

AppleK2Driver.kext

AppleK2Fan.kext

AppleK2.kext

AppleK2SATA.kext

AppleK2SATARoot.kext

AppleKauaiATA.kext

AppleKeyLargo.kext

AppleKeyswitch.kext

AppleKiwiATA.kext

AppleKiwiRoot.kext

AppleLED.kext

AppleLM7x.kext

AppleLM87.kext

AppleLM8x.kext

AppleLMUController.kext

AppleLPC.kext

AppleLSIFusionMPT.kext

AppleMacRISC2PE.kext

AppleMacRISC4PE.kext

AppleMacRiscPCI.kext

AppleMaxim1989.kext

AppleMaxim6690.kext

AppleMCEDriver.kext

AppleMediaBay.kext

AppleMIDIFWDriver.plugin

AppleMIDIIACDriver.plugin

AppleMIDIRTPDriver.plugin

AppleMIDIUSBDriver.plugin

AppleMobileDevice.kext

AppleMPIC.kext

AppleNDRV

AppleNForceATA.kext

AppleOnboardAudio.kext

AppleOnboardDisplay.kext

ApplePCCard16ATA.kext

ApplePCCardATA.kext

ApplePMU.kext

ApplePS2Controller.kext

AppleRAIDCard.kext

AppleRAID.kext

AppleRTC.kext

AppleSEP.kext

AppleSmartBatteryManager.kext

AppleSMBIOS.kext

AppleSMC.kext

AppleSMCLMU.kext

AppleSMU.kext

AppleSMUMonitor.kext

AppleSPU.kext

AppleStorageDrivers.kext

AppleSym8xx.kext

AppleThermal.kext

AppleUSBAudio.kext

AppleUSBDisplays.kext

AppleUSBTopCase.kext

AppleVADriver.bundle

AppleVIAATA.kext

AppleVIA.kext

AppleVSP.kext

AppleXsanFilter.kext

ArcMSR.kext

ATINDRV.kext

ATIRadeon8500DVDDriver.bundle

ATIRadeon8500GA.plugin

ATIRadeon8500GLDriver.bundle

ATIRadeon8500.kext

ATIRadeon8500VADriver.bundle

ATIRadeon9700DVDDriver.bundle

ATIRadeon9700GA.plugin

ATIRadeon9700GLDriver.bundle

ATIRadeon9700.kext

ATIRadeon9700VADriver.bundle

ATIRadeonDVDDriver.bundle

ATIRadeonGA.plugin

ATIRadeonGLDriver.bundle

ATIRadeon.kext

ATIRadeonX1000GA.plugin

ATIRadeonX1000GLDriver.bundle

ATIRadeonX1000.kext

ATIRadeonX1000VADriver.bundle

ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin

ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle

ATIRadeonX2000.kext

ATIRadeonX2000VADriver.bundle

ATIRNDRV.kext

ATTOExpressPCIPlus.kext

ATYinject.kext

AudioDeviceTreeUpdater.kext

AudioIPCDriver.kext

autofs.kext

BootCache.kext

Caches

cddafs.kext

CM4040.kext

CMD646Root.kext

CRYPTOCardPCCard.kext

Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext

DSACL.ppp

DSAuth.ppp

dsmos.kext

DVFamily.bundle

EAP-KRB.ppp

EAP-RSA.ppp

EAP-TLS.ppp

GeForce2MXGLDriver.bundle

GeForce3GLDriver.bundle

GeForce8xxxGLDriver.bundle

GeForceFXGLDriver.bundle

GeForceGA.plugin

GeForce.kext

GeForceVADriver.bundle

I2CGPIO.kext

ICAClassicNotSeizeDriver.kext

ICAFWKodakProDriver.kext

ImmersionForceFeedback.kext

IO80211Family.kext

IOACPIFamily.kext

IOADBFamily.kext

IOAHCIFamily.kext

IOATAFamily.kext

IOAudioFamily.kext

IOBDStorageFamily.kext

IOBluetoothFamily.kext

IOBluetoothHIDDriver.kext

IOCDStorageFamily.kext

IODVDStorageFamily.kext

IOFireWireAVC.kext

IOFireWireFamily.kext

IOFireWireIP.kext

IOFireWireSBP2.kext

IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext

IOGraphicsFamily.kext

IOHDIXController.kext

IOHIDFamily.kext

IOI2CAD741x.kext

IOI2CADT746x.kext

IOI2CControllerPMU.kext

IOI2CControllerPPC.kext

IOI2CControllerSMU.kext

IOI2CCPUVoltage.kext

IOI2CDeviceFCU.kext

IOI2CDeviceLMU.kext

IOI2CDriveBayGPIO.kext

IOI2CFamily.kext

IOI2CHWClock.kext

IOI2CLM6x.kext

IOI2CLM7x.kext

IOI2CLM8x.kext

IOI2CMaxim1631.kext

IOI2CMaxim1989.kext

IOI2CMaxim6690.kext

IOI2CMotionSensor.kext

IOI2CPulsar.kext

IOI2CSlewClock.kext

IOI2CSMUSat.kext

IOKeyLargo.kext

IONDRVSupport.kext

IONetworkingFamily.kext

IOPCCardFamily.kext

IOPCIFamily.kext

IOPlatformFunction.kext

IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext

IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily.kext

IOSCSIParallelFamily.kext

IOSerialFamily.kext

IOSMBusFamily.kext

IOStorageFamily.kext

IOStreamFamily.kext

IOUSBFamily.kext

IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext

IOVideoFamily.kext

IPFirewall.kext

iPodDriver.kext

iTunesPhoneDriver.kext

JMicronATA.kext

KeyLargoATA.kext

L2TP.ppp

LogitechForceFeedback.kext

LSIUltra320.kext

MacIOGPIO.kext

mcxalr.kext

MegaRAID.kext

msdosfs.kext

Natit.kext

ntfs.kext

NVDANV10Hal.kext

NVDANV20Hal.kext

NVDANV30Hal.kext

NVDANV40Hal.kext

NVDANV50Hal.kext = [VIDEO] Hardware Abstraction Layer for the latest crop of nVidias

NVDAResman.kext

NVinjectGo.kext

NVinject.kext

OSvKernDSPLib.kext

PMUMotionSensor.kext

PPP.kext

PPPoE.ppp

PPPSerial.ppp

PPTP.ppp

Radius.ppp

rtl8187.kext

SCR24X_Apple_Driver.kext

seatbelt.kext

SM56KUSBAudioFamily.kext

SMARTLib.plugin

smbfs.kext

SMCMotionSensor.kext

SoftRAID.kext

System.kext

TMSafetyNet.kext

udf.kext

VirtualAudioDriver.kext

webdav_fs.kext

webfilter.kext

zfs.readonly.kext

********************************************************************************

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Follows the "original" first post to this thread

 

Hello:

 

I am battling with 10.5.1. to work on my laptop - some may have come accross my threads in the forum already. Since Kalyway is working like a charm on my desktop (Asus P5B-DL + C2D-E6400) but plays funny with my laptop (ThinkPad T61 C2D-T7500 w/X3100) I quite naturally switched to iATKOS for the laptop;

 

As usual, there is a trade-off, with Kalyway the sound worked but there was no screen, no keyboard, no nothing else... with iATKOS there is a screen, there is keyboard and wireless but there is NO sound, no matter what.

 

So, comparing both systems, I notice they both have a AD1984 8086:284d soundcard. So, I figured, if Kalyway has it running I just need to copy the proper KEXT files from Kalyway[desktop] to iATKOS[laptop] and voila! Being a novice, this is indeed a simplistic way of solving things but... who knows, it might just work?

 

Eventually, my question: is there a list or a manual saying which KEXT controlls what? Which group of files is responsible for audio, which ones for video, etc... I would like to try both ways - install Kalyway and copy files needed for wireless, keyboard and video OR install iATKOS and copy files for sound, eth0 and power management...

 

Cheers,

John

[dancemc87]

hey,

 

unluckily i cannot answer your question, but i have a the same enquiry to do:

which kext is used for what?

at the moment i am stuck during the iatkos installation where i can choose to replace "applesmbios.kext".

well, if i knew roughly what it is good for to replace this file and what it does, i would be able to decide whether to install or not.

is there any database describing all known apple original and self written / added kexts??

 

plz help.

 

thanks a lot!!!!

[00diabolic]

Ive wanted to know this kinda thing for a while just for reference. I know a natit.kext is for video but nothing else. This is the basics and there are people on this forum that know this info or know where it is yet overlook these posts.

 

So I implore you great OSX masters answer our call for knowledge.

 

[Dense]

There are people that know a fair bit about what the kernel extensions do but it would take a very long time to go through them all. Expecting a single post explaining this is extremely unrealistic. Those that have a fairly solid understand of the kexts usually end up trying to make their own distribution.

[consolation]

It's kind of obvious really... the name of each kext tells you what it is for, eg. NVDANV50Hal.kext deals with, wait for it wait for it... the, Hardware Abstraction Layer for the latest crop of nVidias. Apple_iSight.kext deals with... well, I'm sure you can figure it out. If you are unfamiliar with the HW a quick google will usually reveal it. The trick is with the dependencies, that's contained in the plist inside each package. Just dig in and explore, I doubt anyone ever made a master chart of the various interconnections.

[00diabolic]

well is a natit always for graphics? The obvious ones are well obvious, DUH. Near as i can figure it natit means video or generic video driver. appleHDA is generic hi def audio driver.. Those are the types of questions we wanted answered here. What do some of these not so common terms mean. If you come from the windows world your clueless and dont even always know what to google for. Seems like there should be a site that covers all of this. Gives some of the more common terms used be OSX and how they map to the stuff a pc user would know.

[wigworm]

well is a natit always for graphics? The obvious ones are well obvious, DUH. Near as i can figure it natit means video or generic video driver. appleHDA is generic hi def audio driver.. Those are the types of questions we wanted answered here. What do some of these not so common terms mean. If you come from the windows world your clueless and dont even always know what to google for. Seems like there should be a site that covers all of this. Gives some of the more common terms used be OSX and how they map to the stuff a pc user would know.

 

Have you ever thought about doing a research and make that list yourself for others to benefit instead of complaining about no one is giving it to you on a silver plate. What make a master a master? I can pretty much tell you don't ever have that quality. A master is one who humble yet brave and hardworking enough to experiment and explore, not to wait and whine for others to give. This is a place for those who do not only want certain things out of ordinary, but also enjoys the process of making it happen by doing a little bit work. Ask Steve Job for that list. Make sure you pay him first. Nobody owes anyone anything in this world. Cry me a river.

[Agent]

Hello guys,

 

/off-topic: I don't know why 00Diabolic decided to go so agressive on something one usually politely asks for [my intention]. Sharing knowledge is only possible among those who really want to learn and those who are ready to teach. Those who teach usually deserve a fair share of respect for their knowledge, hence the importance of asking the right way.

 

On-topic now: well, I would love to do a simple #slocate *keyboad.kext / and find out which ones pull the strings for my keyboard, but alas we all know things ain't exactly so easy for a novice

 

As noted in my first post, I am looking for the proper KEXT files for the wireless, the keyboard, the display, the eth0 device, the sound... Please read this "as is" without finding more to it than there really is - my point is only proven by the fact that neither AppleAzalia.kext nor AppleHDA.kext are "obvious" in their names to be sound-related but they are!

 

Perhaps each could just "add his/her 2c" into mapping this, then put it all together and have it as a wiki reference? How say the moderators? Would that be ok or would that be like spreading chilly up a bull's ass [Apple legal]?

[consolation]

- my point is only proven by the fact that neither AppleAzalia.kext nor AppleHDA.kext are "obvious" in their names to be sound-related but they are!

 

Yes they ARE!!!!! What is the first link when you google azalia -> http://www.intel.com/standards/hdaudio/

HDA has stood for High Definition Audio for a while now, Apple is the company whose implementation you are looking at.

 

Lets try another obscure one ACard62xxM.kext, first google link to ACard gives you:

http://www.acard.com/english/home.jsp

Type in 62 into their product box, you will see a bunch of products, let's try 6290M you get:

http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-product....amp;idno_no=126

Oh, ok it's a driver for sata adapters made by ACARD using AEC-62XX series chipset, the M stands for Mac. I could have found out the same info by opening up the info.plist, finding the vendor/device IDs and googling them. Hey, I have (not really) a 62xx chipset adapter that's not made by ACARD, maybe if I add my vendor/device ID to the plist it will work, and if that does not work, what if I flash my generic adapter with ACARD's mac bios?

 

I'm not being really snarky at you, but IM is getting flooded by people (not necessarily you specifically) who seem unable to do a basic search of the forum or net before posting. It's getting to the point where this site is almost becoming useless as you need to trawl through 1.26765060023e+30 posts all asking the same "will A work with B/com.apple.Boot.plist not found/etc etc" questions. I have an idea, search before asking - can't find it? Try it, then post some useful info.

 

Your idea is not bad, start a thread listing all the kexts you know and asking ppl to add. You can keep a master list on the first post that you edit from other members submissions.

[00diabolic]

Yes they ARE!!!!!

 

Agent as you can see either everyone knows and answers to these simple question and there not willing to share or they simply just dont know.

 

TO everyone YES ANYONE Can spend hours researching an answer of something like what kext does what. So why then do people join forums? Well maybe some join forums to rip people for asking questions like wigworm. Well I'll tell you why I join a forum its to be assisted in finding the answers out there.

 

It seems like a lot of this info about kext's would be on some website somewhere. Since OSX is BSD unix it really seems like that would make sense. I guess that is what I was looking for here. Finding info on each individual kext was not something i wanted to do, yet it looks like that might be the only way. I did not wanna start such a rage around this but I guess I have. However some people do like conflict it seems.

 

If anyone has a website they think is great thats all I was looking for here. If not perhaps consolation idea is good. This forum could be that source of info.

 

THANKS EVERYONE

[SticMAC™]

If you spent as much time searching, than what you do WHINING, the you would have had the answers already!!

Your attitude is what get them NOT answering your questions, you can't have everything spoon fed......

 

I understand that he problem comes in when "someone" modifies a kext for his own private use and then starts spreading it around like: my displaynx7010.kext!

You should be able to right click on it, OPEN PACKAGE, and check the info.plist file with a text editor most of the time it will have a description, version and origin of the kext!

 

 

SticMAN

 

 

It's kind of obvious really... the name of each kext tells you what it is for, eg. NVDANV50Hal.kext deals with, wait for it wait for it... the, Hardware Abstraction Layer for the latest crop of nVidias. Apple_iSight.kext deals with... well, I'm sure you can figure it out. If you are unfamiliar with the HW a quick google will usually reveal it. The trick is with the dependencies, that's contained in the plist inside each package. Just dig in and explore, I doubt anyone ever made a master chart of the various interconnections.

[Megamixman]

OK lets make it simple. The kexts are not named after what generic device they are drivers for (unless they are generic drivers like the HAL or natit example). Most of the kexts are named in some manner for the MAKE AND MODEL of the hardware device that they are drivers for. So people who are whining about not understanding what something is and how the windows world it doesn't work this way.... WELL IT DOES. Windows drivers are actually named in far worse manners. So if you have sparse knowledge about the hardware world, well you're gonna have issues figuring out what a kext is and all i can say is that OSX isn't for noobs, so go learn about hardware. And as sticMan said, look in info.plist inside the kext. Don't know how to do that? Google Unix commands and learn some basic terminal commands and figure it out. If you don't know those basics, you deserve no help at all.

[wigworm]

Agent as you can see either everyone knows and answers to these simple question and there not willing to share or they simply just dont know.

 

TO everyone YES ANYONE Can spend hours researching an answer of something like what kext does what. So why then do people join forums? Well maybe some join forums to rip people for asking questions like wigworm. Well I'll tell you why I join a forum its to be assisted in finding the answers out there.

 

It seems like a lot of this info about kext's would be on some website somewhere. Since OSX is BSD unix it really seems like that would make sense. I guess that is what I was looking for here. Finding info on each individual kext was not something i wanted to do, yet it looks like that might be the only way. I did not wanna start such a rage around this but I guess I have. However some people do like conflict it seems.

 

If anyone has a website they think is great thats all I was looking for here. If not perhaps consolation idea is good. This forum could be that source of info.

 

THANKS EVERYONE

 

The difference between you and me: I find this forum to be very resourceful and am able to find all the answers that I need by doing a little bit search plus a little bit investigation and experiement done myself. Curiosity and patience is the key. If you don't have the guts to read through the info.plist and just try a little bit yourself to make sense of what it's saying, you will never learn and grow. Also, asking is one thing, complaining is another. You are not only asking, you are demanding, kicking and screaming and cursing like a little cry baby. To me it's kind of ridiculous in this scene. This is a place of self education, sort of like a haven for hobbyists. Vast majority of people out there would rather buy genuine MAC. People here possess different quality.

[wzrduvahhs]

Also, how do you restore a "backed up" kext file or replace a previous version of a kext file?  I've tried, by dragging and dropping, and replacing when prompted, and I still get the following error message upon reboot: "The system extension /system/library/extensions/AppleSMBIOS.kext was installed improperly and cannot be used.  Please try re-installing it or contact the product's vendor for an update".  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

 

Thanks,

 

wzrduvahhs

[wigworm]

Also, how do you restore a "backed up" kext file or replace a previous version of a kext file? I've tried, by dragging and dropping, and replacing when prompted, and I still get the following error message upon reboot: "The system extension /system/library/extensions/AppleSMBIOS.kext was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try re-installing it or contact the product's vendor for an update". Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

wzrduvahhs

 

Use Delish's kexthelper (drag and drop the kext you wish to install in kexthelper). Then do a repair permission in disk utility.

[Hagar]

Use Delish's kexthelper (drag and drop the kext you wish to install in kexthelper). Then do a repair permission in disk utility.

Disk Utility often doesn't catch permission errors in newly installed kexts.. fix permissions with:

 

 sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions && sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions

instead.

[00diabolic]

Maybe this is still not worth asking but I was hoping someone could try a bridge the gap here a lil, windows to osx.

 

For example when I google natit kext I basicly get that its a all in one type driver or that it basically just means its a video driver and that all graphics cards have a natit.kext and it loads first and then the main graphics driver. But which is correct? I believe it is the latter.

 

Are there other terms like natit that refer to other hardware types? This is what I thought Agent was asking when he started this topic and its also what I was wondering myself. What hardware types have what kext names generally speaking?

 

As you can see the question I am posing is NOT one you can answer by opening up a plist file with txt editor. I'm trying to figure out how OSX is organized.

[Dense]

Disk Utility often doesn't catch permission errors in newly installed kexts.. fix permissions with:

 

 sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions && sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions

instead.

 

The reason disk utility doesn't catch all permissions with new kext's is due to the fact that when installing the kexts via the apple installer they need to be added to a special group. This also would not be done if they were added manually via copying.

 

This will probably be over the head of most users but the PackageInfo needs these groups

 

  <groups>
<group>com.apple.repair-permissions.pkg-group</group>
<group>com.apple.FindSystemFiles.pkg-group</group>
 </groups>

 

Technically if you extract using xar a Leopard package, you could add this into the PackageInfo and then recompress it.

 

The 2 groups add it to the repair permissions list as well as to Spotlight.

[consolation]

Maybe this is still not worth asking but I was hoping someone could try a bridge the gap here a lil, windows to osx.

 

For example when I google natit kext I basicly get that its a all in one type driver or that it basically just means its a video driver and that all graphics cards have a natit.kext and it loads first and then the main graphics driver. But which is correct? I believe it is the latter.

 

Are there other terms like natit that refer to other hardware types? This is what I thought Agent was asking when he started this topic and its also what I was wondering myself. What hardware types have what kext names generally speaking?

 

As you can see the question I am posing is NOT one you can answer by opening up a plist file with txt editor. I'm trying to figure out how OSX is organized.

 

 

natit, NVinject, PC_EFI, all those hacks are used to work around the lack of EFI in a hacky, i.e. they pass on information to mac os that would normally be supplied by the EFI present in either the logic board or component rom.

 

Yes the kernel extension (kext/driver) organisation is somewhat hierarchical, in that some kexts are dependent on other kexts/drivers for function and may not load/operate when these are not met. The next level is frameworks which make use of kexts to supply higher order functionalit eg, openGL.framework. Functionality can also provided by bundles and components. The idea is to make OS as modular and flexible as possible.

 

Hope that points you in the right direction....

[delish]

Use Delish's kexthelper (drag and drop the kext you wish to install in kexthelper). Then do a repair permission in disk utility.

 

Just a note about my utility, Kext Helper sets correct permissions when its installs.

The reason I recommend running Disk utility after install is to fix any permission error that might allready be in your extensions folder.

[00diabolic]

natit, NVinject, PC_EFI, all those hacks are used to work around the lack of EFI in a hacky, i.e. they pass on information to mac os that would normally be supplied by the EFI present in either the logic board or component rom.

 

Yes the kernel extension (kext/driver) organisation is somewhat hierarchical, in that some kexts are dependent on other kexts/drivers for function and may not load/operate when these are not met. The next level is frameworks which make use of kexts to supply higher order functionalit eg, openGL.framework. Functionality can also provided by bundles and components. The idea is to make OS as modular and flexible as possible.

 

Hope that points you in the right direction....

 

THANK YOU consolation.. That is exactly what I was looking for. Got a few followup questions though.

 

So a natit may not be just for video? Or does natit basically mean video hack? But these hacks are used by the system if present for say sound or something else that may not work out of the box on a hackintosh. So for example if the OSX system cant load based on the default drivers present it will look for a natit and load that & that natit will basically tell it how to use the standard kext or direct the system towards a new kext. If i'm wrong please clarify. I'm also assuming in say the case of sound the kext can be named anything and as long as its owned by the system & permissions are correct and placed in system/library/extensions it will attempt to use it.

 

I've basically understood what PC_EFI is, it allows OSX to get commands from the standard PC bios and see it as if it was EFI. netkas site was pretty good at breaking that one down.

[Agent]

I have updated the first post to list all files located at /System/Lybrary/Extensions on a Kaly system, I hope more people will drop in their 2c to make this list worth something. I am not talking about the ATI*.kext files, of course

[SticMAC™]

AppleHDA.kext = [AUDIO] Apple High Definition Audio, related to Intel Sound Cards

 

ALSO for Sigmatel Cards

 

SticMAN

[consolation]

THANK YOU consolation.. That is exactly what I was looking for. Got a few followup questions though.

 

So a natit may not be just for video? Or does natit basically mean video hack? But these hacks are used by the system if present for say sound or something else that may not work out of the box on a hackintosh. So for example if the OSX system cant load based on the default drivers present it will look for a natit and load that & that natit will basically tell it how to use the standard kext or direct the system towards a new kext. If i'm wrong please clarify. I'm also assuming in say the case of sound the kext can be named anything and as long as its owned by the system & permissions are correct and placed in system/library/extensions it will attempt to use it.

 

I've basically understood what PC_EFI is, it allows OSX to get commands from the standard PC bios and see it as if it was EFI. netkas site was pretty good at breaking that one down.

 

well... natit is just a name, the same approach can be used and IS used for sound etc... ALCinject (iirc). However, using netkas' PC_efi the same strings can be passed on by the boot loader - look on the irc there is a number of cards already done. Then, you can get rid of natit, this approach can be used for any device; it's just a matter of someone investing the requisite time and effort.

 

Now, some kexts just "put up their hand" to get loaded at startup - natit is one of them. This lets it tell OS that you have, say, a 2900XT attached. Once OS knows this, it will load the required kexts according to which ones have the required device IDs in their plist, those kexts may then call on other kexts; until all the dependencies are fulfilled.

 

Yes, it's what's inside the kexts that matters, not the name. The permissions basically provide a layer of security to keep the system (and user) files protected. This is all simplifying things a bit (afaik), but essentially this is the gist....

[Agent]

Thank you SticMAN, updated!