osx86 Island

This is not “every” method to get snow leopard installed.  I will probably modify this as time goes on so that people can add to it as they need, so we can get problems resolved for more people.  I also want to say that if any of this is wrong, I am sorry, I myself am a newbie at this type of installation (I’d only been using releases prior to this, and even rely on that for parts of the tutorial) – so bare with me and we’ll correct the information as much as we can as time goes on.

1) Set up your work environment – 10A261 is not a “stable distribution” that has pre-modded kexts – so you will need to set up an environment you can work through problems with.

First I would recommend you obtain and install a version of OSX, preferably a 10.5.6 distribution, that you can work with to start from.

I used XxX_x86_10.5.6_Install_Disc_Universal_Final – but you may want to use a different one  - I am a big fan of Ideneb, for example.

You should install this version of osx as your “fail-safe” for working on snow-leopard, a place to go and work with osx-related files that (hopefully) will be more stable for you.  This means when you install, you should use your distribution’s disk-utility (found at the top in a drop-down menu) to create multiple partitions if you dont have multiple partitions set up already.  4 partitions seems to be the sweet number for this type of project (3 for the project 1 for windows) – but for the method described in my tutorial, you’ll need 3 partitions set up like this.

Partition 1 – 20 gig~ (where leopard will be installed) – make this partition big enough for OSX (about 10 gigs) and if you’ll be loading the OSX install DVD DMG image onto this drive to work with, I’d recommend about 20 gigs of space

Partition 2 – 10 gig~ (this will become your “dvd” drive – where we “Restore” the OSX install DVD to – i’d recommend making it about 10 gigs)

Partition 3 – 20+ gig~ (this is your final destination drive, where you are looking to install Snow Leopard – Make this as big as you can if you plan on using it heavily after snow is installed – otherwise, 20 gigs will allow you to do just about everything you’d want to do for “testing” if that is your goal, as it was mine)

Partition 4 - Optional, ??? Gig~ (as big or small as you want, this is where other operating systems would go if you wanted, on my system, I use this as my windows partition)

During installation choose the PCEFI V9 bootloader option.  If you are using an older distro that does not have pcefi 9 as an option its ok, we can fix that later – though having it right off the bat will make things go smoother for you.  If you do not have PCEFI V9 as an option, just boot with a chameleon of some sort, and once you are all loaded up, use

  PCefi_v9_Installer_Final_2.dmg (9.9 MiB, 7,365 hits)

and install it within OSX after you get your system up and running.

2) Restore the Snow Leopard DVD image (dmg) file to a drive to work from.

Insert  your Snow Leopard 10A261 DVD or, do as I did, and use the disks image in DMG format, and just double-click it to mount the image.  Open up ‘Disk Utility’ and click the partition you would like to function as your Snow Leopard installation DVD after this “restore” is done. (note: It should be a different partition than the one you are currently running leopard) and choose “Restore” from the tabs that pop up to the right.  In the “Source” box that pops up, drag your 10A261 image that you just mounted.  In the Destination box, drag the partition you wish to install Snow Leopard to.  Check the “Erase destination” check box at the bottom.

The benefit to the method described above is that you basically end up with what the computer will see just like a bootable DVD, that you can modify very fast without needing to have duel-layer DVDs and without having to reburn the image every time you make a change.  You COULD easily boot from this “cloned” drive via PCEFI V9 with this method if you had to, in this tutorial, currently, you do not need to, but I show this method because it makes sense for a lot of projects you might work on in the future – so its good for you to know and get used to.  Again, this is not the only method, this is just the method I am using for this tutorial.

3) Show Hidden Files

Some of the files on this DVD, as well as other places you might need to access, are “hidden”.  To show hidden files open up Terminal and type

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Alternatively, if you perfer working from a graphic user interface, there is a tool below that you can download and simply double-click to show or hide all files

  ShowAllFiles.zip - Toggle 'Hidden' OSX File Visibility (34.8 KiB, 3,353 hits)

4) Modify the “Restored” (cloned) DVD image that you now have on a partition

Open disk you just restored the DVD to and you should now see the previosly “hidden” folders, including one named “System”.

Navigate to System/Installation/Packages/

You will need to delete “osinstall.mpkg” and replace it with another one, otherwise it will not allow you to install to a drive.  After you delete it the one on your “restored” DVD partition, download

  261OSInstall.mpkg - OSInstall.mpkg for 10A261 (839.7 KiB, 6,524 hits)

and put it inside System/Installation/Packages/ to replace the old one.

5) Install Snow Leopard to an empty partition

If you have been following directions closely, you will already have an empty drive in mind to install Snow Leopard to – if not, you will need to create one before you continue, you can accomplish this under Disk Utility.

To begin installation, go to your “Restored” dvd image drive and Navigate to System/Installation/Packages/.  Double-Click osinstall.mpkg (which we just replaced in step 4) to start your osx installation, and you will be on your way to installing Snow Leopard!  Be sure to point this installation to the drive you planned on installing Snow Leopard to, this should NOT be the drive that you are running your current leopard install from.  After you choose a drive click “continue” and at the next screen choose “Customize” at the bottom left and set custom install options.  I recommend you uncheck everything except the essential system software.  I think on mine, i was running into issues installing X11, so after unchecking the additional languages and X11, I was able to finish the installation successfully.

Congratulations!  You just mostly installed Snow Leopard.  We’re not quite done yet, so be sure to not rush and restart just yet!

6) Set up the extensions to work with your odd-ball hardware

Snow leopard still has some kexts that need to be added or changed in order to continue.

First, You’ll need a decrypt file.  There are different ones, but some dont play as well with Snow as others, one known to work can be found below:

  This is the dsmos kext file for 10A261 (17.9 KiB, 3,918 hits)

Grab the decrypt kext file and put it in your newly-installed Snow Leopard partition’s extensions folder.  If this is your first time installing kexts, this might get a little tricky, as you have to actually put it in the folder, and then correct the permissions via command line…  But there are tools out there that can turn this process into a simple drag-and-drop.

Normally I would use kext-helper to install kexts quickly and easily on a “mostly-working” install of osx, but for the sake of this tutorial, we will be using osx86tools, so we can run it from our Leopard partition, and still be able to select the Snow Leopard partition to install the kexts to.  I try to keep things as “gui” as possible, so I am trying to avoid setting permissions after every kext-change via terminal.  Once you do it a couple times, its not difficult, but it definately gets annoying and kext-helper and osx86tool utilities definately help prevent any “typo” related issues when cycling through lots of kexts trying to get a piece of hardware working.

Open osx86tools and choose to install kexts from the button on the right.  Choose the kexts you want to install (in this example, just the decrypt kext you downloaded) and choose the drive you installed snow-leopard to as the target drive, and enter your username and password at any prompts.

Tada!  You installed your first kext in Snow Leopard.  You will need to repeat this process for any kext files specific to your systems needs.  For many though, you will only really need, at the basic level:

PS2 Keyboard and Mouse kext files – this will be very useful for laptop users to get thier touchpad and keyboard going, for example.

  Snow Leopard 10A261 ps2 Kext (321.1 KiB, 4,383 hits)

nullCPUpower or some other form of cpu power management disabler.  You can also just remove the appleintelCPUpowermanagement.kext, but I perfer to leave as many files intact as possible, so whenever someone invents a new method to get by things, I’m not missing something that new method might need to make it happen.

  Disabler (7.9 KiB, 3,246 hits)

7) Configure your PCEFI boot wait times

If PCEFI9 is installed already, great!  We can move right to configuring PCEFI9’s wait-timer and dropping in our boot files.  If however, you do not have PCEFI9 installed yet, you will need to install it.  If you have been following the tutorial, you should have installed it earlier, but if you didn’t you can grab the installer from Step 1 of this tutorial.

First we should configure PCEFI9 to have a longer startup time if you havn’t already done so.  This isn’t a “neccesary step” but its a very good one to do.  If chameleon doesnt have a timer you’ll need to mash F8 after your bios finishes loading on your computer but before your hard-drive starts to read fully in order choose what boot partition to start from.  With a timer, things are much less of a pain, especially since for some people, F8 opens bios options, which when you accidentally do – just gets frustrating.  There are several ways to do this, but the way I will tell you is a popular way that I will quote from the InsanelyMac forums:

Browse with Finder to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist and just drag the file to your desktop.  After that edit your file (the desktop one) and save it.  To finish the job you drag the desktop version in the same folder where the old one was … /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ and it should show you a dialog window.  Press the Authenticate button and type your password when it’s asked for.  Good job … all done!

Now that you know “how” to change the file, here is “what” you should be adding.

Look for a pre-existing line that says <key>Timeout</key> – if it exists, just edit the string underneith it with the ammount of delay time you want on boot, to choose what disk to boot from.  If it does not exist, you will have to add the whole line.  The end result of this portion should be added in to look something like this:

<key>Timeout</key>
<string>8</string>

The above example will put an 8 second delay on your startup, so that if you dont touch the keyboard for 8 seconds after the bootloader shows up, it will automatically boot.  If you press down or up and choose a different drive though, the timer will freeze and let you type extra boot commands etc (I.E. you could type -x and force it to start in safe mode).

8) Make Snow Leopard Bootable.

PCEFI9 should be installed by now.

Part of chameleon/pcefi is a file simply called “boot” that sits in the root of whatever drive OSX is installed on.  We need to replace the default PCEFI9 bootlloader file with the one found below:

  Snow Leopard bootloader to be used with PCEFI9 for 10A261 (36.5 KiB, 4,654 hits)

The boot file is hidden by default, so if you havn’t done so already, make hidden files visable by following either the terminal or application directions found in Step 3 of this tutorial.

After files are made visible, navigate to the root of the drive your current (working) osx install is sitting on.  Delete the file named ‘boot’.  After it is deleted, put the new ‘boot’ file from above in the old one’s place.  Do this by simply copying it, and pasting it into the drive.  Do this for every-drive you want it to be on, including the drive you  just installed Snow Leopard on.

Next you will want to use a tool called DSDT patcher.  In all honesty, the DSDT patcher does things that I dont fully understand, but aparently for some people, they cant boot Snow Leopard without it, and with it, they can.  Others have said DSDT is not required, but it doesnt hurt either way, so for the sake of this tutorial I am going to include it.

DSDT used to be somewhat confusing.  I was guided through it on forums and in IRC a couple times, but I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing or, in the end, if I did it right.  Now there is a GUI you can use to make this process very easy thanks to the awesome coders at pcwizcomputer.com.  Basically you just open it, make sure darwin/macosx is chosen, check “Apply DSDT patch to:” and then choose the drive you want to apply it to.  Do this to every drive you want it done to (you should basically do it to every drive you dropped a ‘boot’ file in).  If you downloaded the PCEFI9 package from this tutorial, you can find the DSDT patcher right inside that.

Otherwise, you can download the DSDT patcher standalone below:

  PCwiz DSDT Patcher with GUI (1.5 MiB, 4,440 hits)

9) Start Snow Leopard and hope it works.

If you have done everything above correctly, and are lucky with hardware on your system being compliant with stuff that works in Snow Leopard, you should be able to boot at this point.

Restart your computer, and, provided you added the timer to PCEFI/Chameleon, you will be able to interupt the boot process with little effort, to stop it from just launching your normal osx 10.5.6 again by pressing the up or down arrows on your keyboard.

Arrow down to whatever drive you installed Snow Leopard, and use the strings to boot.

-v -f

-v -f -x

-v -f -legacy -x

and if that doesnt work, you are pretty much boned for now, and will have to go try changing some kext files out, screwing with frameworks in Snow Leopard, and messing with bios options to see if you cant get some hardware enabled or disabled that is potentially causing a conflict that is preventing OSX from booting.

As files that solve common problems arise, I’ll toss them into the download section, so that you might be able to get things going – less common problems though, you’ll have to fish around for solutions to yourself, or hope someone already resolved it and published the solution somewhere ^^.

Thats all I have for right now, I myself have some issues with this install, where my desktop continually crashes in a never ending cycle.  We’ve found a work-around, but it breaks other things in turn – so its a problem we’re working on.  This should not be expected to go smoothly, as this is both a developer’s release, but also not intended to be run on “general” pc hardware as it is.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful in your Snowy adventures, and that it helps you at least get started in the realm of osx86.  If I missed anything I’m sorry, I’ll try to update and fix problem areas of this tutorial as time goes on, but for now

osx86 Island Welcomes you to Snow Leopard!

Thanks for reading!

A special thank you to the irc-osx86-hu crew for walking me through this process, the people at Insanelymac for the awesome resources on this sort of thing, and all of the people who take the time to provide GUI based tools to make delving into projects like this easier!

Fujilives & Ridgeline

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Tutorial . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.