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[Guide] Boot from EFI partition, zero modification installs on Intel SSE2 or better...

munky

By munky,
in Tutorials (The Genius Bar)

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strongesthylian
strongesthylian
Posted
Posted

I can't seem to get the video or the chipset kexts to load. And the booting text goes too fast for me to be able to read it. Any idea if there's a log that gets saved or anything like that?

 

As far as information I can provide, I have an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz and an Intel GMA950 integrated graphics card. I'm using the ICHx kext found in iDeneb v1.3 and the GMA950 kext found in http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=128862.

 

I think I have to put in an EFI string for the GMA950, but I'm not exactly sure why it's not recognizing the string.

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Terc
Terc
Posted
Posted

Me again,

 

Nice to see this project moving along, JMicron support is a nice step forward. IMO this is clearly the future of the OSx86 scene. Thanks for your work here Munky, etc all.

 

I'm working on a custom setup for the P5Q series of Asus boards, and I was wondering if someone could give me a hand setting up nvkush using the boot132 method. I've tried just adding nvkush.kext but I keep seeing my login window crash (I can see errors when it attempts to load by using -v flag at boot)

 

Do I need to include something other than the nvkush.kext in my EFI\Extentions directory to get it working?

 

Also, if someone could link me to a tutorial for using efi strings in the plist file, it would be greatly appreciated.

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BladeRunner
BladeRunner
Posted
Posted
Me again,

 

Nice to see this project moving along, JMicron support is a nice step forward. IMO this is clearly the future of the OSx86 scene. Thanks for your work here Munky, etc all.

 

I'm working on a custom setup for the P5Q series of Asus boards, and I was wondering if someone could give me a hand setting up nvkush using the boot132 method. I've tried just adding nvkush.kext but I keep seeing my login window crash (I can see errors when it attempts to load by using -v flag at boot)

 

Do I need to include something other than the nvkush.kext in my EFI\Extentions directory to get it working?

 

Also, if someone could link me to a tutorial for using efi strings in the plist file, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

The link here netkas forum efi strings is one of the better places to learn about the whole process. The gfxutil utility is very useful if gfxstudio doesn't work for you.

 

good luck.

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jokinawa
jokinawa
Posted
Posted

sensei730000

 

you can either add:

 

<key>Quiet Boot</key>

<string>Yes</string>

 

or

 

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>5</string>

 

to your com.apple.Boot.plist

 

The timeout one is what I prefer. The string represents the number of seconds before it boots into OS X.

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Ducko
Ducko
Posted
Posted

Thanks a lot Munky!

I am nearly completely successful with your method. There is only some small bugs and i cant solve them.

I have these kext in my EFI partition:

AppleACPIPlatform.kext

IONetworkingFamily.kext

dsmos.kext

AppleHDA.kext

IntelCPUPMDisabler.kext

HDAEnabler.kext

SMBIOSEnabler.kext

 

Is there anyway i can check whether which one is loaded, which one is not ? I am sure HDAEnabler, SMBIOSEnabler, dmos, IntelCPUMDisabler are loaded fine. But the others seem not. I cant restart, no sound.. If i patched them direct to Leopard partition, everything is fine. So how can I make them to load ?

 

On the other hand, I have windows XP installed in the second hard drive. Everytime I choose 81 and choose this Windows partition in the boot loader, the boot loader freezes. The only way to go to WIndows is change my boot order in BIOS. How can i fix it ?

 

Thanks.

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Terc
Terc
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The link here netkas forum efi strings is one of the better places to learn about the whole process. The gfxutil utility is very useful if gfxstudio doesn't work for you.

 

good luck.

 

 

Thanks for the help!

 

So, is there any reason (aside from the massive effort involved) that this system wouldn't work:

1: Use some generic boot 132 iso to boot/install from Retail Leopard disks.

2: Use the same boot 132 iso to launch the newly installed Leopard.

3: Run some tool (included on the generic boot 132 disk) to modify your 200MB partition according to this tutorial, place appropriate necessary kexts (dsmos.kext, AppleIntelCPUManagementDisabler.kext, etc, but NOT the driver type kexts) in the partition and then generate com.apple.boot.plist with matching efi strings for known supported hardware so the appropriate kexts are loaded from the retail Leopard install (which may be receive updates from Apple's server).

 

It seems to me that most of the tools necessary are already available for this, is there anything (other than the appropriate tool which would prevent this method from working?

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Nick14
Nick14
Posted
Posted

Anyone one can help me ?? i can install Vanillia leo disc with EFI partition with out root device i've added All drivers i need for ich6 but after install finished i keep getting waiting for root device and if i dont boot with boot-132 disc i get a black screen with -v and -v -f

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Redth
Redth
Posted
Posted

I'm having some issues getting things to boot from the EFI partition...

 

I've tried a couple times setting things up, but ultimately i end up getting a Grub 17 error. Now i'm not sure if your bootloader is based off of grub, or if this is caused by some remnant grub install on one of my drives... What I do know is that I have 3 drives... 2 sata, 1 ide, and i'm trying to boot from the partition on my ide drive, which happens to be # 82 when i boot from boot-132. I'm suspecting it's trying to load 80 by default and this might be the issue?

 

I'm going to try disconnecting my sata drives tonight and see if that works (just thought of that).

 

Any ideas though? It's a bit of a pain having to use boot-132 cd every time, but that method does work flawlessly. I've got everything up and running (lan, gfx with dual monitors, full capabilities, sound with only 2 channels still) using boot-132 and an efi string for my gfx.

 

Thanks for all your hard work, this method really does rock!

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GingerPrince
GingerPrince
Posted
Posted

Hi Munky,

 

thanks for all this. I'm having a few problems still.

 

I'm trying to use AppleSMBIOSEFI and AppleHDA (patched by taruga) but neither of them seems to be getting loaded correctly. any pointers on where to look for debugging?

 

Also, I put the boot-uuid flag in the Kernel Flags in a Boot.plist in the EFI partition but it never seems to work.

 

It's like half of it is working but not the other half.

 

cheers,

Matt

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BladeRunner
BladeRunner
Posted
Posted
I'm having some issues getting things to boot from the EFI partition...

 

I've tried a couple times setting things up, but ultimately i end up getting a Grub 17 error. Now i'm not sure if your bootloader is based off of grub, or if this is caused by some remnant grub install on one of my drives... What I do know is that I have 3 drives... 2 sata, 1 ide, and i'm trying to boot from the partition on my ide drive, which happens to be # 82 when i boot from boot-132. I'm suspecting it's trying to load 80 by default and this might be the issue?

 

I'm going to try disconnecting my sata drives tonight and see if that works (just thought of that).

 

Any ideas though? It's a bit of a pain having to use boot-132 cd every time, but that method does work flawlessly. I've got everything up and running (lan, gfx with dual monitors, full capabilities, sound with only 2 channels still) using boot-132 and an efi string for my gfx.

 

Thanks for all your hard work, this method really does rock!

 

I had what I think were the same type problems caused by residual Chameleon components. The only way I found to resolve the problem was to repartition the drive. Just doing a format of the target partition would not fix the problem.

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Terc
Terc
Posted
Posted
its in progress :)

 

:whistle:

 

Mark my words: If this system is being developed, it WILL be the future of the OSx86 scene. You heard it here first folks!

 

I've been trolling these forums since 2005. I remember building custom images in VMware and dding them over, before there were any custom kexts or the like. Back when the messy (but functional) sse2>sse3 kernels first were released, when they were redone, when the first people got accelerated video working. when we Darwin was patched to work with retail, but this thread here is the first one that has got me posting multiple times. This ROCKS!

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Redth
Redth
Posted
Posted
I had what I think were the same type problems caused by residual Chameleon components. The only way I found to resolve the problem was to repartition the drive. Just doing a format of the target partition would not fix the problem.

 

Hmm, I've never had chameleon installed on any of the drives... And the drive I installed osx on, I erased completely, repartitioned the drive for osx with the guid partition (it had windows xp previously installed). That's part of why i've been confused, I haven't done any osx stuff on this machine before.

 

Well, like i said, I'm planning to disconnect my other drives as a test this evening, I'll post back to see if that was a fix or not...

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nashw
nashw
Posted
Posted
Still get blinking cursor on boot.. even when selecting internal HD with BIOS as optical drive is preferred by saved default.

 

Hmm.... anything else i could be missing?

Hi guys. any other suggestions? Managed to make the drive bootable, but still blinking cursor...

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MonkeyTreacle
MonkeyTreacle
Posted
Posted

hey excellent work and guide Munky! This is really exciting stuff!

 

I clean installed onto an external HD from my Macbook Pro using my 10.5.2 repair disk and updated to 10.5.4, then plugged it into my PC by usb, booted using the bumby-boot-132 disk, then followed this guide and it's working fine. Can't get much more vanilla than that!

 

 

 

 

I've been having issues getting my 7300 GT to work at all though using EFI strings in the boot.plist file (using EFI studio)

 

after many many attempts i wondered if it might by the plist itself, so i changed it to just having a -v kernel flag in and a timeout flag to see if was actually being recognised at all.

 

it's not :D - - nothing happens on boot (i.e., it just gets to darwin prompt with the choice of HD, as usual).

 

 

I have the new com.apple.boot.plist file saved in the default HD preferences/systemconfigiguration/ directory, also in the root of EFI , and also in library/preferences/systemconfiguration/ file in the EFI partition as well. i've tried just having one copy at a time in each place too.

 

its like it's just not being read at all. But if that was the case it wouldn't boot at all, right??

 

Am I doing something glaringly obviously wrong? I'm using v3. Is it about permissions and ownership on the plist file - something I never really got the hang of? - I've just been editing the boot.plist file with Textedit.

 

 

 

On a slight aside, if you use EFI strings in boot.plist file, does this mean you no longer need a kext installed? I'm always getting "no kext loaded" on the graphics properties. I COULD use the kexts on disk method, but once this is done I want to carbon copy clone it and keep it vanilla and in a safe place.

 

 

Cheers

 

 

p.s. To the guys having trouble with blinking cursors after doing this; make sure you haven't got an extra USB thumb stick plugged in the back of your PC where you can't see it if you are trying to boot from an external USB HD! I did and it took me 4 goes before I realised it was trying to boot from the wrong one! :)

 

 

 

 

ASUS P5K Q6600 2.4Ghz 2GB Corsair 800Mhz

7300 GT (which I have managed to get working in the past using NVinject or Natit with NVCAP, I can' remember which one now)

 

Macbook Pro 10.5.4 2.Ghz 2GB

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BladeRunner
BladeRunner
Posted
Posted
hey excellent work and guide Munky! This is really exciting stuff!

 

I clean installed onto an external HD from my Macbook Pro using my 10.5.2 repair disk and updated to 10.5.4, then plugged it into my PC by usb, booted using the bumby-boot-132 disk, then followed this guide and it's working fine. Can't get much more vanilla than that!

I've been having issues getting my 7300 GT to work at all though using EFI strings in the boot.plist file (using EFI studio)

 

after many many attempts i wondered if it might by the plist itself, so i changed it to just having a -v kernel flag in and a timeout flag to see if was actually being recognised at all.

 

it's not :) - - nothing happens on boot (i.e., it just gets to darwin prompt with the choice of HD, as usual).

I have the new com.apple.boot.plist file saved in the default HD preferences/systemconfigiguration/ directory, also in the root of EFI , and also in library/preferences/systemconfiguration/ file in the EFI partition as well. i've tried just having one copy at a time in each place too.

 

its like it's just not being read at all. But if that was the case it wouldn't boot at all, right??

 

Am I doing something glaringly obviously wrong? I'm using v3. Is it about permissions and ownership on the plist file - something I never really got the hang of? - I've just been editing the boot.plist file with Textedit.

On a slight aside, if you use EFI strings in boot.plist file, does this mean you no longer need a kext installed? I'm always getting "no kext loaded" on the graphics properties. I COULD use the kexts on disk method, but once this is done I want to carbon copy clone it and keep it vanilla and in a safe place.

Cheers

p.s. To the guys having trouble with blinking cursors after doing this; make sure you haven't got an extra USB thumb stick plugged in the back of your PC where you can't see it if you are trying to boot from an external USB HD! I did and it took me 4 goes before I realised it was trying to boot from the wrong one! :)

ASUS P5K Q6600 2.4Ghz 2GB Corsair 800Mhz

7300 GT (which I have managed to get working in the past using NVinject or Natit with NVCAP, I can' remember which one now)

 

Macbook Pro 10.5.4 2.Ghz 2GB

 

Well, a few points to check. First, the Boot.plist should work from either the /L/P/S spot on your OSX partition, or in the /Volumes/EFI/System/Booter location on your efi-boot partition. Personally, I would pick one and remove the others.

 

Next thing is, the Boot.plist would not be in play until after you select the boot partition. Also, I would either edit the Boot.plist with "vi" or the Xcode plist editor. The reason is, the hex string *must* be a single string - i.e., without any cr/lf line breaks. Some of the GUI text editors break lines and you can't tolerate that.

 

The use of EFI strings does not eliminate the need for kext. It just lets many more users default to the vanilla versions. You still need kext related to your specific video card.

 

Hope that helps - and that I got the nature of your problem correctly :D

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BladeRunner
BladeRunner
Posted
Posted

@Munky

 

I just installed your boot loader v4. I can't see any differences. That's a good thing - right?

 

I noticed I had an error mounting the efi partition. Then, I remembered one of your earlier posts about using a file system check to clear the problem. so, I added it to my efi-mount script

 

#!/bin/bash

diskID=disk0s1   # change to match your requirements

# Make sure the user is Root
if [ $USER != "root" ]; then
  echo "Error ==> This script must be run as root"
  exit
fi

# Make sure the EFI partition file system is clean 
fsck_hfs /dev/$diskID

# Create the mount point
mkdir /Volumes/EFI

# Mount the EFI partition 
mount_hfs /dev/$diskID /Volumes/EFI

# List the content of the EFI partition
ls -l /Volumes/EFI/

exit

 

Hope it helps someone else.

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fulg
fulg
Posted
Posted

Munky, thanks a whole bunch for sharing this boot method, it's awesome. I did my first boot-132 install of 10.5.0 this weekend, and updated it to 10.5.2, then 10.5.5 without ever patching anything. Had to go buy a SATA writer to avoid all the JMicron issues (finally!), but at $25 for a DL DVD burner, it wasn't a big investment, I should have done it a whole lot sooner :)

 

I absolutely looove the fact that the OSX partition is 100% virgin, makes it a whole lot easier to manage everything. This is definitely the future of OSX86.

 

The only issue left is the -f flag is required to successfully boot, but this isn't a big deal, I don't reboot often. I know I have to copy over the dependencies of the .kexts I have in my EFI partition, I'll get around to doing it eventually. Maybe cyclonefr's fake plist method might be of use here to avoid updating the EFI boot partition at every OSX upgrade?

 

Cheers mate, and thanks again! :D

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Terc
Terc
Posted
Posted
Well, a few points to check. First, the Boot.plist should work from either the /L/P/S spot on your OSX partition, or in the /Volumes/EFI/System/Booter location on your efi-boot partition.

 

Whoa, hang on here.

 

"v3 of the bootloader supports a com.apple.Boot.plist file located on the EFI partition. You can place this in either of these two locations:

 

/Volumes/EFI/com.apple.Boot.plist

-or-

/Volumes/EFI/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist"

 

Or at least so says Munky. Is it only supported at /Volumes/EFI/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist? If so, Munky, could you update your tutorial? I haven't been having any luck using EFI strings, but since I've never used them until now, I assumed I was just doing it wrong. (I've been placing mine in /Volumes/EFI/com.apple.Boot.plist) Just to stress this though, I'm new to using the plist, so it might just be me.

 

Scratch that, just a typo.

 

The only issue left is the -f flag is required to successfully boot, but this isn't a big deal, I don't reboot often.

 

Perhaps just modify your plist file to add the -f argument on boot? Seems like it might be worth it. Just add these two lines to your com.apple.boot.plist:

 

	Kernel Flags
 -f

 

If you want to further customize it (set timeout for auto booting, etc, just go to plister found here: http://diabolik1605.com/plister/

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BladeRunner
BladeRunner
Posted
Posted
Whoa, hang on here.

 

"v3 of the bootloader supports a com.apple.Boot.plist file located on the EFI partition. You can place this in either of these two locations:

 

/Volumes/EFI/com.apple.Boot.plist

-or-

/Volumes/EFI/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist"

 

Or at least so says Munky. Is it only supported at /Volumes/EFI/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist? If so, Munky, could you update your tutorial? I haven't been having any luck using EFI strings, but since I've never used them until now, I assumed I was just doing it wrong. (I've been placing mine in /Volumes/EFI/com.apple.Boot.plist) Just to stress this though, I'm new to using the plist, so it might just be me.

Perhaps just modify your plist file to add the -f argument on boot? Seems like it might be worth it. Just add these two lines to your com.apple.boot.plist:

 

	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>-f</string>

 

If you want to further customize it (set timeout for auto booting, etc, just go to plister found here: http://diabolik1605.com/plister/

 

My bad - I apologize. I typed the comment from memory without checking it. On my internal drive I have 2 partitions with OS X installed. So, I can't put the Boot.plist in the efi partition. I also have an external USB drive with only one copy of OS X so there I have the Boot.plist in /Volumes/EFI/com.apple.Boot.plist.

 

Sorry for the typo. Always trust Munky first!

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B612
B612
Posted
Posted

good news here :) (and bad too ;))

 

I have installed efi-boot v4 and it works so well! My system is even faster to startup. I didn't have problems with ATA drives, but I guess this new boot makes it easier anyway. :)

 

No news for the dual boot with Windows XP. :(

It used to work with Chamaleon efi boot, which recognized the second partition of my first HD as "foreign OS". In this case, as in the previous munky's releases, I am getting "Macintosh HD, hd(0,2)" as the only choice.

 

The only way I have to start Windows XP is making that partition active from MAC OS X (in which case, I don't have dual boot anyway, I only see Windows).

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