nForce OS X Lion (10.7) APP STORE DOWNLOAD INSTALL GUIDE on a Series 6 or 7 nForce chipset / Intel CPU MOBO

[Lonewolf1991]

Hey,

I have created the USB installation drive using the instructions on a MAC Virtual Machine I have, but I am not able to boot into the drive and it doesn't show up as a bootable device, any ideas?

[Dilemma Prison]

Using 2 x 1GB RAM modules is the hardware version of using maxmem=2048 but if you have an EVGA 680i MOBO then note this very interesting post I have come across on the Tech Support Guy forum by 5ndr5 was:

 

 

Also see here......and 680i MOBOs more generally here.....

 

Ah, the much complained about i680 memory issue. A lot of users ran into issues w/ just running 4 chips, over clocked or otherwise. Some resolved problems w/ bumping voltages, but most of what I read involved doing so in tandem w/ overclocking. A lot of people were blowing their ram too. I seem to recall there being lots of nebulous problems with memory combos, oft discussed on the overclockers boards. I'm running only a pair of 2gb 800mhz chips in this system at present, no overclock on the ram. (1.9v i think ) At previous times I had 1/1-2gb 1,1,2,2-6gb and 2,2,2,2-8gb of ram in the thing; 8 gigs back when I was using 10.6 server and the large FIS port replicated hard drive arrays.

 

Ah well; I set the cpu/maxmem values down and in the process of beating the {censored} out of the storage at the moment.

 

*EDIT*

 

Well; it's definitely an issue with either the cpu/mem values.

 

cpus=1 maxmem=2048 results in kernel_task consuming a steady 3.5% of one core. This is happening when duping files on drives attached to my add-on card and when duping files on the nforce sata. Looks like it's possibly some more nebulous nforce related issue: apple's stuff not liking chipset or config or ahci implimentation or something along those lines.

 

I'm going to start bumping settings upward until the problem comes back.

 

*EDIT2*

 

Using 2 cores is not triggering the massive CPU usage. It must be related to the memory limit.

 

maxmem=3456 w/out the cpu flag still shows the expected 3-4% overhead for disk to disk file transfers. I guess I will leave it there and thrash/reliability test my disks now. Digging through the vague {censored} on other forums I find instances of other folks dropping maxmem for stability reasons (but nobody actually mentioning anything about their CPU utilization). Some of these are on AMD nforce systems, some Intel nforce systems and others just on core2 intel chipsets. For my own system, when I have my CPU maxed by my sata + ethernet overhead (redlining in activity monitor) for an extended period of time I seem to eventually crash (w 4gb+ ram).

 

Bonus side effect : transfer rate for AFP is pretty much holding around 95mb/sec now instead of spiking around, no longer CPU limited due to the previous issue.

[verdant]

Hey,

I have created the USB installation drive using the instructions on a MAC Virtual Machine I have, but I am not able to boot into the drive and it doesn't show up as a bootable device, any ideas?

 

Run a Chameleon 2.0 DR5 installer package to install Chameleon on the GPT partitioned/Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) USB flash drive installer.....

 

BTW what are your PC system details....?

[verdant]

@ Nick Savage

 

Your observations on CPU use versus RAM use when doing SATA data transfers on your EVGA 680i MOBO are interesting.........you seem to have narrowed it down to a RAM issue......I look forward to seeing what your further testing throws up........

 

BTW have you entered your data for this topic's poll yet?

 

I ask because there are only 17 votes entered in the poll; whereas as of now, there have already been 153 downloads of my OS X Lion BootCD and 314 downloads of my OS X Lion Support Files v1.1 (and 145 of v1.0)....

[Dilemma Prison]

@ Nick Savage

 

Your observations on CPU use versus RAM use when doing SATA data transfers on your EVGA 680i MOBO are interesting.........you seem to have narrowed it down to a RAM issue......I look forward to seeing what your further testing throws up........

 

BTW have you entered your data for this topic's poll yet?

 

I ask because there are only 17 votes entered in the poll; whereas as of now, there have already been 153 downloads of my OS X Lion BootCD and 314 downloads of my OS X Lion Support Files v1.1 (and 145 of v1.0)....

 

Just voted

 

Well; I ran about 2tb of data through various drives on the machine; at this point I'll consider it stable; or at least not experiencing that particular issue. I'm going to keep pushing maxmem up to see what the exact memory limit is; see if I can figure out what exactly isn't working properly.

[sirbow2]

now that is what you call a noob guide!!

 

great job verdant! not only for nForce but a pretty dang good general Lion install guide.

[Lonewolf1991]

Okay, I managed to boot the usb and install it on my drive. I tried booting it using the usb drive with the bootloader but I get a "IOATAController device blocking bus."

My specs are:

Q9450 2.66 ghz

Evga nforce 780i

Evga gtx 280

4 sata harddrives, 3 in raid0 with windows and one separate one for Lion

2 sata dvd drives

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[verdant]

now that is what you call a noob guide!!

 

great job verdant! not only for nForce but a pretty dang good general Lion install guide.

 

Thanks......my intention was to make a generally helpful (and educational) guide for OSx86 and OS X Lion, while still basing it around installing and running OS X Lion for Intel CPU based on nForce chipset + Intel CPU MOBOs......

 

Okay, I managed to boot the usb and install it on my drive. I tried booting it using the usb drive with the bootloader but I get a "IOATAController device blocking bus."

My specs are:

Q9450 2.66 ghz

Evga nforce 780i

Evga gtx 280

4 sata harddrives, 3 in raid0 with windows and one separate one for Lion

2 sata dvd drives

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I am assuming that you have installed Chameleon 2.0 RC5 on your OS X HDD as the guide explains. So, then do the following:

 

[1] Match all your BIOS settings with those I recommend for OS X 780i using my BIOS settings template......see post #1 for download link......

 

and use these RAID settings:

 

RAID Enable [Enabled]

SATA 0 Primary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 0 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 1 Primary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 1 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 2 Primary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 2 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

 

to see if you can boot OS X off the HDD......if you can, then try with these settings:

 

RAID Enable [Enabled]

SATA 0 Primary RAID [Enabled] for Windows HDD1

SATA 0 Secondary RAID [Enabled] for Windows HDD2

SATA 1 Primary RAID [Enabled] for Windows HDD3

SATA 1 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 2 Primary RAID [Disabled] for OS X HDD

SATA 2 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

 

because OS X does not work with BIOS "fake hardware" software RAID, only with Apple Software RAID and/or a OS X compatible PCI/PCIe RAID card setup.....

 

[2] Get a PATA (IDE) DVDRW and set it as Master for use with OS X, so that you can read/write optical media using OS X

[Lonewolf1991]

Thanks......my intention was to make a generally helpful (and educational) guide for OSx86 and OS X Lion, while still basing it around installing and running OS X Lion for Intel CPU based on nForce chipset + Intel CPU MOBOs......

 

 

 

I am assuming that you have installed Chameleon 2.0 RC5 on your OS X HDD as the guide explains. So, then do the following:

 

[1] Match all your BIOS settings with those I recommend for OS X 780i using my BIOS settings template......see post #1 for download link......

 

and use these RAID settings:

 

RAID Enable [Enabled]

SATA 0 Primary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 0 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 1 Primary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 1 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 2 Primary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 2 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

 

to see if you can boot OS X off the HDD......if you can, then try with these settings:

 

RAID Enable [Enabled]

SATA 0 Primary RAID [Enabled] for Windows HDD1

SATA 0 Secondary RAID [Enabled] for Windows HDD2

SATA 1 Primary RAID [Enabled] for Windows HDD3

SATA 1 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

SATA 2 Primary RAID [Disabled] for OS X HDD

SATA 2 Secondary RAID [Disabled]

 

because OS X does not work with BIOS "fake hardware" software RAID, only with Apple Software RAID and/or a OS X compatible PCI/PCIe RAID card setup.....

 

[2] Get a PATA (IDE) DVDRW and set it as Master for use with OS X, so that you can read/write optical media using OS X

 

 

Changing the bios settings and disabling RAID didn't work

I guess having 6 Sata devices makes it REALLY incompatible...

[verdant]

Changing the bios settings and disabling RAID didn't work

I guess having 6 Sata devices makes it REALLY incompatible...

 

Disconnect all SATA devices from the MOBO except the OS X HDD and see what happens....

 

Also, what kexts do you currently have in Extra/Extensions/ on the OS X HDD.....?

[Lonewolf1991]

Disconnect all SATA devices from the MOBO except the OS X HDD and see what happens....

 

Also, what kexts do you currently have in Extra/Extensions/ on the OS X HDD.....?

I have the following ones:

AD1998b.FIX.kext

AppleNForceATA.imk64bit.kext

EvOreboot.kext

FakeSMC.kext

 

As said by the guide

I mean if I would have to disconnect all my HDDs just to boot into Mac OS, it would become a real inconvenience

I have so say though, that your guide is amazing, the only one with which I was able to actually install so great work!

[verdant]

I have the following ones:

AD1998b.FIX.kext

AppleNForceATA.imk64bit.kext

EvOreboot.kext

FakeSMC.kext

 

As said by the guide

I mean if I would have to disconnect all my HDDs just to boot into Mac OS, it would become a real inconvenience

I have so say though, that your guide is amazing, the only one with which I was able to actually install so great work!

 

Glad my guide helped you to get this far........

 

Do not panic.....at present, we are just doing some 'dectective' work to isolate the cause of the problem.......

 

If you disconnect all the SATA devices except for the OS X SATA HDD, then you can focus on where the problem lies......

 

For example, you can try the OS X SATA HDD on SATA 0 Primary with the recommended 780i BIOS settings etc.....and then consider the software side.....

 

I have to go offline now for about 3 hours but will check back later......

[Lonewolf1991]

Glad my guide helped you to get this far........

 

Do not panic.....at present, we are just doing some 'dectective' work to isolate the cause of the problem.......

 

If you disconnect all the SATA devices except for the OS X SATA HDD, then you can focus on where the problem lies......

 

For example, you can try the OS X SATA HDD on SATA 0 Primary with the recommended 780i BIOS settings etc.....and then consider the software side.....

 

I have to go offline now for about 3 hours but will check back later......

 

I'm sorry if I'm becoming an annoyance ><

I tried to make sure that everything was in place, the bootloader, the kexts and everything.

Then, I unplugged EVERYTHING except the HDD with Mac OS on it. I launched it with -v maxmem=2048

It got to the "still waiting for root device" so I'm guessing some progress is being made!

[verdant]

I'm sorry if I'm becoming an annoyance ><

I tried to make sure that everything was in place, the bootloader, the kexts and everything.

Then, I unplugged EVERYTHING except the HDD with Mac OS on it. I launched it with -v maxmem=2048

It got to the "still waiting for root device" so I'm guessing some progress is being made!

 

Are you booting in 64bit mode using arch=x86_64?

 

In Terminal type:

 

sudo chown -R root:wheel /Extra/Extensions/
sudo chmod -R 755 /Extra/Extensions/
exit

 

then reboot.......and let me know what happens......

[Lonewolf1991]

Are you booting in 64bit mode using arch=x86_64?

 

In Terminal type:

 

sudo chown -R root:wheel /Extra/Extensions/
sudo chmod -R 755 /Extra/Extensions/
exit

 

then reboot.......and let me know what happens......

 

Did the above as well as disconnected all drives except Mac HDD, this is what I got.

It looped until I turned the computer off

 

EDIT:

Please ignore the above, apparently the kext utility renamed my Extra/Extensions folder. What I get now is "disk0s2: data underrun". This was using -v arch=x86_64 with and without maxmem=2048

[verdant]

Did the above as well as disconnected all drives except Mac HDD, this is what I got.

It looped until I turned the computer off

 

EDIT:

Please ignore the above, apparently the kext utility renamed my Extra/Extensions folder. What I get now is "disk0s2: data underrun". This was using -v arch=x86_64 with and without maxmem=2048

 

 

Assuming that your SATA DVDRWs are disconnected too, the error that you are still getting is indicating that the problem is isolated to the OS X target HDD..........

 

When you repeatedly get errors like:

 

AppleNForceATA: found 0 units.

AppleNForceATA: found 0 units.

disk0s2: data underrun.

disk0s2: data underrun.

AppleATADiskQueueManager::setPowerState(0x3944000, 2 -> 1) timed out after 1000194 ms

 

it is strongly suggests that your OS X HDD is having read/write problems.......e.g. OS X is trying to read a data file as part of the boot process but cannot do so because the data file is mapped onto a bad block/sector on the HDD etc.....

 

What is the HDD brand/model?.......is your HDD partitioned as GPT or MBR?

 

Boot your OS X into single user mode using the -s boot flag at the Chameleon bootloader prompt and wait for the :/ root# prompt to appear, and then type

 

/sbin/fsck -fy

and report what the output is....

 

If the output does not indicate any problems, then I suggest that you use Disk Utility to reformat your HDD OS X volume as MS-DOS (FAT) and then reformat it again as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)........then reset the HDD volume ownership

 

sudo chown 0:0 /Volumes/"your target OS X HDD volume name"

 

then reinstall OS X, remembering to reset kext ownership and permissions on /Extra/Extensions/ and on /System/Library/Extensions/:

sudo chown -R root:wheel /Extra/Extensions/
sudo chmod -R 755 /Extra/Extensions/

 

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

 

I also recommend that you get a PATA (IDE) DVDRW......jumper-set it as Master....connect it to your MOBO using an 80-wire IDE cable.......

 

You had similar problems with Still waiting for root device" and "IOATAController device blocking bus." when installing OS X Snow Leopard in August 2010........can you remember what the cause/solution was for Snow Leopard....?

[Dilemma Prison]

Okay, I managed to boot the usb and install it on my drive. I tried booting it using the usb drive with the bootloader but I get a "IOATAController device blocking bus."

My specs are:

Q9450 2.66 ghz

Evga nforce 780i

Evga gtx 280

4 sata harddrives, 3 in raid0 with windows and one separate one for Lion

2 sata dvd drives

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Could this be that old issue of some stock apple kext loading and interfering with devices that have the nvidia vendor ID? ; wasn't there scenarios where you zapped some of the default kexts to prevent that on some mobos?

[verdant]

Could this be that old issue of some stock apple kext loading and interfering with devices that have the nvidia vendor ID? ; wasn't there scenarios where you zapped some of the default kexts to prevent that on some mobos?

 

I wanted to first identify any HDD issue if present, and then, if there are no HDD issues, focus on the OS side.....starting with resetting ownership and permissions......

[Lonewolf1991]

I AM NOW POSTING THIS FROM MY LION INSTALLATION!~ Thank you soooooo much for all the help. I fixed all the kexts and permissions like you told me to but I kept getting the IOATAController blocking the bus. I was reformatting my macbook pro at the time and I forgot about it. About 5 minutes later, the Welcome Screen came up and I started setting it up! Once again, THANK YOU!

[verdant]

I AM NOW POSTING THIS FROM MY LION INSTALLATION!~ Thank you soooooo much for all the help. I fixed all the kexts and permissions like you told me to but I kept getting the IOATAController blocking the bus. I was reformatting my macbook pro at the time and I forgot about it. About 5 minutes later, the Welcome Screen came up and I started setting it up! Once again, THANK YOU!

 

Glad to help........

 

Now that OS X Lion is installed and running, do you still get a "IOATAController device blocking bus." message on bootup? If so, how long does it take to clear and for you to get to the OS X Lion Desktop.......?

[Lonewolf1991]

Nope, no IOATAController messages. The OS boots in about 2 mins, and I have all then HDDs plugged in. Although, I tried copying an ISO from my external drive, which was 2.5GB and it said it would take 4 hours to copy, not sure if my HDD is that slow or something else...Although it's not a problem!

[verdant]

Nope, no IOATAController messages. The OS boots in about 2 mins, and I have all then HDDs plugged in. Although, I tried copying an ISO from my external drive, which was 2.5GB and it said it would take 4 hours to copy, not sure if my HDD is that slow or something else...Although it's not a problem!

 

That is good news.... You can now use Disk Utility to repair the OS X system permissions.

 

If your external HDD is connected via USB 2.0 then there will be some CPU overhead......check using the OS X Activity Monitor.......and so, real life data transfer speeds will not be as high as the USB 2.0 claimed max. throughput....even so 4 hours is a long time for 2.5GB......

[Kn0s]

did anyone try the 10.7.2 update? anything broken?

[verdant]

did anyone try the 10.7.2 update? anything broken?

 

There appear to be some issues, e.g. broken video/graphics etc. being reported but I have not had time to try the 10.7.2 Combo Update on my nForce OS X 10.7.1 test system yet.....

[rockthegod]

I have OSX Lion 10.7.1 installed on my rig (in my sig). I tried to update to 10.7.2 and the system refused to boot. It got stuck at "IOATAController device blocking bus" followed by a few "AppleUSBCDC: start initDevice failed" and finally that dreaded "Still waiting for root device" error message. All of these can be bypassed by adding the "use Kernelcache yes" option in org chameleon boot (RC5 r1200) but then the system halts just before the login screen shows up without any kind of error messages or KPs. I am using a edited DSDT based system with the following extra kexts "NullCPUpowermanagement, ApplenforceATA, EvoReboot, FakeSMC, NVClockX, IOATAFamily.RootBoot, nFoceLAN, VoodooHDA for my X-Fi Titanium, and the USB 3.0 renesas driver" most of these from Verdant's support package. Graphics is enabled by EFI strings at boot. My system just works perfectly at 10.7.1 except the usual SATA DVD drives. Maybe if anyone could find a solution to install 10.7.2, I would be really thankful. Thanks to Verdant for this comprehensive and productive guide...