How to install kexts on Lion

[davidm71]

Hi,

 

I'm a little confused about where do you put kexts these days since chameleon now loads it from the SLE folder as opposed to the EE folder.

 

Can someone please clarify the proper way to install system specific kexts please?

 

Thank you.

[Gringo Vermelho]

That has nothing to do with Chameleon, it's due to changes in Lion vs. older versions of OS X.

 

You can still load kexts from /E/E, but then you must disable the kernel cache and it'll take a lot longer to boot. The only time you'll want to do this is when booting your Lion installer partition/flash drive and installing Lion for the first time.

Once the installation is done and you have verified that it is bootable, you can copy your kexts to /System/Library/Extensions, set permissions and ownership, force a cache rebuild and set UseKernelCache=y in /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist to use the kernel cache.

 

If you still want to be able to boot into your Lion installer, leave a copy of your extensions in /E/E and type UseKernelCache=n at the Chameleon boot prompt when you want to boot it - for example to run Disk Utility or perform other maintenance tasks.

 

Try to use legacy/plist-only kexts as far as possible, or other means to achieve what you want (chameleon configuration settings, DSDT injection) so as to modify as few Apple kexts as possible. If you modify Apple kexts, odds are that you'll lose your modifications on the next system update.

 

Fire up Terminal and type each line followed by enter, exactly as below. Rebuilding the caches may take a little while, wait for the prompt.

The first two commands set permissions and ownership. The last three commands delete and then rebuild the caches so as to include your new/modified extensions. Along the way you'll probably see an error message about JMicronATA.kext, just ignore it.

 

sudo -s (enter your password)

chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions
chmod -R go=u-w /System/Library/Extensions

rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup
kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
kextcache -system-caches

exit

[davidm71]

Thanks! This explains why sometimes deleting kexts in EE did not a thing!

 

I get it now..

 

Thanks.

[BuXb]

I am experiencing a real odd boot caches oddity which results in the infamous "Still waiting for root device" if I don't either boot w. kernel caches off, OR downgrade SATA to legacy in BIOS. Can you please swing by here and share your ideas ?

 

Thank you,

Bugs