osx x86 install guide
Looking around the net, its hard to find a good, complete guide for install osx86. I’ll try to make a complete one here. If there is anything missing, please feel free to comment.
Things you might need:
- An Install DVD that works on intel hardware
- A computer that supports at least SSE2
- A USB mouse and keyboard (optional, but makes things easyer later)
- A free 6.5GB (at least) partition or disk
The 1st thing you should do is make sure you can boot the install DVD. If you can’t get to the installer screen, this guide will do you no luck. Some things you might want to try to get it booted are as follows.
Press F8 to get to the boot option screen. You do this right when it says Loading Darwin…
at the boot: prompt add -v to get a print out of what is going on. Some other options you can try are platform=ACPI or platform=X86PC. If you still can’t get it booted you should look around http://wiki.osx86project.org/ for help.
Now that you know you can boot into the installer you can contine.
Setting up Hard drive space:
As stated earlyer, you will need at least 6.5GB of free space. You can try to get away with less, but you wont be left with much free room. I would recommend you go with 10GB. There are two ways to setup the harddrive space. The first is in an empty partition. The second would be on an entire disk.
Setting up a Partition:
I recommend using Partition Magic to do this. There are a number of linux methods you can also use to resize partitions. Where the partition is on the drive doesn’t matter, as long as the partition is a primary partition. DO NOT make the partition as an extended partition. Do not format the partition. The partition type needs to be set to 0xAF (HFS), otherwise the installer complains. You can set the partition type using the installer DVD if you have trouble.
Using FDISK from DVD to set partition ID (0xAF):
It F8 to get to the boot menu and type -x -s -v (plus any addition options you might need to boot correctly). This will boot you into a command line. At the command line type
fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
Mind you the rdisk0 part might be different depending on how your system is setup. rdisk0 is the first SATA disk in my system. If you are using IDE drives you might want to try /dev/disk0. If you did it correctly you see
fidsk: 1>
Type p to print out the partition table. You should see the partitions you setup. If not then you typed the wrong drive and need to quit (by typing q) and try another drive. If you see the partition you want to use for OSX type setpid followed by the number of the partition you would like edit. For example you would type setpid 2, if you want to set up OSX on your 2nd partition, and windows is on the first. Fdisk then ask you for a “Partion id”, type AF, and press enter. Type w to write your changes, then q to quit. Type reboot to restart the computer.
Setting up a whole Disk:
If you want to use a whole disk to install to there is nothing to setup. Just use the Disk Utility built into the installer to setup the drive.
The Install (what you were waiting for)
At this point, you should be able to boot into the graphical install, and have a partition or disk ready to install into. Boot up the installer and wait for the menu bar to show acrows the top. On the menu bar go to Utilities and select Disk Utility. Select the partition you want to install onto from the menu on the left. At the bottom of the screen it should show you all the information about it. If the format (partition ID) is not 0xAF (HFS or Mac OS Extended), you’ll have problems. If you close the disk utility and open up the terminal from the utitlities menu, you can change the id using fdisk, as explained above (go back to the section about using fdisk for an explanation.) Click on the tab labled ‘erase’ to format the disk. I recommend setting the volume format to “Mac OS Extended (Journaled). But you can use what you like. Click erase to format the drive. Once the drive is format close Disk Utility and contine the install.
Customize Install:
At one point in the install there will be a Customize option on the bottom left corner. DONT MISS THIS. If you miss this you will have an hour long install process. Customize the install by removing the languages and print drivers you do not need. If you DVD has patches on it, you might find them in here to. Install only the ones you need.
Contine with the install
Don’t believe the time remaining, it lies. It will take some time to finish the install. Go find something to do. Like take a 10 mile walk. Watch a movie. When it is done installing the computer will automaticly reboot.
The first boot:
This is where alot of problems happen. Even though the install went well, you 1st boot might not go well. You could get stuck at the grey apple screen for ever, or OSX wont see your mouse and keyboard, or you might be stuck in an reboot cycle. If it can’t see your keyboard and mouse, this is where the USB keyboard and mouse come in. Plug them in and OSX should see they ok. If you don’t have the USB see the section at the bottom about PS2 kext. If you have the other problems try the F8 trick and put in -v to see what is going on.
You should be in OSX after the initial register screen. But a few things might not be working, such as ethernet and sound. There might be a way to fix these depending on what you have.
Mouse not working, and other PS2 problems:
You need PS2 support for these to work. If you’re lucky these would have already been installed by the DVD, but probably not correctly if they aren’t working. If not, you have to find them. Look for ApplePS2Controller.kext on the internet. To fix them so they work, boot in safe mode by using F8 then -x -s, to get into Safe Mode. Now you need to remount your drive in read/write mode. The quickest is to just type
mount /
Next you need to fix the permissions on the extention. You can do this as follows.
cd /System/Library/Extensions
chmod -R 755 ApplePS2*
If you installed other extentions do the same for them, such as:
chmod -R 755 AppleAC97Audio.kext
You then need to remove the Extentions cache files:
rm /System/Library/Extentions/Extensions.kextcache
rm /System/Library/Extentions/Extensions.mkext
You can now reboot the system and your mouse, sound, or what ever should be working now.
Fixing the Network:
So you have what you think is a supported card, but it’s not working? Well it probably is supported, but OSX doesn’t know that. The following was derived from osx86project. You need to find the PnP device ID for your card. To do that boot into windows and open up the Device Manager. Find your Network card, open up the properties on it. Click on the Details tab. You should have “Device Instance Id” selected in the drop down. What you will see is something like PCI\VEN_12AB&DEV_12EF&SUBSYS… Now what you need is the numbers/letters following VEN and DEV. These are your vender and device ID numbers. You need to join them with the Device ID first. So in this example you would get 0×12EF12AB. Write this number down, as you’ll need it.
Boot up OSX and open up a terminal window. Type
sudo bash
cd /System/Library/Exensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/
ls
Here you should see a list of apple supported cards. If you are luckly one simular to your hardware will be listed in here. The AppleIntel9245XEthernet.kext is for Gigabit internet cards, the other works on Intel Pro 100/VE cards. cd into the kext that you will use then into the Context subfolder. Open up the Info.plist file with the following command.
nano Info.plist
Now this is where it will differ depending on what version of OSX you are installing. If you are using 10.4.5, scroll down untill you find IOPCIMatch. If you look right below it you will see with a list of number in the format of 0xABCD1234. Other versions of OSX will have these numbers after were it says Device Name. These are a list of PnP device id, as you probably guessed. If you can’t find the above sections, scroll through the file until you can find a list of 8 digit numbers. Remeber that number you wrote down a little bit ago? Add it to the list. Each ID should be seperated by a space. Next remove your Extentions cache files.
rm /System/Library/Extentions/Extensions.kextcache
rm /System/Library/Extentions/Extensions.mkext
Reboot and your card should work now. If it doesn’t then you added your PnP id to the wrong kext. Undo what you did and try it with a different kext.Sound you say:
Getting sound to work is a little more involved then ethernet. Depending on what sound card you have there are many methods (to the madness) to get it to work. I had a RealTek ALC861. The thing about this card is that it uses an intel bus/hub. So I have to enter the ID’s for the card and the hub.First off you’ll need the right kext for your audio card. Mine happened to be the AppleAzaliaAudio.kext. Different cards might work with the AppleAC97Sound.kext (or something simular). What’s that you say? You don’t have these kext? You’ll have to google the internet for them then. I have heard there are torrents out there with these kext files, but havent ever looked or seen them.
Anyway, to get the RealTek card to work I followed the walk through found on here:
http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=1474&st=40
I had to do a little more mucking around because I had an ICH-7 intel bus insead of a 6. Where you have to edit this file:
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleAzaliaAudio.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAzaliaController.kext/Contents/Info.plist
I put in a bunch of ID’s hopeing one would work. You find the section for the ICH-6 bus (yes i know its not ICH-7) and add your pnp ID in there right after IOPCIPrimaryMatch.
Now the bigest question I had when doing this was how to find my bus id. In windows I opened up device manager and wrote down ALL the id’s for the ICH-7 bus. Under ‘System devices’ in device manager, you see a buch of Intel® devices with a 4 digit number after then.. such as 244E or something. Somewhere in the list of Intel devices you’ll see one like UAA Audio something. This would be one you are looking for. Get the Dev ID for it (either by reading the 4 digit number next to it, or properties -> Details). Mine was 27DA for the UAA device. I also wrote down the ID for the PCI controller (27B9)..
I used these numbers to enter in for the IOPCIPrimaryMatch in the AppleAzaliaController.kext. ie i added 0×27DA8086 and 0×27b98086 onto the list. Removed my extentions cache files and rebooted.
My audio worked after this. I’m not sure which of the 2 above numbers i actauly needed but i figgured put both in and see if it worked. and it did.
VMware stuff:
If you are going to try to install in VMware, you will need a Virtual CD driver, as the built in ISO support in VMWare will not correctly read mac ISO’s. You also need to add paevm=”true” onto the end of the vmware machine configureation file. This enables PAE support. Your host CPU has to have this too. I’m not sure what VMware does if the hose CPU does have support.
Filed by shim at August 2nd, 2006 under Tech