Snow Leopard Guide (Rough Draft)

[SilverZero]

Hey all, I decided to quit wasting your time by doing so many little tests on my end. I know that I have one method that works for installing Snow Leopard to your S10, so I'll just share that (as I have done with our wonderful donors). There may be some hangups and there will definitely be some improvements, but I wanted to get something out there since you've all waited so patiently. Let's give it a go!

I've uploaded both the guide (PDF) and a zip file to the web, so go ahead and download them both to start. You will need to do this from a working Leopard install on the same machine as you're installing Snow Leopard to! There are some file manipulations that have to be done from a working OSX environment, we'll get around that soon enough. I'm watching the Dell and MSI Wind forums for any hints, but I am also doing a lot of my own testing.

Notes:
You should use an MBR hard disk and make sure your BIOS is NOT set to "AHCI."
The majority of kernel panics that EVERYBODY is experiencing come down to two things: Problems with the Extensions.mkext file in /S/L/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup and problems with the kexts themselves. My guide calls for putting ALL kexts into /S/L/E and building an mkext from the whole shootin' match, then placing it in the cache directory above. Extra/Extensions cause problems especially with PCEFI v9, which you're also required to use at this point for simplicity. So if you have a KP, chances are that's what's causing it.

IMPORTANT: Please see my updates about three posts down from here. I'll add that to the OP as soon as I get things cleared up a bit more. At this point, I have followed my own guide and the notes below, and I'm booting Snow Leopard. Maybe hold off on steps 17 and 18 in my guide unless you're into testing and breaking things, it's not necessary to boot Snow Leopard. Just my advice.

UPDATE: My install would not boot after the first boot. I think the solution would be to run Kext Utility (just open the app and let it run on both /S/L/E/ and /E/E) as soon as you are in your first desktop. Not sure about this, but I do remember doing it last time I had a working system, so maybe that was the key. I'll test later, right now I've got some other business to attend to.

Good luck!

Links:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jjjfqzitgdw
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zgue2ydytg2

And if you appreciate my work, please donate! I'm planning on an S12 project now that the S10-2 project is rolling along so well. Thanks!

[evilgood]

You are our hero. seriously.

[evilgood]

curious why MBR. If I have a working Disk with GPT, would there be anything I would do differently?
EDIT:
I do have an MBR disk. Hmm. I didn't realize. However, it won't let me shrink my Leopard partition.
Could I (safely) use Ubuntu and gparted to reduce it in size without totally hosing it?

[SilverZero]

curious why MBR. If I have a working Disk with GPT, would there be anything I would do differently?

It shouldn't matter as far as my guide goes (the OSInstall.mpkg replacement will be unnecessary but should still work), but I can't guarantee that the installation will work. We've traditionally stuck with MBR because it keeps the door open for a multi-boot setup with XP later on. I hear Windows 7 works with GPT, and probably Linux, which means as soon as XP is in the ground we'll not have to worry about this anymore. Still, it's a quick and easy patch, so I kept it.

Okay, so a couple of issues right off the bat. Installation MAY somehow change your BIOS settings, so when you reboot, just hit F2 right away and change your AHCI back to Compatible if it switched.

Installation does NOT change the active partition, but we need the Snow partition to be the active one in order to boot properly the first time. Use a Linux Live USB like Mint to run gParted and switch the active partition to the Snow Leopard partition. I'm at this stage now and continuing with my testing and I'm watching the intro video right now, followed my own guide exactly as written plus what I just wrote here. No audio, bummer. That's on the list.

One more thing: Updating the active partition seems to make Leopard not boot anymore (kernel panic). I think this is due to the bootloader trying to call the wrong kernel, maybe I can fix this from com.apple.boot.plist. For now, you can always use gParted to switch them back and forth, but that's super annoying - but also remember you can just use Snow Leopard and still access all of your files on your Leopard partition.

Will keep updating as soon as I know anything more.

Oh, and evilgood: Thanks. It's fun, it's my pleasure, I hope I can get some good results for the community.

[fiddler59]

Silverzero,
This is great but I am trying to figure out how this is going to apply to my situation. I don't have a Leopard disk to make an initial install on my S10. However I do have an Aluminum IMac with Snow Leopard installed. I want to just make a SL install on my S10, so I am trying to figure out how to modify your steps to patch a SL restore on my 8gig usb thumb drive so I can install it on my S10. Any help ??

David Blackmon

[SilverZero]

Silverzero,
This is great but I am trying to figure out how this is going to apply to my situation. I don't have a Leopard disk to make an initial install on my S10. However I do have an Aluminum IMac with Snow Leopard installed. I want to just make a SL install on my S10, so I am trying to figure out how to modify your steps to patch a SL restore on my 8gig usb thumb drive so I can install it on my S10. Any help ??

David Blackmon

That's my project for tonight (and maybe the weekend at large). The only challenge right now is making the installer USB key boot on the S10. Once I get there, we can do everything from Terminal if we have the files. Then the last step will be to figure out how to get it all going without a Mac at all!

[fiddler59]

Very cool....you are obviously working your @#$ off..... going to send some bucks your way as soon as I get paid !!

DB

[evilgood]

I'm going to throw this out as a question as maybe others will have it:
I do have an MBR disk. However, it won't let me shrink my Leopard partition.
Could I (safely) use Ubuntu and gparted to reduce it in size without totally hosing it?


Right now my Disk is:
MBR

200mb EFI (macOS Disk Util sees this as Disk0s1)
74GB Mac
200mb empty
74GB Windows 7

I'm hoping to shrink 74GB mac to about 35GB, and make 35GB for Snowy.
Do I need to leave slack space in between partitions?

Thanks in advance, anyone.

[SilverZero]

I'm going to throw this out as a question as maybe others will have it:
I do have an MBR disk. However, it won't let me shrink my Leopard partition.
Could I (safely) use Ubuntu and gparted to reduce it in size without totally hosing it?


Right now my Disk is:
MBR

200mb EFI (macOS Disk Util sees this as Disk0s1)
74GB Mac
200mb empty
74GB Windows 7

I'm hoping to shrink 74GB mac to about 35GB, and make 35GB for Snowy.
Do I need to leave slack space in between partitions?

Thanks in advance, anyone.

Don't leave extra space in between partitions, there's no need. As for shrinking the HFS+ partition, here's a great article that walks you through it. The key is disabling journaling on the partition before resizing (and you may want to back up your really important files if you have any, just in case). Gotta love gParted!

[fiddler59]

I know this may not be possible, but wouldn't it be cool if we could come up with some kind app like NetbookBootMaker that they are developing on the DellMini forum for our S10's s12's ect.!!

David Blackmon