What's new with OSx86

[ritalin]

I've noticed a few projects that might develop into something very interesting for the future of the hackintosh.

1) Run OSX unmodified in a VM

Okay this might not be that useful to most people, but being able to run OSX in a virtual environment is cool.

2) The iDEBOX project at the uphuck forum You need to login to read the posts.

Hey all,

this is the new project from the team..

Anyone knows about linux can start this project with us..

more info will come soon..

Basically though the project will aim to create a debian based installer for leopard, also
future iATKOS releases which are enchanced with iDEBOX will contain many linux ports in them such as pciutils etc..
our goal will also include to be able to use KDE and GNOMe under OSX in the future with ease

Best of both worlds I guess..

I'm not sure of the advantage of using a linux installer, but I like the sound of integrating KDE and GNOME. I haven't used KDE since I bought my first Mac, It would be nice to see how thing have changed.

3) On the horizon is "Slipstream OSX". This is probably the most interesting project for the average user. It should be possible to incorporate this into a linux live CD. Boot from the live CD and make your own custom OSX install DVD. All you require is an original Apple OSX install DVD.

[aquamac]

Hi Ritalin,

Slipstream looks interesting, but I am not sure where to download the script. Perhaps I am going blind??

[dense]

I'm the author of Slipstream OSX and the page that you have found is my internal documentation. Google somehow managed to index the page even though there were no external links

I am still in development phase and while the script has been mostly complete for a few months its been a very long testing process. I am still slowly completing the documentation and once that is done I hope to release it. That hopefully explains why there is no link to download it.

[ritalin]

Hi Dense, thanks for the info. I really hope well get to see the fruits of your labour. I've been making my own installers for a while and I'm hoping, if it's released, that your script will make the task a whole lot easier.

[dense]

It pretty much does exactly what most people want now. Give it a unmodified OS X DVD and it spits out a working version for a PC. Everything is customisable and totally dynamic however you probably know that if you read that page

[nikonnut]

Dense,
Welcome I'm really looking forward to seeing Slipstream when it's done.

Nik

[aquamac]

Hi dense & welcome!

Slipstream looks fantastic and what everyone with a Hackintosh is looking for. I really appreciate your hard work on this and hope you will contribute to these forums on a regular basis.

[ritalin]

Progress is being made with iDEBOX over at uphuck forums.

Ok here is where we are with this:

We are creating a live linux dvd based on Knoppix and Debian..
Stripped down to have only partitioning/firefox and debug support.

Use that live install to install Leopard Main pkgs..

What we can do with idebox as of now:

1- we can format partitions hfs+
2- We can read/write hfs+ partitions...
3- We can install Leopard Xar pkgs

What we can not do:

1- Efi bootloader is ok with grub2 added. However for x86 boot we need some sort of implementation of
"startupfiletool" for debian. The Sources are publicly available, However I have no idea how to approach to porting that for debian. for x86 boot we need startupfile tool otherwise idebox will be efi only and
will only support core based + cpus. ( - which is no a big concern )

2- We need to modify / create a gui for installation. This is still on the shadows. (probably will be the biggest portion of the project).


Anyone with C++ knowledge or linux experiance can pm me about this and the ways you can
contribute.

It sound really interesting to me. The only problem is that if you distribute this with the Leo pkgs included then it's still piracy.

[ritalin]

Chameleon Boot Loader

What is it?
-----------

Chameleon is combination of various boot loader components. It is based
on David Elliott's fake EFI implementation added to Apple's boot-132
project. Chameleon is extended with the following key features:

- hybrid boot0+boot1h loaders for both MBR and GPT partitioned disks.
- automatic FSB detection code even for recent AMD CPUs.
- device-properties support.
- software RAID support.
- stage2 loader (boot) can be placed as a regular file in the boot
partition's root folder. It has precedence over the embedded
startupfile.

Source Code
-----------

For downloading the source code please visit the project page at
chameleon.osx86.hu

Licensing
---------

Chameleon is released under the terms and conditions of Apple Public
Source License (see attached APPLE_LICENSE) with the following restrictions:
You may use this software for personal, educational and evaluation purposes
only. To use this software for commercial purposes please contact us at:
chameleon.osx86.hu/contact

I can confirm it works on my hardware. The really nice thing is you can download the source and see how it all works. ;D

To install chameleon 1.0.9 download this pre compiled set:
Chameleon-1.0.8-build.tar.gz
Then replace "boot" in the "Chameleon-1.0.8-build" with this:
Updated chameleon's stage 2 boot (1.0.9)
Re 1.0.9 - Kabyl has found that annoying ‘bug’ which caused a kernel panic when using some non-vanilla kernels in conjunction with AppleEFIRuntime.kext. The ineffective device-properties string issue was also solved by this fix.

1. Install boot0 with the bundled fdisk and never use dd for updating the MBR:

fdisk -u -f path/to/chameleon/boot0 -y /dev/rdiskX

2. Use dd to install boot1h. The correct dd should look like this:

dd if=/path/to/chameleon/boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXsY bs=512 count=2

3. Then just simple copy chameleon's stage 2 boot to your root folder.

4. Reboot

[danielmramos]

So how is Chameleon supposed to be better than PC EFI? I wonder if someone could do a comparison that sure would help.

Forget it.

Here is zef's explanation of the differences and advantages. It sounds really awesome!

forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=104754&st=120

[ritalin]

Well 2008 May 25th was a busy day for the darwin boot loader!

I particularly like the sound of this:

Kudos to the folks at VMware, in particular Regis Duchesne (HPReg) who spearheaded the effort. His hard work on the virtualizer makes VMware Fusion 2 Beta 1 capable of running an unpatched Darwin 9 system. Obviously this is with the goal of officially supporting the virtualization of OS X which will be coming at some point in the future.

I will be trying a virtual Darwin 9 system asap.

As a side note: VMware Fusion 2 Beta 1 is capable of running Half-Life with D3D perfectly on a virtual XP (a first on my hack). ;D

[ritalin]

Check this out! Look at the 2008 June 29th Entry.
DFE Sounds like it now offers all the features that EFIX promises but has yet to deliver. What's more the DFE code is free and open source!