Snow Leo Striped Raid with Chameleon 2.0-RC2-r640

[aquamac]

OK Guys time for another walkthrough!

This time it's:

OSX86 SNOW LEOPARD/CHAMELEON 2.0- RC2-r640 RAID!

WARNING - ADVANCED.

The walkthrough is similar to to the previous one but with different boot files to download and a few extra steps.

We will create a bootable Striped Raid Array to give your Hard Disks some welly.

You will need a MINIMUM of 2 identical Hard Disks.

This will be for 2 disks, but it can be for more.

Step 1.
I am assuming that you have installed OSX86 on a single USB or Internal HD already and that you have it running just the way you want it that has an Extra folder that is fully working.

You will need 2 further disks!

Step 2.
Open up Disk Utility and click on one of your newly installed Hard Drives in the LH pane. Then Select Raid from the top tab.
Drag your 2 new disks into the raid window as you would if you were using a real mac.

Name your array, I called mine "Macintosh Raid" then select Stripe from the dropdown box below.

Then click the "Create" button. A new disk called "Macintosh Raid" will pop up on your desktop.

OK, nothing too exiting so far.

Step 3.
Clone your existing working OSX86 drive with CCC or Superduper. Make sure you select not to reformat though, otherwise you will wipe the raid array you just made. You just want to copy the files.

You will now have a Raid drive that is a copy of your existing HD but it will not boot.


Step 4.
Open up Disk Utility and from the LH pane, right click "Macintosh Raid" Then select "Information".

Where you see Raid identifier which will look something like this:

RAID Identifier : 948357DD-2F47-4EE6-8F22-294C275C8A90.

Copy this by right clicking.

Drag your com.apple.boot.plist to your desktop and open it in text edit.

Copy the identifier you found in Disk Utility to the plist as below:

<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>boot-uuid=948357DD-2F47-4EE6-8F22-294C275C8A90</string>
<key>device-properties</key>

and replace the existing one. It must say: "boot-uuid="

(without quotation marks) in front of the identifier. You must replace your existing one at this stage or the whole project will be a waste of time.

Repair Permissions with disk Utility.

Step 5.
Download Chameleon boot-loader from here and copy all the files to your desktop.

rapidshare.com/files/273144179/Snow_Leopard_Chameleon_files.zip

Empty all the individual files onto your desktop.

While your at it, download this little program that toggles your hidden files:

rapidshare.com/files/273166181/ShowAllFiles.zip

Step 6.
Now, open the Terminal program from your utilities folder and type:

cd ~/desktop (hit return)

Then type:

sudo su (hit return and enter password)

Then type:

diskutil list (hit return)

which should show your disk partitions like this :



The first 2 disks shown each have an installation of OSX86 but the 2 disks we are interested in are /dev/disk2 & /dev/disk3. These are the 2 Raided disks. Depending on how your disks show up, change the /dev/rdisk2 information below to whatever information you need.

Step 7.
Into the terminal type:

fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk2 (then hit return)
then type:
fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk3 (then hit return)
then type:
dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk2s3 (then hit return)
then type:
dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk3s3 (then hit return)

OK so far..good, well carry on...

then type:

diskutil mount disk2s3 (then hit return)
then type:
cp boot /Volumes/Boot\ OSX (then hit return)
then type:
diskutil unmount disk2s3 (then hit return)
then type:
diskutil mount disk3s3 (then hit return)
then type:
cp boot /Volumes/Boot\ OSX (then hit return)
then type:
diskutil unmount disk3s3 (then hit return)

Copy your Chameleon "Extra" folder from your working drive to your desktop and update the com.apple.boot.plist UUID with a copy of the updated one you made earlier. You must do this otherwise when you boot from your raid, you will end up booting from another disk.

Copy this to your Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder.
You are then going to have to place a copy of this in each of the hidden "Boot OS X" partitions of your 2 disks along with your dsdt.aml and a copy of your "Mach_kernel" too.



To do this, either login as root by enabling root user (you can do this in Snow Leopard by navigating to System/Library/CoreServices and opening Directory Utility. Click the padlock and from the menu bar click edit and"Enable Root User", choose a password you will remember, then log out of your account and back in as "root".

Then navigate to Users/youraccountname and drag the Extra folder to your root desktop. If you copy and paste it to an Empty folder the permissions will change to root:wheel.

In the Terminal, type:

diskutil mount disk2s3

The hidden "Boot OS X" disk will reappear, you can copy your "Extra folder into the drive along with your dsdt.aml and Mach Kernel.

Unmount the drive:

diskutil unmount disk2s3

Do the same again for the second drive:

diskutil mount disk3s3

drag the Extra folder, dsdt.aml and Mach_kernel in and then unmount the drive with:

diskutil unmount disk3s3

You are now finished and should have a bootable Raid drive. All you need to do now is reboot and select the first of the 2 raid drives that shows up in your bios and select that drive to boot from.




Scores for Hard Disks improve somewhat with Raid-see below:

[digitaldreamer]

Nice walkthrough!
I was particularly interested in the part regarding the destination of the Extra directories and other bootloader support files. There's very little info on this on the web, even in Chameleon's docs.

Got a couple questions, however, as I'm trying to understand the process well enough to script it. The hard part is attempting this script writing without have a RAID setup. Heh.:

1. I assume that the bootloader still needs the boot.plist in the /Extra directory and this needs to include the UUID of the RAID drive. Is the one in the SystemConfiguration directory only used by the low-level RAID driver for the RAID UUID info (but, not needed by bootloader)?

2. You mention navigating to Users/youraccountname to retrieve the Extra folder? I'm not familiar with this location for the Extra folder, as I'm used to having it in root. Am I missing something info here?

3. You mention copying the DSDT file to root of helper partition (hidden "Boot OS X" partition). Can this file go inside of Extra, instead? I'd think the bootloader supports it, but not sure about RAID.

4. I see that the mach_kernel needs to be copied to each helper partition. I first assumed this only referred to modified kernels. But, this refers to any kernel, including the vanilla kernel, correct?

5. Can the EFI partition of each RAID set be used for "boot from EFI" setup, by copying Extra files, DSDT.aml, and kernel? Is this possible? If so, which is set active?!

If there's a source of other in-depth info on this, just point me in that direction.
Best of wishes,
MAJ

EDIT: Also
What does the "System" folder in the RAID helper partition contain?? And, is it really needed? I ask, because some users do a restore/clone to the RAID root volume and this folder surely isn't going to be included in the copy.

[aquamac]

Hi digitaldreamer,

The system folder in the Raid helper partitions contain kexts that are automatically updated everytime you change kexts in your System/Extensions folder. In fact, if you set OSX to show all files, then delete theExtensions.mkext, you will get to see the "Boot OSX" partitions momentarily mount as they are updated.

However, the latest versions of the Chameleon boot loader supports Raid natively so there is no need to go to these lengths. Raid 2 disks together (more if you prefer) and boot with Chameleon and you can install OS X to the Raid array. I tried this with 4 x SSD's and they go like a rocket - with a random uncached read of over 8000 [256k blocks]!

[cruisar]

Hi Aquamac,

Lovely walkthrough....can I use Chameleon 2 RC3 instead of RC2?

Thanks

[aquamac]

Yes, you certainly can, in fact with the latest builds of chameleon, it may even recognise your carbon copied Raid disks natively now. Worth a go first!

[cruisar]

Thanks,

I can confirm that Chameleon 2 RC3 works well with your walkthough, Running RAid now

Thanks

[neil43]

Great guide. I have my test RAID 0 up and running using this guide and Chameleon 2.0-RC4 -r658 on a P55M-UD2 MB with SL 10.6.2.

Now the task is doing a RAID 10 set-up (a stripped set with two sets of mirrored drives, each at 500GB).

Do you know of any tricks that would help in this build?

Neil

[neil43]

Using your guide I have brought up my bootable RAID 10 made up of 4 Seagate 500GB HDDs.

Thank you again for the great guide.

Neil

[aquamac]

Congrats Neil,

Thanks for the feedback. did you have to do anything specifically different for Raid 10?

[windows04]

Hi I used your guide and it works very well, however I have one problem:

When I boot into Chameleon, there is a countdown to boot into my RAID, so far so good . But when I press a button to go into the menu and select manually, the RAID drive is gone from the menu. So I can only boot into windows or linux, the mac drive just doesn't show up in the menu :s. Is there a way to fix this?

[jaev]

sweeeeeet

[futureformer]

folks, I have the following problem:

I followed this guide exactly. so far, chameleon boots the loader from the RAID, but then it can't see the RAID-partitions to boot the OS from.

I am also missing two folders on the OSX helper partitions:

com.apple.boot.S
System

which process writes this both folders (including files) on the helper partitions ? I really struggle, because I think the answer on this question is the solution ?

any help would be nice !


future_former

[pest132]

So i installed osx via easybeast (tonymacx86+multibeast) Ive been trying to get my 2 ssd's in a raid0 to boot but i was going off this guide aquamac.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=hack1&action=display&thread=613&page=7
please look at the link to help me out scroll to bottom.
I have pics of my terminal session,raid etc.
Then i found this guide but the install route easybeast is not dsdt will i still be able to do this?
i have a gigabyte x58a-ud5 rev.2
thanks-Joey

[picard]

thank you very much for this how to ...

for me it worked, i can boot but have a little problem: i have two 500 GB, and when i choose striped raid i always have 1TB not 500 GB.



you wrote: "Repair Permissions with disk Utility." when i am trying that, i get the shown message, what is wrong?



what about updates (10.6.6 or something else), when i have to change my extra folder (delete or create new kext), need to change the extra folder in boot osx too?

thank you very very very much, i am trying this for days and your guide is the best

[minasokoni]

I followed the instructions fully and when I boot I get to the apple logo with the ajax spinner and nothing happens. It happens to both drives too. I can only get past that screen when I use the iboot disk. Any ideas on what Im missing?