Internet problem on SnowLeopard- Cannot connect - Discoveries Made

[sev]

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask your advice on a certain matter relating to internet access, being a command line novice, I hope you can bear with me as I'm sure that i'm doing something wrong that is so stupidly simple!

Like many I have a good stable Leopard installation, and so I decide to purchase and install SnowLeopard using a guide on insanelymac. Using the extra/ folder provided I successfully installed with a cd bootloader.  I then took an old 256mb memorystick and installed Chameleon on to it following the visual guide on the lifehacker snowleopard guide.

After my first boot, which through my usb speakers allowed me to have instant sound and hear the intro, I set up my video card hex strings and using kext helper I dragged the two ethernet controller kexts over it one at a time - appleYukon2 and appleYukon2injector. As soon as injector was done I could get internet - the network control panel retrieved all the data necessary.

When I reboot, I get no internet - saying that the isp is self assigning, and thus cannot connect to the net  

I did a re-install of the OS and the same thing, so this time I took a snapshot of the settings and re-entered them manually on the second boot, and even tried assigning a static ip on the router and set  the settings on the control panel as manual, - once again no internet.

Since my leopard install has full internet, without hickup I sat back and had a think...

THe only difference is the fact that I use boot123 on leopard and chameleon on SL, which brings me to my question...

In your opinion, could it be something in the 'extra' folder on the chameleon that would influence this?

I don't know how the extra folder really works, but I see that depending on what 'extra' folder you source, some  have quite a few kext items in them.
I was given an alternative 'extra'folder by a guy on another thread with a host of kexts inside, some 12 in total but when I went to install the apple grey boot screen just seemed to spin for two or three minutes so I did a soft reset.
After reading the Chameleon FAQ's I'm going to retry making my bootstick but with the clean bare minimum extra folder linked in the post.
It would appear that on a fresh install, I can get internet working, but on subsequent boots this isn't possible, and this only affects snow leopard. ?!?
Finally, I see some include a dsdt.aml in the folder,  I have a patched bios so is this required?
I it just reminds me of my old Mac OS9 days when you'd have extension conflicts with innits at startup
Sorry for the questions, but I'd really like to fully understand what these items do, and how they interoperate.
Kindest regards, and many thanks in advance  

[Superhai]

Only use kexts in /Extra/Extensions that you know what are doing, if there are some that you don't know what do then use google and find out if you need them. Other than that your issue is not a chameleon problem.

[Lord Anubis]

Hello everyone,


I don't know how the extra folder really works, but I see that depending on what 'extra' folder you source, some  have quite a few kext items in them.

Hi,

The only help that I can offer is, read the documentation, not once, but twice.

Short story; chameleon's boot file read basically, first what is available in the extra folder and then load what, in your case, SL has/need/find.
How better you start with, read - right kexts, dsdt, plist and other files, the better SL runs.

For the moment I have 5 kexts in extra/Extensions folder ( if I have time I can go to 3 ). This means maybe mobo A needs 5, mobo B needs 7 and mobo C needs 3.

Search here or at insanely mac for your mobo and check things out, don't think that you are 100% settled after one day.
I have for months a problem with my 7300gt silent video card and I know it will never be solved.

About your internet, I did have something similair, but when it works it acts weird. I did install another kext realtec100sl.kext and my problems where gone.

But everything depends on what you got in you case!

HTH

LA


 

[sev]

After removing and re-installing kexts over and over and not getting anywhere, I thought ok, this is what we've got...

an IONetworkingfamily kext which was modified in terminal to have the right ethernet identifiers - The package contents show the Yukon 2 kext therin.

The AppleYukon2.kext and AppleYukon2injector.kext also sitting in S/L/E .

I restarted in chameleon RC4 with all caches turned off. It booted and it all worked with internet straight away !?!

I stated to slim down my chameleon E/E folder to bare essentials, so now I have just HDA enablers IOAHCIportinjector fakesmc2.5 and EvOrboot kexts and that's it.

Ethernet still wouldn't work on reboot !

I then took the caches folders out of S/L and L/E and put them on the desktop

This time it hung on the grey apple boot screen!

SO I booted verbose, and it hung waiting for a debug on the ethernet, after 5 minutes I retarted on the reset button.

I also noticed that now that the identifiers were in the boot.plist on the chameleon stick, I now couldn't boot leopard.

Using an old boot 123 cd, I rebooted leopard and create folders in chameleon stick for 10.5 and 10.6, so now I boot with different boot.plists for each OS, it seems to work.

I then tried to move the old cache folders on the desktop back to their original locations in SnowLeopard from within Leopard and attempt a reboot. - Still no joy as it hangs on the same verbose boot message.

I decide to reboot Leopard - from within leopard, I go to the partition with Snowleopard installer and remove the E/E folder which I put in there from Shaumux's excellent Insanely guide, and thus all I have is the original vanilla install medium files.

With minimal kexts in my chameleon 10.6 folder I reboot the installer and erase and re-install my Snowleopard partition. The installation goes fine, and without further ado, as I have the boot.plist and smbios.plist from the old installation, I immediately install the 10.6.2 updater and adjust boot-UUID flag values accordingly in boot.plist

I have yet to install any kexts or apps into SnowLeopard as I want a totally vanilla system with which to solve this ethernet problem - and everything is pointing to a cache issue.

I'v got this far with it, but if anyone can help me further I'd really appreciate it.

[Gringo Vermelho]

You need an unmodified IONetworkingFamily.kext in System/Library/Extensions (extract it from your install DVD using Pacifist). And get rid of the injector and the AppleYukon2.kext you put in S/L/E too.

Then use the attached kext in /Extra/Extensions.

Don't forget to fix permissions and flush the extensions cache before rebooting.

If you search carefully in the projectosx and/or insanelymac forums you can find a nice and clean way to set the 88E8056 as 'internal' and EN0 via DSDT patching. If you're aiming for compatibility this is your next logical step.

/edit

..or you can use Chameleon's EthernetBuiltin=Yes in Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist, it should work with the 88E8056 and the legacy kext I posted.

[sev]

Gringo,  many thanks for your input, I have left the networking family kext unmodified as you suggest and downloaded your legacy kext - I haven't used it in /E/E as yet as....I have a development,

I went  and read the guide for p5q Deluxe on the italian forum at insanely to see what if any issues others had had if any with ethernet.

In there there was a different take on the ethernet concept and I downloaded two new kext, one for each marvel ethernet controller, but more importantly, it had a dsdt.aml file in one of the folder bundles.  I put this in /Extra/ with the boot.plist and smbios ...My Snow Leopard 10.6.2 boots with working ethernet!!!
So hopefully if I flash with a the new modified rom, I should get the same result if I understand correctly.

After that I can look at fine tuning the /Extra/Extensions folder I have downloaded and printed the superb Chameleon manual on this forum-

My usb boot stick will not mount Leopard, it causes it to have a KP, I am thinking that this perhaps is because of the BootUUID flag which 10.6.2 wants , I'm not sure.  The kext files in E/10.5/Extensions are from my original 10.5 boot disk and so I know they work, so the only other factor is the two .plist files.   When I set the stick up, i had a separate .plist file in each of the 10.5 and 10.6 folders but i'm sure this was not right - both OS's booted however!

Also I can now concentrate on sleep and restart.  I have fakesmc and EvOreboot kexts in the /Extra/10.6/Extensions folder.

When I select restart, the screen clears, goes to blue and then the spinning thing keeps spinning and after three to five minutes I have to use soft reset.

When I select shutdown, the screen clears, goes to blue, then black and after a while shuts down, spinning the drives down however my fans are still running - so the board is still live and it forces me to use the main power button to shut down the board.

No big deal, just an annoyance, but the most important thing is that my bootstick works and my Snow 10.6.2 can see the internet.

And the best bit...  I'm learning a huge amount about not only the mac os but hackintosh's in general as I go

[rocksteady]

A few thoughts to make the beginning of your journey easier to understand:

As a newcomer you'll probably follow a guide. That's fine for just installing and booting to a (half-baked) installation documented for someone else's (similar) hardware. If you want to understand how things work then you could start adopting some good habits:

• Get a spare HD and install MacOS X using the guide of your choice. If this takes you more than 30minutes, start documenting your installation steps against the guide you're following.

When the installation is complete:

• Grab your hardware manuals and take notes on each and every device that matters LAN, Sound, RAM type/size/specs, GFX card, etc.
• Print the README + BootHelp.txt files
• Print Distemperus's efforts on documenting chameleon
• Open the FAQ in your browser

From here on you have to start reading in order to understand:

• what Chameleon is and how it works, the difference between Kernel Flags and Booter Options, and the 3 stages of the boot process.
• what KEXTs are, how they work, and why some of them are placed in /S/L/E while others /Extra/Extensions. Some that go in /Extra/Extensions have to be part of MKEXT in order to run.
• that you never source an /Extra folder from someone else, you create one for your specific hardware, ditto for the options in your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist
• you always take small steps when troubleshooting, ie you never mess with LAN and GFX kexts at the same time.
• you document all along the way, step-by-step
• you're willing to do this over and over again. The more you understand the better. Even when you get comfortable with the technical stuff you have to understand that anything may brake from one release of MacOS X to the other. Be prepared to play cat+mouse.

If you decide to dive into ACPI with DSDT patching, then you'll find that some of your devices can be enabled without a KEXT, some others may still need DSDT patching + KEXT(s), and having a modified BIOS + a patched DSDT is a bad idea. Again, take baby steps.

FYI: Your thread (although descriptive) has nothing to do with Chameleon troubleshooting per se. What you were facing was basic OSx86 understanding/functionality, you could have faced the same issues with a different bootloader. Don't take anything personal but there's some valuable esoterica in the simplicity of the FAQ, and Docs hosted here. Until at least 50% of the Chameleon userbase understands what Chameleon is and up to what point affects your hardware/installation, we're doing generic OSx86 chit-chat.

[Mod Team Note: Thread to be adapted for FAQ material]

[sev]

Thanks Rocksteady for that.

Infact your words are quite prophetic as that's pretty much exactly what I am doing, every time I come up against a snag I don't bother with messing around, I just re-install the system from scratch.  I have both my OS X Installations on separate partitions of a drive which is independent of my windows disk.

When I download an /extra folder from someone else's guide I never just replace; I always look within the /Extra folder of the last known good boot to see what has changed and yes, only one at a time.

One thing that I have noticed is that in essence, certain device enabler kexts aside there are really only two or three kexts which seem essential for initial functionality.  And I am beginning to discover the notion of dsdt rom patching in order to allow the system to see things from the off and although I haven't done any of my own, I will make it my business to learn more and explore the guts of those I have downloaded to try.

Digressing a little, but keeping to your comment on guides and noobs, I am very much a noob - certainly not to computers but to code / coding and the mechanical understanding of what runs under the hood of an OS.

I have come to the conclusion that while much and all of the information is out there, it is written by those who understand code and process and therefore has certain elements that one takes for granted  - of course the noob like me must assemble the missing pieces from various sources until all the jigsaw pieces are there.

I see this even at the cesspool that is insanely with it's slew of arrogant genius' and sheep who just follow a guide blindly and then post about it not working - ingoring  the fundementalof what they are doing, the Why and the how.. there are lots of how to... but there is little why and because.  So, in this respect your words ring very true.

Now, I know this is rather bold, but I want to pass something by you here... I'm a technical author by origin, manuals, technotes et al.  So how about, as a complete noob, I write a guide with the questions and phrasing the way I would want to find on the web, and with your (the community) help we get it right, fill in the missing bits.  Not just the how, but also the because and the why- so all, from noob to veteran can benefit from it.

In that way, I learn and everybody learns, and also we hopefully avoid the same questions coming up over and over.  Would you be willing to help me on this, for the benefit of all who want to learn and do?  and if so, shall I just post each revision to the board for all to contribute input or pm to specific indiviuals? 

[rocksteady]

sev,

Your feedback is very welcome. It also allows me to set straight a few things:

I do not like this whole "noob vs expert" calling. Unless you ever met anyone who was born expert, I'd go for lazy vs active. Ditto for the "you dumb, me smart" mindset. That might be tolerated between teenagers but it'd better stop with the end of puberty.  We're stating everywhere in these boards that we're here to learn from each other.

There's nothing personal with insanely too. It once used to be the central hub of OSx86 but leave a forum unmoderated, sell out and start serving ads and what not instead of quality and see where it takes you. The obvious outcome of this is the current situation: everyone has a site/blog/forum, people who have a clew and people who have none. Everyone's an expert now calling names on the internets. Serious business.

For these two reasons I joined the Voodoo team via this forum. I have better things to do than call names on the interwebs and evangelize my own achievements. I like to hang around with like-minded people.  I'm helping a bunch of guys that started some projects I'm fond of. I've participated in similar projects in my teens and I can relate.

You're more than welcome to help us with documentation. I'm kind of heading the documentation for Chameleon by collecting information, reading source, taking notes and  producing FAQ material. A few nice guys popped up to support the effort, you can find some prime examples:
Creating Themes Guide & Resizing Themes
[How To]: Installing OSX without acces to a Mac
Documentation for Chameleon 2.0
TIP: Having problems with bad boot (boot0) loader? Here's a new solution

Up until a few days ago I was also head janitor of the forum (yay for Balckosx + Gringo), trying to keep the forum clean + focused in order to allow the core dev.team to focus on development rather than forum maintenance. I'd also like start contributing code but being then perfectionist nut that I am, I won't until we reach a decent point of documentation + forum quality.

Regarding your contribution, feel free to start threads for documentation and ask my, Blackosx or Gringo's help for thread editing should you need so. I'll collaborate with you all along the way. Public inforrmation/knowledge stays public. There're some "in the land of blind, one-eyed is king " gotchas, who require intensive handling since lots of people payed real $$ for free open source software.

Now let's get cracking and produce some first-class stuff

PS: I see that you reference MacOS 9 experience , check out tempolo's site, you might find that you were using some of his software (I did). Wish that he had more time to share with us. Also, if you were around when hacking NeXTStep/OpenStep for white hardware was the bomb, I'd love to hear about it.

[sev]

Rocksteady, that's great stuff!!

I do like the wavelength you're on, and I agree on all of your points.  Unfortunately my System 7 to 9 experience was very much just as a user rather than as a coder as such.

I'm doing some research from various sources, and hopefully in the next week, I'll post the beginnings of a 'novice' thread, which would work very well with our other poster's thoughts of a hackintosh forum.

My initial thoughts for both are along the lines of ;

"This is what we are doing, this is why we are doing it, and this is how we do it"

Hopefully we can then all learn the reason for doing something rather than just blindly following a guide or grabbing someone elses' 'perfect extra' folder or guide  - something I and many are guilty of.

Either way, once it's up i'm sure we can refine and add until hopefully it becomes an accurate and informative guide in clear english which hopefully should serve novice and veteran alike, and in time turn the former into the latter. 

[Terc]

One confusion of mine: As long as you're not "stacking" kexts (using more than one kext for the same purpose), why would it matter if you had, say, a kext for a NIC you don't have, or a kext for some audio chip you don't have on your board?

As far as I understand it, OSX should only load the kexts that are needed for your system.  That's how Apple can have so many different hardware configs, but only one set of extensions in /S/L/E.

This is important for a project I'm doing, and it's important for projects like EmpireEFI.

If I'm off base here, _please_ set me straight.



As a side note, obviously, it's a good idea to reduce the number of kexts you're using on your system since it will improve boot times and since it's a good learning exercise for someone that doesn't know what each kext does.

[rocksteady]

@sev: Sounds great, esp. the next week part. We're superbusy right now updating the infrastructure that makes everything else rock+roll (forum included)

Please remember to start a new thread dedicated to your contribution.

@Terc: you're right about Apple's way. They do it like this since System7. All retail MacOS installation CDs (not the model-specific ones) had a full image broken down to different sets (Install for any Macintosh, install for this Macinstosh ony, Desktop, Laptop, System/Gestalt ID fun, etc.)

OSx86-wise it's essential to go minimal for initial troubleshooting/debugging (to say the least). Factor in the zillion of different bootloader versions/patches, each user's hw, quality of hacked KEXTs etc, and you'll see why it causes a SNAFU instead of joy.

Stay tuned, things are getting elegant along the way 

[Superhai]

Generally it does not matter at all if you have the kexts or other frameworks installed or not, of course except for the disk space used. The problem is however when it get to the hacked and quick-n-dirty kexts that flourish in the osx86 world, those that are not programmed to the spec or uses esoteric functions to circumvent oddities, and they break some of the integrity in the IOKit structure.

In my belief a good hackintosher is past the beginners mark when he knows the matching process of IOKit in and out. Essentially all hints, tips and clues are related to the matching done by IOKit, and will get you a full understanding without sorting to guessing and assumptions (of which 96% of osx86 world is into now).

[sev]

Don't forget to fix permissions and flush the extensions cache before rebooting.

For my own information in the future, how do you  flush the extensions cache?

Would I be right in saying that permissions are repaired through Disk Utillity and Extensions cache through the terminal?

[Gringo Vermelho]

Yeah I just kinda threw that in there didn't I. 

The problem with using Disk Utility is that if you use community-made or modified Apple kexts that was just copied into S/L/E by you and not put there by an installer, DU will not repair permissions on them.

It's better to avoid S/L/E and use /Extra and /Extra/Extensions instead, as far as possible. The same goes for any other modification you can think of - if you can handle it via DSDT, com.apple.Boot.plist or smbios.plist it's always preferred to hacking away at system files..and you get to keep that nice Vanilla flavor.

When you keep your modifications separate from the installation itself like this, then if something stops working right after installing a system update you know that it's because something is wrong or missing in your /Extra folder.
It goes without saying that this approach to Hackintoshing greatly simplifies troubleshooting.

Also Chameleon does not care about kext permissions, so that's just one thing less to worry about. You can drop kexts right in /Extra/Extensions and they are ready to go.

I only have one manually installed kext in S/L/E, NVEnabler 0.1.kext (it's the only way I can get analog TV-out on my hack) the rest are in /Extra/Extensions.

Set permissions on everything in S/L/E:

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

I've also seen this:
chown -R 0:0 /System/Library/Extensions
chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions

I remember seeing an explanation of why you should use the first chown/chmods rather than the second ones but I don't remember why. Maybe one of our deeper digging members can explain.

Rebuild Extensions Cache in Snow Leopard:

kextcache -v 1 -t -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions

In Leopard you can just delete /S/L/Extensions.mkext.

When you use Pacifist to extract and install a kext from an install DVD or Apple Update you can have it install the kext with permissions intact. But you should still rebuild the cache before rebooting.