Author Topic: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?  (Read 37852 times)

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Doraemon

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Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« on: April 14, 2009, 10:40:05 PM »
Hi all,

I installed Chameleon 2RC1 on a GPT fresh install of iPC 10.5.6 (vanilla) using only a patched nForceATA kext for my mb chipset:

When I try to boot after POST, I select my OSx86 hdd with Chameleon 2 installed, the screen is black and then the computer reboots, POSTs, and repeats: infinitely booting, POSTing, booting, etc. but never loading the Chameleon boot loader.

I've read through the forum, I don't see a topic opened for this issue though in the initial comments on the blog posting of Chameleon 2.0 there was at least one other user who appeared to have this identical problem. I apologize if I've missed it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

Cheers!

EDIT: I booted into Parted Magic 4.0 to see what flags Chameleon assigned to my partitions, my GPT drive looks like this:

{unallocated (23.54 MiB)}
{/dev/sda1 (hfs+) /media/sda1 (Leopard) (23.90GiB) (no flags)}
{unallocated (128MiB)}
{/dev/sda2 (hfs+) (Theta) (119.90GiB) (no flags)}
{unallocated (128MiB)}
{/dev/sda3 (ntfs) (Vista) (24GiB) (msftres)}
{/dev/sda4 (fat32) (EFI) (200MiB) (boot)}
{unallocated (64.62GiB)}

Not sure if that helps...

UPDATE: I can now boot with Chameleon 2RC1. I'm not exactly sure what changed but I was abled to boot into my Leopard partition with the iPC install DVD (Chameleon 1.0.11) and then used the manual install method, since that point I have been able to boot with Chameleon 2.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2009, 09:06:30 AM by Doraemon »

ksudeadeye

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2009, 09:16:12 AM »
Hey All:

I've been having a similar problem. I'm trying get OSX 10.5.6 (retail) running on my workstation (Asus P5B-D mobo).

I have Kalyway 10.5.2 installed on a 16GB thumb drive and I'm trying to use it to install the retail DVD ISO on an external 320 GB hard drive. Kalyway runs great. I can install the retail DVD ISO, the 10.5.6 combo update, and Chameleon (v2.0RC1) to the external drive without an issue.

Once I reboot, I set my BIOS to boot off the external drive. Then I see the following lines flash briefly on the screen (similar to Kalyway's boot process):

boot0 : GPT
boot0 : testing
boot0 : done
boot1 : /boot


Then the machine suddenly reboots. This loops over and over again. Chameleon never loads.

I've attached screenshots of the parition tables for the thumb drive (Kalyway) and the external drive (retail). The only difference I can see is that the thumb drive's EFI parition is FAT32, while the external drive has an HFS+ EFI partition. In both cases the EFI parition is the boot partition. I've also mounted the external drive's EFI partition and verified that Chameleon has been installed.

Not sure where to go from here. I've tried booting to the Kalyway install CD and setting the startup partition like Doraemon suggested, but it still doesn't seem to work. Thanks in advance for any help.

-ksudeadeye

Thumb Drive


External Drive

zef

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2009, 10:44:35 PM »
Once I reboot, I set my BIOS to boot off the external drive. Then I see the following lines flash briefly on the screen (similar to Kalyway's boot process):

boot0 : GPT
boot0 : testing
boot0 : done
boot1 : /boot


Then the machine suddenly reboots. This loops over and over again. Chameleon never loads.

Can you post your currently used com.apple.Boot.plist? If you have a @Hz setting in your Graphics Mode setting in the boot.plist, try to remove the @frequency part.
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 | i5-2500k | 16GB RAM | GTX560 | Keyboard | Mouse | Devilsound DAC

ksudeadeye

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2009, 04:42:58 AM »
Here's com.apple.Boot.plist (from the EFI partition). I haven't modified it at all.

Code: [Select]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>


rocksteady

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2009, 04:18:49 PM »
Here's com.apple.Boot.plist (from the EFI partition). I haven't modified it at all.
Assuming that you're in a all SATA setup and that SATA is setup as AHCI (not as a bastardized SATA/IDE mode), 
try to add a Timeout option in your com.apple.Boot.plist

Code: [Select]
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>5</string>

Kinda anecdotal info floating around, but works for some Asus boards.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2009, 04:57:09 PM by rocksteady »
Stop bitching, start coding or documenting or both..

P5Q-EM : Q6600 : 8GB RAM : 8800GT : SATA Drives

popophobia

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2009, 04:51:48 AM »
I have the same problem. For both retail install on my 2 HDDs. Both of them have timeout of 3. I'm using munky EFI partition.

Before this, chameleon 2 RC1 loads just fine on XxX distro install. Wonder if the EFI partition messes up something...

oldnapalm

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2009, 01:11:28 AM »
Same problem here on a MSI 945 Platinum. HFS partition is second primary of SATA HD, and first primary is NTFS. Chameleon 1.0.11 works fine.

oldnapalm

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #7 on: July 27, 2009, 06:45:14 PM »
Same thing with RC2.
Is there a debug version, so I can try to find out what's causing the reboot?
Version 1.0 works fine on this system.
Thank you.

zef

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #8 on: July 28, 2009, 04:29:59 PM »
Chameleon 2 needs the new boot1h code updated on your hfs partition to able to load 63.5k+ boot2 images.
The same goes if you use your EFI partition for the booter.
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 | i5-2500k | 16GB RAM | GTX560 | Keyboard | Mouse | Devilsound DAC

oldnapalm

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #9 on: July 28, 2009, 05:49:24 PM »
Hi, thanks for the reply.
I did manual install, wrote boot1h to HFS partition using dd, and do not use EFI partition.
What else can be wrong?

zef

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #10 on: July 28, 2009, 05:55:22 PM »
so how far do you get? do you see the boot0 .. boot1 outputs? Can't you press any key to get to the boot menu somehow?
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 | i5-2500k | 16GB RAM | GTX560 | Keyboard | Mouse | Devilsound DAC

oldnapalm

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #11 on: July 28, 2009, 06:18:36 PM »
I see no messages, it just reboots (well, I think boot0 message is there, but it flashes so fast I can't see). If I replace /boot with version 1.0.11 it works fine.

zef

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #12 on: July 28, 2009, 07:29:56 PM »
Ok, may i have your first 3 sectors of your HFS partition please?

you can extract it with dd:

sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskXsY of=napalmHFSHeader bs=512 count=3

... also you may give a try to debug loading boot with boot1hp/boot1he.

boot1hp goes in place of boo1h to your partition, and boot1he should be dd'ed to at sector 40 of your disk:

sudo dd if=boot1hp of=/dev/rdiskXsY bs=512 count=2
sudo dd if=boot1he of=/dev/rdiskX bs=512 count=8 seek=40

First send me your HFS header only.
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 | i5-2500k | 16GB RAM | GTX560 | Keyboard | Mouse | Devilsound DAC

oldnapalm

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #13 on: July 28, 2009, 07:42:21 PM »
Sure.
The computer with this problem is at home, I'll send you the first 3 blocks of HFS partition as soon as I get there.
Thanks again.

oldnapalm

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Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
« Reply #14 on: July 28, 2009, 10:21:19 PM »
Here goes the HFS header.