Author Topic: Install Chameleon on RAID (Highpoint RocketRAID 2680) .. ?  (Read 3369 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

fixxxer

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 2
Install Chameleon on RAID (Highpoint RocketRAID 2680) .. ?
« on: April 04, 2011, 09:23:44 PM »
Hey folks, first of all please excuse my relative noobliness, I spent a long time researching my Hackintosh project, and have enjoyed a relatively decent degree of success. The final hurdle to jump is the bootloader to boot from the HDD - up until now I have been using iBoot, a Chameleon based bootdisk by tonymacx86.com. I am unable to install the Chameleon, and I'm relatively confident that it's because of my RAID configuration.

Ok so now you know where I want to get, let's describe where I'm at. Again, please forgive any missing information, I will gladly post any required config files or logs, read any number of posts or pages necessary - I will gladly put in work to get this working. I have put together a hackintosh project using a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 motherboard, Intel Quad Core Q6600, 8GB DDR2 RAM, and a GeForce GTX 285. The RAID controller is a Highpoint RocketRAID 2680, which is a PCI-Express RAID card, and is supported native by Snow Leopard.

Upon booting my system with the iBoot boot disk, I can see the disk volumes I have configured. I simply set them up in the RocketRAID configuration utility, and Snow Leopard recognises them correctly without any configuration or modification. I can then boot into my primary drive. In fact I've been enjoying OS-X Snow Leopard (10.6.6) for a month or so now.

Where I'm stuck is on the Chameleon install, and this is where I could use the advice. So I want to do an install on my RAID drive. I don't know where to find the information on how to do that, so could someone point me the right way please? Also, if anyone has any experience of getting running with a RAID install, or even with this card in particular, I would be extremely grateful if you would be kind enough to share your knowledge.

I'd be happy to benefit from any thoughts or comments that might help me on my way. I'm generally used to wading into technical info and figuring out the details, but I just really wanted to get the picture from some guys in the know.

All comments welcome, and thank you for your time!

fixxxer

  • Entrant
  • Posts: 2
Re: Install Chameleon on RAID (Highpoint RocketRAID 2680) .. ?
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2011, 11:01:07 PM »
Hi all, ok so I figured from the fact that I failed to spark a response that I must be doing something wrong. To be fair I somehow knew I hadn't included enough information. So, armed with the Chameleon manual, I set upon the task of installing Chameleon, and failing miserably! However I have gathered relevant information, so I hope this will help start a conversation.

The error I get when attempting to boot from the HDD is the following:
boot0: GPT
boot0: testing
boot0: testing
boot0: error

I guess this means that boot0 - the part of Chameleon I understand is responsible for locating the active partition - is presumably testing two volumes for the active partition.

It seems as though now is a good time to print my diskutil list output (note that disk0 at this point contains a Chameleon based boot disk, used to boot the machine):
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *22.7 MB    disk0
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS iBoot                   22.7 MB    disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.5 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS USB Backup Disk         1.5 TB     disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh               999.7 GB   disk2s2
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.0 GB   disk3
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS RAID1 Scratch Disk      499.7 GB   disk3s2

At this point I have a strong feeling like boot0 isn't actually scanning disk2 or disk3, which are both volumes attached to the Highpoint RocketRAID 2680 card.

I followed the install steps in the manual to the letter, first attempting to install into the drive root, then when I got the boot0 error I tried installing to the hidden EFI partition, but then upon rebooting I got the same error.

Now I have the problem where the EFI partition I conditioned as part of the Chameleon install isn't hidden - presumably because I experienced an unrelated problem when attempting to touch the .fseventsd folder. The log is attached, so if anyone knows how to hide the partition again properly I would welcome the tip!

Would I be right in thinking that if I can't get boot0 to boot from the RAID card that I'll have to set up a chain boot or similar? If so, does anyone have any tips? Please, I'm desperate! :-)

Finally, if I wanted to transition to another HDD, to make installing Chameleon easier - something like an SSD - does anyone have any tips for how best to transition the OS?

Thanks for your time!

Gringo Vermelho

  • Forum Moderator
  • Posts: 611
  • The gray monster energy hat
Re: Install Chameleon on RAID (Highpoint RocketRAID 2680) .. ?
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2011, 06:06:30 PM »
Very few people use hardware RAID because it requires dedicated hardware like yours.

You can't do hardware "BIOS" RAID with Intel ICHxR controllers on a Hackintosh for example so most people use Apple software RAID, set up with Disk Utility.

Maybe that explains why nobody has replied yet. I can't help you, I don't know anything about RAID.

See if you can find something using the forum search, I think there are some old posts around here somewhere about installing Chameleon on a RAID setup.

Why are you using such an old version of Chameleon?
« Last Edit: April 06, 2011, 06:16:38 PM by Gringo Vermelho »
10.9.5 - ASUS P8Z77-V Pro - i5 3570K - GTX 660 - Chameleon 2.3 svn-r2xxx
How to...
Install Chameleon: http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,649
Make your own Chameleon boot CD: http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,484.msg2131.html#msg2131