can't find mach_kernel and other strangeness

[sapele]

Hello,

first of all thanks for all of the work.  I will be donating again!

The history is that I had followed blackosx guide for leopard in the past.  I am in the process of getting my digital house in order to install snow leopard with his guide and I have run into a chameleon problem.

The history.
I had a 1tb WD drive partitioned into two.  The first held Chameleon RC2 and the second was my macOSX install of leopard.  There are three other sata drives on the machine but chameleon booted the intended partition by default.  Probably becasue it was on the same HD as the chameleon install?

What i did.

I partitioned a 500GB WD disk in two and installed Chameleon there.  The second partition there is a data disk.  Then I erased the 1TB WD disk and cloned the install back to it.  I wanted to have only one untouched OSX install on that disk (in simpler terms I moved chameleon to a seperate HD).  I thought this would be a better way for me to move forward.

what has happened.

chameleon now boots and wants to start my time machine back up disk by default.  It is a 750GB WD disk that is on the next sata controller to the partitioned 500GB disk with chameleon.  I hit the space bar and now I am presented with two choices.  The osx install on the 1TB disk and a second small test partition with OSX on it (yet another 500G WD disk partitioned in two/ test partition and a data disk).  The time machine disk does not even show up despite the fact that chameleon had just wanted to boot it by default.  If I hit return to boot the 1TB disk I am informed that chameleon can't find mach_kernel.  If I then try to boot the test OS I get a KP 9 times out of 10.  If I reboot the machine and try to boot the test partition fist then it will boot 9 times out of 10 without a KP.

I have tried specifying the kernel location ect without any results.

I have been able to boot into the 1TB disk and as best I can remember it happend like this

booth the machine hit space bar to bring up the two OSes.  try to boot the 1TB disk with single user mode.  Cant find mach_kernel is the result.  I hit the arrow key to boot the test OS and the 1TB starts?  Once this happened in single user mode and once it happened in regular mode? 

Something sure seems to be crossed up.

I have reinstalled RC4

I have erased the chameleon partition and rolled back to RC2 which worked for a while until i tried to boot RC4 from a USB stick and everything has been screwy since.

I did correct a permission error on my Extra/apple....plist which must have occurred by dragging and dropping from disk to disk.

I am grateful to anyone who would take the time to consider my situation.

[Blackosx]

Hi sapele and welcome to the forum

chameleon now boots and wants to start my time machine back up disk by default. 

You can change which disk/partition Chameleon tries to boot by default with the following boot option in the /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist

   <key>Default Partition</key>
   <string>hd(x,y)</string>

where 'x' is the disk number, 'y' the partition number.

Then I erased the 1TB WD disk and cloned the install back to it....
If I hit return to boot the 1TB disk I am informed that chameleon can't find mach_kernel.

You see that error when Chameleon tries to boot a partition without the mach_kernel file at it's root. Double check your drive cloned successfully and make sure it has the mach_kernel file at it's root. It's also worth checking your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist to see if it contains the following

   <key>Kernel</key>
   <string>mach_kernel</string>

If I then try to boot the test OS I get a KP 9 times out of 10.  If I reboot the machine and try to boot the test partition fist then it will boot 9 times out of 10 without a KP.

This is not a Chameleon issue. If you are happy you have a working /Extra folder then there is something wrong with your OS X installation.

I have erased the chameleon partition and rolled back to RC2 which worked for a while until i tried to boot RC4 from a USB stick and everything has been screwy since.

Booting from a Chameleon install on a USB stick will not change anything on your HDD's and therefore won't have been the cause of messing your system.


Overall though, don't panic. I just think you have got yourself a bit muddled as to what is doing what as the whole process is really pretty simple. I recommend finding a spare partition on one of your many HDD's and doing a fresh OS installation, then see if you can boot that from your existing Chameleon install. If you can't then re-install Chameleon and your required /Extra folder to either another HDD partition or a USB memory stick and try that.  Either one or both of those method will work.

Good luck

[sapele]

Thanks for the encouragement.

I can verify that the boot plist has the call for mach_kernel. 

Great point about the clone.  I am away from that machine but when I return i will check to see if the kernel got lost in the clone process.

Finally I have added the line for changing the default partition.  It had no effect and chameleon still tried to boot the WD 750 with time machine first.  I used disk utility to find the disk and partition of the 1TB drive.

I want to mention that I am still running leopard and doing so with power management disabled.  I do not have my dsdt file in the extra folder.  should I?  I have a GA EP45 DS4P board and the dsdt fixes for hpet and cmos reset.  I took it out because i have been running leopard for years without it and I have been trying to recreate that previously working state with the new hd configuration.

[Blackosx]

Chameleon uses the drive order it gets from BIOS for identifying it's disks and this can be different from what you see in Disk Utility. To make sure, boot in to Chameleon's GUI and press TAB to switch to the CLI and double check the disk/partition numbers you see there with what you are adding to the default partition boot option

You should be able to carry on using your Leopard install without a patched DSDT.aml but when you come to running Snow Leopard you are going to at least have to stop your CMOS from being reset by using either a DSDT with a patched RTC device or looking to add ElliottForceLegacyRTC.kext but we're going off-topic here.

EDIT: I see you said you already have a patched DSDT for your mobo, so go ahead and add it back in to your /Extra folder - it can't do any harm.

You're best bet for now is to get yourself up and running with what you have now as discussed earlier. Then once you're ready to look at installing 10.6, either have a read of my install guide PDF's at InsanelyMac to give you an overview of the install, as it's for a different mobo, or find another topic which suits your liking and go from there.

[sapele]

I am in font of the machine and repairing permissions on the 1TB disk...I dont expect a miracle but it cant hurt.

THe mach kernel is present on the clone so that is now confirmed.

Once permissions are repaired i will reboot and follow your instructions to check the drive order at boot.  It is new to me so I just want to make sure i know what i am supposed to do.

Chameleon will try to start my TM backup so I will the the space bar before the time delay elapses.
then I hit TAB?

Is the rest self explanatory?

Thanks and there is no doubt that I will be following your amazing guide for 10.6.  It is printed and well thumbed through!

thanks

[sapele]

To answer my own question it is self explanatory.

The disk numbers were different at boot.  I tried to point chameleon to the correct location of the kernel with

mach_kernel rd=disk1s2 but got the usual message about kernel cant be found

I then rebooted and entered the Test OS and added the revised disk numbers to my boot plist.

I rebooted and SUCCESS!

I have no idea what was happening but as long as my TM disk was being selected as the default partition things were not working for me.

Blackosx- Thank you so much for your efforts here and elsewhere in the OSX86 world.  I always know I am reading the right posts when I come across one of your comments.

[Blackosx]

Fantastic. Well done with sorting your problem.