Author Topic: How to change display order of Chameleon GUI boot menu and the default  (Read 8947 times)

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textonyx

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Hi, I'm a bit of a perfectionistic computer tech and other forums direct to here as the go to guys for Chameleon problems.

On my second hard drive, the partitions are listed as A B C D where D is the default. I want to change it so that the display is A B D C where C is the default. I have tried to change this with the Default Partition method which I've seen recommended several times and is in the downloadable .rtf file. I've modified both the /Extra com.apple.Boot.plist and the other instance in SystemConfiguration. It is annoying to have a Fat32 data partition show up as my default boot partition. I came up with an inelegant solution. I installed Pinguy on a 10GB partition at the end of the drive (last partition). This gives me the ugly Grub2 bootloader, but I can change the default OS and the order that the displayed bootable OS. I think Cham lists partitions in the order they are found on the hard drive (apparently).

Could someone please explain to me how the edit of Default Partition to com.apple.Boot.plist accomplishes the fix for this, if it were working for me? Does the Chameleon bootloader read the hard drive first, including com.apple.Boot.plist, before it generates the graphical display that I see in a given order. I'm speaking about when I just see one icon (the end one) and before I press F8 to see the other choices. Is there another com.apple.Boot.plist in the EFI partition which does not get changed after I edit the one in /Extra? I can't mount the EFI partition, the command that formats the EFI prior to mounting says "not allowed" which is not that early  'you can fix it later' error that can be ignored.

Gringo Vermelho

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You can't mount the EFI partition without using sudo. If you still can't mount it then it hasn't been initialized and there is nothing on it.

There would only be a com.apple.Boot.plist on /EFI/Extra if someone deliberately put one there. Chameleon does not generate this file by itself, nor does it copy an existing com.apple.Boot.plist there by itself.

I don't know why default partition isn't working for you. It works fine for me.
What about hide and rename, do those work for you?

Consider that the order of partitions and drives are related to where Chameleon is installed, therefore it does not always correspond with BIOS- and physical drive order and sometimes not even the order shown by diskutil list.

The com.apple.Boot.plist in SystemConfiguration should be left untouched. Chameleon will read the one in /Extra first and override it anyway.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2011, 03:23:27 AM 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

textonyx

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Thank you for the reply. Yes, I used sudo, I followed the directions exactly until I couldn't. I think it was mount_hfs that was "not allowed". I wasn't even sure this was a good idea, why would using the EFI partition change the order that the partitions were displayed or make com.apple.Boot.plist start working; but I was going to try it. I've found a few other posters who couldn't make Default Partition work, but only one report of "not allowed" like mine.

"What about hide and rename, do those work for you?"  You mean hide the Windata partition so it wouldn't take up a space on the displayed partitions? I didn't think of it so didn't try, I can still try it and it seems worth a shot. Maybe it will work and not fall prey like the Default Partition. I have worked around it, but it's ugly and to describe it as inelegant is too charitable, it's a kludge. Grub2 and Burg is buggy. Somebody on this forum suggested the SystemConfiguration edit, so I tried it, grasping at straws. I just remembered, I think I was able to write the dd command successfully, but I don't know if it really went to EFI. Nothing changed. I'll try rename. Thanks.  UPDATE: I tried "hidden" which had a zero effect. I tried on different possible partitions also; nothing is hidden.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2011, 09:24:15 AM by textonyx »

textonyx

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I found your perspicuous guide and I believe successfully installed Chameleon to EFI. I was able to format, mount to /Volumes/EFI etc. I just copied the /Extra folder to EFI. But it didn't change the display order at all. I found something I didn't know about  :o Is
this some sort of normal soft link to /Extra, which also has the same content? I hid two partitions so I'd be sure to notice a change.

textonyx-Mac-Pro:Extra textonyx$ pwd
/Volumes/Snowy/.chameleon/Extra

textonyx-Mac-Pro:Extra textonyx$ ls
DSDT.aml         Themes
DSDT.aml.bak         com.apple.Boot.plist
Extensions         com.apple.Boot.plist.bakArch
Extensions.mkext      smbios.plist


« Last Edit: April 13, 2011, 01:31:55 AM by textonyx »

Gringo Vermelho

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No that's not normal, I don't know where that comes from or what it's doing there.

Tried googling "/.chameleon/extra"..?

As you can see (thanks for the compliment!), installing Chameleon means copying three files.

At that point the installation of the bootloader itself is done and the rest is personal - configuration, cosmetics - theme, smbios.plist, DSDT, com.apple.Boot.plist and whatever else you want to use. And you place it in /Extra yourself.

At some point you must have used some third party tool that put that folder there. If you have Chameleon set up on /EFI/Extra now with all your configuration files etc etc, I guess it's safe to delete that hidden folder.
However I can't guarantee it - we can't support non-retail DVD installations, or stuff like multibeast and other post-installation third party tools here, there are too many unknowns.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2011, 02:52:20 AM 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

textonyx

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Quote
Gringo Vermelho wrote: I have to tell you that we can't support non-retail DVD installations, or stuff like multibeast and other post-installation third party tools here in this forum.

I did buy a retail disk. And did a manual update to 10.6.5. For 10.6.6 I used an integrated package which used my retail disk. I felt this was the same as slipstreaming where MS provided files to help integrate Windows XP and its Service Pack upgrades. At one point I had two partitions of SL on the same drive. My first surprise was that only one EFI partition was created. And it seemed like information leaked across from one install to the other, the behavior wasn't what I expected.

Originally, I used MultiBeast. Now I could build it all manually, but I don't remember seeing a full manual installation guide.
Well, I'm going to get rid of that .chameleon folder or sym link whatever it is. My clone backup is flawed with this also. But now I can reinstall this all rather pristinely if removing that .chameleon folder causes a disaster. Thanks for the implied suggestion. I've got another backup of just relevant SL files and updates etc. Thanks for the rc5 also. No luck with that search, and I tried the ".chameleon" variant, it might ignore the dot. Time to remove that .chameleon. It won't impact /Extra I think. I'll tell you later.


« Last Edit: April 13, 2011, 03:50:44 AM by textonyx »

Gringo Vermelho

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There can only be one "real" EFI partition on each drive.

On a Mac (or Hackintosh) the EFI partition gets created when you use Apple Disk Utility to partition the drive as GUID, before there is any OS installed. Apple uses it for firmware updates, we can repurpose it to hold Chameleon. Chameleon can be installed anywhere you want though, there is no special advantage to having it on the EFI partition. I just happen to like it that way.

If you're curious, read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_System_partition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

I've updated the Chameleon build that's attached to my guide:
http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,649.msg2794.html

What do you mean, information leaked across?

If you were using the same installation of Chameleon to boot both partitions, then whatever settings and configurations you have in /Extra on the partition where Chameleon is installed will affect both partitions. This is expected behavior.
I know there are ways to use separate configurations for booting more than one installation of OS X with Chameleon but I have never tried it myself, you'll have to research this on your own.

This can be useful for dual booting 10.6 and 10.5 for example if you want/need to load different drivers from /Extra/Extensions for one and the other. Personally I don't see the usefulness in having two installations of Snow Leopard on the same drive. You can perform nearly all necessary (knock on wood!) recovery operations by booting from the install DVD. It's comfortable to have the install DVD restored to a hard drive partition though. But you normally won't need a separate configuration for booting that.

Your .chameleon folder probably comes from using Multibeast? If you want to pursue this, visit the tonymacx86 forums and ask about it over there. It's funny how these tools people put together to make it "easy" always end up complicating things.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2011, 04:50:36 AM 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

textonyx

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Gringo wrote: "I've updated the Chameleon build that's attached to my guide:
... What do you mean, information leaked across?"

---------------------------------------------

Thanks, I downloaded them.  I had two paritions of SL, 10.6.5 and 10.6.6. I was trying out BBedit on 10.6.5 and made it the default. BBedit was not installed on 10.6.6. I wanted TextEdit to be the default. When I clicked on some .txt file, BBedit would open up even though it wasn't installed on that partition (10.6.6). Some application removed to Trash on one partition would not open up in the other partition even though it wasn't in the Trash in this other partition. I would have to boot back to the first partition with the Trash containing the app could be found. Take it out of Trash say on 10.6.6, and then I could now use it on 10.6.5 where it never was in the Trash. I think my memory info reported was different to start with in both versions at first, but then changed so they read the same. It seemed like some things had merged rather than being independent on each partition.

I'm pretty sure I ran the auto-install of Chameleon on both partitions and one may have been rc4 and the other rc5, but not sure, and am not much interested in that experiment anymore. Nope, not from MultiBeast. Removing that .chameleon entry had no effect, I think it was just a sym link to /Extra. Actually, at this point I think the easiest thing to do is reinstall. Thanks for your help.



« Last Edit: April 13, 2011, 05:27:12 AM by textonyx »