Chameleon 2 doesn't seem to install: MBR disk

[Harbinger]

Quick rundown: GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard, 4GB RAM, SATA HD and DVD-ROM.  Originally had XP installed on HD, wanted to triple-boot XP, OS X 10.5.6, Ubuntu.  Tried formatting HD as GUID and Mac side worked fine, Chameleon worked fine, XP had hissy fits and wouldn't start.  I reformatted disk as MBR, installed OS X on a USB hard drive, set boot order in BIOS for USB HD first, installed Chameleon 2 on that drive.  Worked okay. 

Next, I Carbon Copy Cloned OS X to main SATA HD after repartitioning it (remember, it's MBR now).  There are four partitions: XP, OS X, Ubuntu, and extended NTFS for XP data.  Use Grub-DFE to boot and choose OS X, boots fine.  Once inside OS X I launch Chameleon 2 and tell it to install.  It does, and it doesn't give any errors.  When I reboot the machine goes through BIOS check okay then halts and won't boot unless I use Grub-DFE again.

When the disk was GUID I know the program would use the 100MB EFI partition to store itself and its files.  From what I've read I had the impression it would still work on an MBR disk w/o the 100MB 'boot' partition.  True or false?

[Harbinger]

Sort of answering my own question here, but still with a problem...

I found a how-to guide on installing/configuring Chameleon 2 RC1 for an MBR partition over on iHackintosh (props to Vishay).  It goes as follows:

Code: [Select]

1. Extract the Chameleon archive and open a Terminal window there. 

** (This step wasn't clear on first readthrough--I eventually used Pacifist to extract and save the .dmg contents.  -Ed.) **

2. Use sudo -s to assume root privileges.

3. Install boot0 to the MBR:

   fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0

4. Install boot1h to the bootsector of your OS X partition:

    dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk0s2

5. Copy the ‘boot’ file to your root partition:

   cp boot /

6. Make sure your OS X partition is flagged as active.

7. Copy Themes and smbios.plist to your Extra folder:

   cp -R smbios.plist Themes /Extra

7. Finally add any kexts you wish to /Extra/Extensions like you usually would.
I've gone through this and now can boot from Mac, and can select and boot from XP and Linux as well.  However, I could not copy the smbios.plist in step 7 as it was not part of the RC1 package as is implied.  Possibly as a result, when I tell the Mac to restart the desktop icons disappear although the wallpaper remains, and the 'whirlygig' appears and starts to spin.  The Mac locks up and requires a press of the reset button.

So, is the smbios.plist really a part of the package?  Does someone have alternate instructions for installing Chameleon to an MBR installation?

[Harbinger]

Second time answering myself.  I found the answer I needed on another forum--smbios is not needed on my install.  I also had to delete the Extensions folder from /Extra as I'm using an mkext file with board-specific extensions.

As an aside...I really like what you guys are doing with this bootloader.  But, judging from the number of posts on different boards from people who are having problems installing and configuring it, I have to say that you've got to document your sh*t better.  I consider myself somewhat advanced in my general computer knowledge but a newcomer to the Mac side.  In order to find out how to make the MBR install work, I had to sift through a lot of noise in discussion forums and glean bits of info from multiple sources.  Most people aren't going to put up with that and will move on to something else.

I'm just sayin'...   

[zapzupnz]

This is all very bizarre to me, because it worked perfectly fine with my MBR installation.

I initially thought it didn't until I realised the graphical side which I expected to see had to be configured in the com.apple.Boot.plist first.

'Twas easy for me. So I wouldn't say it was an MBR related issue at all so much as a system-specific one.

[rocksteady]

...I really like what you guys are doing with this bootloader.  But, judging from the number of posts on different boards from people who are having problems installing and configuring it, I have to say that you've got to document your sh*t better.

ah c'mon,
we gotta be thankful for what they do, they're busy developing and give out their tools for free. btw the instructions you're quoting from the other forum are included with chameleon:

Most people aren't going to put up with that and will move on to something else.

most people are free to choose whatever they like, no one invited them to try this, they can just stick to what they have

[tempolo]

This is all very bizarre to me, because it worked perfectly fine with my MBR installation.

The reason for the MBR boot failure is probably because he copied an existing OS X partition from a different disk over to the Hackintosh disk. And that overwrote the second phase of the boot loader (boot1h) which is then stored in that OS X partition's first 2 sectors, and probably more (such as the "boot" file, which can easily be copied back, though).

With a GUID partitioning scheme this problem can be avoided if chameleon gets installed into the EFI partition that's always present in a GUID scheme. With a MBR scheme, there is no such EFI partition, though, and thus it has to be installed into the OS X partition. Hence, if you reformat the OS X partition or overwrite it entirely, you'll lose that part of the boot loader.

[tempolo]

we gotta be thankful for what they do, they're busy developing and give out their tools for free.

I'm with Harbinger on this.
Documenting the basics of their own doings would help everyone: The developers would help each others because there's less to explain to each other, the users benefit from it, too, because they're enabled to help others better instead of doing a lot of guessing and false attempts.

I'm developing for over 25 years, and the first I usually do is define what I'm about to do, be it for an entire project or just for the next set of functions I'm writing. It helps define the goals, even for oneself. Programmers who aren't doing this aren't doing anyone a favor (unless they're doing it on purpose so that no one else can mess with their works
I mean, have you ever looked at open source code that never explains what it's doing? That's awful.

Hence, a generel rule to any responsible programmer is to document while you go.

BTW, for that reason I've started my own doc project here: http://www.tempel.org/Hackintosh/ImplementationDetails

[rocksteady]

I'm all for documentation too tempolo. My previous comment was more about people nagging all the time and how when something becomes easy most people miss the fun part. (not towards Harbinger but in general)

The chameleon project has come a long way, iirc it started as a 2-man army (kabyl + someone else) and now the team has grown incorporating features + ideas under one single bootlader.

I mean, have you ever looked at open source code that never explains what it's doing? That's awful.

Yeah i hear ya, I used to clean code from open-source "experts" for certain apps that we'd give a try in our studio. I mean if the code is a mess, documentation won't help much either...

The other issue with the whole osx86 "scene" is that it's now split into a zillion places/forums and useful info is hard to find. I also have my collection of bookmarks/documentation but I believe that a single place with all the info would be better.

We're probably the older ones here, some generation-gaps are expected

btw: for anyone past the teenage years who used to work with Macs, tempolo is the guy who gave us Joilet FS support for MacOS 7-9.x 

[tempolo]

btw: for anyone past the teenage years who used to work with Macs, tempolo is the guy who gave us Joilet FS support for MacOS 7-9.x 

And for those with an Atari ST: I gave you MagiCMac, which allowed you to run most "clean-written" (not games) on a Mac.
And for those who had a C-64: I gave you F-Copy as well.
Yay for old school!