Documentation for Chameleon 2.0 RC

[Distemperus]

I've bundled/researched/compiled & otherwise read source to come up with comprehensive documentation.

edit: minor update to EFI instructions & clarify ReleaseCandidate status

For all newcomers:
If you are not a registered user then you will not be able to see the attached document here.
Please register to gain access to all attached files.

[rocksteady]

Woohoo, a guy that likes to document....

a) Where have you been for so long?

b) best 1st post I've ever seen

[Gringo Vermelho]

Wow, that is beautiful, good job. Welcome to the forum.

[rocksteady]

Thanks for your efforts Distemperus, a warm welcome here again

Going briefly through your doc, everything seems OK.

A first thought though:

Please rename your file to Using Chameleon 2RC, this is precisely the reason we didn't include all details in our official FAQ. Every subsequent RC release introduces new options, but till we get out of beta we cannot be sure which ones will stay and which ones will be dropped/changed.

More feedback when I go through your doc again.

[FlangeMonkey]

Nice one,

I'm new to Chameleon and its answered a lot of questions for me.

Thanks for the hard work.  It needs a Sticky!

[Distemperus]

Please rename your file to Using Chameleon 2RC.

More feedback when I go through your doc again.

Done. I'll also cover some areas of concern myself:

• I thought that something about sourcecode was important and should be right at the top, but striking the right -> tone <- was difficult.

• The particulars of how Chameleon works & the boot* files may be wildly off

• I wanted to list where the Extra folder could go, but it looks like I may have confused the issue even more. I wanted "/Extra" to denote the root and "Extra" to just be any path, but I think for a new user, this could confuse the issue. The listing of the Extra/Extensions folder makes it look like a mess, but I wanted to cover all the bases (new & veteran users). Maybe a picture...

• somewhere it says to use the included fdisk. I don't think I used that fdisk for 10.6. This doc uses the stock OS fdisk in $PATH.

• for RAID, OrigDoc edit the /Library/Preferences/SysConfig/com.apple.Boot.plist, but this doc does it differently. My thinking was that since there will have to be an Extra folder somewhere, it should be in that Extra folder. Unfortunately, I put it onto the hidden partition which makes it more cumbersome. I think the RAID instructions should change to a root-based /Extra folder & skip the the multiple Extra folders on the hidden partition. This preserves a fresh com.apple.Boot.plist (admittedly a simple file, but when you wreck it & don't know, that doesn't help) with a single Extra folder.
-----------
changed:
• In the EFI partition formatting, I changed the unmount to sudo unmount. You need admin privs to do that which the "exit" releases earlier in the process. I didn't want users making folders & copying .kexts that they couldn't get at in the Finder or easily edit a .plist in TextEdit.

[SunLizard]

Very nice.  Maybe we should label this, the Missing Manual...

Might have reduced a lot of my headaches and saved me about 57 reboots had this been available a week ago. HA!  but what fun would that have been....

Good job.

S_L

[SunLizard]

Distemperus,

I've spent some time with your guide now (well a few hours at least.) its a very nice piece of work. If I could be so bold as to offer some suggestions...

1) RTF is nice as its universally readable by everyone, including those guys in '-s'. but you may want to shift it to PDF just so it locks things in place.  It might make it look more readable. 

2) I think the layout is very usable, recommend adding a Table of Contents just so you can see what is where in the document.

3) I think you *should* include source code analysis (perhaps create an advanced section to talk about it.)

4) Recommend adding a version/changelog discussion at some point.

5) I love the string examples.  I love code examples and find them very useful.  If you went PDF, you could add screenshots, the other think I think adds a lot to understanding.

6) For the n00bs (self included) recommend including a discussion of what files get hidden from finder and how to re-enable visibility.

Feel free to take any/some/all/none of these suggestions.  They're just my opinion and we all know about opinions...

pax
S_L

[diabolist]

Thankyou for this excellent piece of documentation, helped me no end!

One small point, in the section "Installing Chameleon into a hidden EFI partition on a hard drive (non-RAID):" you omit to put a step in to put 'boot' into the root folder of the EFI partition. This caught me, and took quite a long time for me to work out what I'd done wrong.

All best

Andrew

[Lord Anubis]

you omit to put a step in to put 'boot' into the root folder of the EFI partition.

there should be no OS on the EFI partition, therefor 'boot' should be not on the EFI partition. 'boot' should be in the root folder of the partition where your OS lives. That/your step is not right and shouldn't be done.

Check your setup carefully for errors.

HTH

LA

[yeshijian]

 ;DExcellect. this doc lets me understand Chameleon more. Thanks!

[jxphajzw]

Thank you !give me 

[jbreher]

As a new member of this forum, I'd like to point out something that confused me mightily.

Until one registers on the forum, one cannot even see that there is a linked file in the first post of this thread.

I would suggest that some way ought to be found to lead people who have not yet registered on the forum to this essential resource.

[Blackosx]

Thanks for the note jbreher. I have added a note to the first post to hopefully help new users.