I'm booting from single Mac MBR partition, the boot.plist posted is the one in \Extra.
AFAIK permissions should not matter, besides the rest of the boot.plist directives work, only the Default Partition bit is ignored.
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>"Graphics Mode"="1680x1050x32"</string>
Hi. The above looks redundant with the "<key>Graphics Mode</key>" part. I think you don't need these Kernel Flags; I for one only have the "<key>Graphics Mode</key>" and it boots fine in the right resolution.
Regarding the Default Partition, maybe your drive is not "hd(0,2)", but "hd(1,2)". It should be, but does not have to, as this depends on the BIOS.
Also, as a work-around: If you just want to boot Leopard automatically, try adding "rd=uuid boot-uuid=<UUID of root volume>" to the "Kernel Flags" key.
Note, however, that you will not necessarily be able to boot other volumes with Leopard than the one with the UUID specified as this will be passed to the kernel and it will look for that volume, no matter what you select in Chameleon (yes, it's a bug).
I've read the two "Graphics Mode" entries are different, the first one sets up Chameleon's menu resolution, the one in the kernel flag sets up OS X boot and desktop resolution.
hd(0,2) is OS X partition, same as the one appearing on chameleon text menu. However the drive order seems to be changed somehow after booting (hd0 in chameleon becomes hd1 for OS X), but the I have OS X partition in second partition of first BIOS drive, and is identified as (hd0,2) in chameleon's text menu.
I'll try your other suggestion, but shouldnt that disable chameleon menu completely? (stopping me from booting verbose or safe?). Is it this correct?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Default Partition</key>
<string>hd(0,2)</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1680x1050x32</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>"Graphics Mode"="1680x1050x32" rd=uuid boot-uuid=4146DC20-F89C-3FA5-8815-7AB28F7D9839</string>
<key>Theme</key>
<string>Bootcamp</string>
<key>TimeOut</key>
<string>30</string>
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>SNIPPED EFI STRING FOR GRAPHICS</string>
</dict>
</plist>
I dont have chameleon installed to the MBR, I suppose that doesnt matter for boot.plist parsing right?
EDIT: tried zhell suggestion, it didnt work :-( Did I put the kernel flag wrong?
Isnt it weird drive order is swapped between chameleon and OS X? This is chameleons menu, see Leopard partition is hd(0,2):
And this is how they show up in Disk Utility, disk0 and disk1 are swapped?