Can't find Extras folder

[brunoxyz]

 Hello, I have been reading this forum for about two days but there are answers I can't find..   I'm really new to macs. 

   I am trying to  customize the boot-loader and maybe upload a theme, I even have the images done but there is no way I can find the Extras folder..  I read somewhere that you might need to mount the EFI partition but I am clueless about doing that. Can someone enlighten me?

   I was also reading that there is no way currently to hide a specific partition on the chameleon boot-loader options, is that true? also is it possible to hide a physical internal hard drive from the options?

Thanks so much for the help and for chameleon, it is simply awesome.


(EDIT)
   I forgot to mention that I downloaded the package and installed it and it worked right away.  I am running windows 7 and Leopard 10.5.5 on two different partitions. Windows created a "System Reserved" partition which I will probably get rid of soon after reinstalling everything.

[Gringo Vermelho]

Yep, there is no way to hide partitions yet.
AFAIK it's possible to hide a physical drive, but then it will also not be available to the OS (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). I don't know how to do that though.

Assuming your EFI partition is at disk0s1, here's how to mount, access and unmount it.
Fire up Terminal.app.
If you're not sure, first type diskutil list to see where your EFI partition is.

sudo -s (type your password)
mkdir /Volumes/EFI (makes a directory to mount in)
mount_hfs /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/EFI (if you get 'invalid argument' at this point do fsck_hfs /dev/disk0s1)
killall Finder (must be capital F! - this restarts the Finder)

A drive icon for the EFI partition appears on your desktop and you can now access it..

When you're done:

Close all folders and anything else that has open handles to the EFI partition
umount /Volumes/EFI (if it doesn't want to unmount, try umount -f /Volumes/EFI to force it)
rm -rf /Volumes/EFI

Don't worry about setting the right permissions for your extensions, Chameleon ignores those altogether.

Hope this helps.

[brunoxyz]

hey thanks a lot for the steps, but I cannot find the EFI partition,, this is what I see when I type diskutil list:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *232.9 Gi   disk0
   1:               Windows_NTFS Windows 7               100.0 Mi   disk0s1
   2:               Windows_NTFS NTFS sys                107.8 Gi   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS MAC                     125.0 Gi   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *465.8 Gi   disk1
   1:               Windows_NTFS Storage                 465.8 Gi   disk1s1

is it possible not to have an EFI partition? or maybe the Extras is somewhere else?

thanks again. 

[Gringo Vermelho]

LOL

Well I hope someone else finds my little guide useful.

You don't have an EFI partition because you are on MBR partition scheme.

You need to format your drive with GUID and reinstall OSX if you want to run Chameleon from the EFI partition.

The Extra folder should be at the root of your HFS+ partition where OSx86 is installed. If it isn't, you should probably reinstall Chameleon 2.0 - but don't select to install it to the EFI partition!

Your partition scheme looks a bit messy.

[Gringo Vermelho]

I suggest the following layout:

Drive 1 - NTFS:
1: Windows install
2: Storage Partition

Drive 2 - GUID/HFS+J non-case sensitive (prepare using Apple Disk Utility)
1: OSX partition - first install an easy to install distro like iPC or something.
2: storage partition
3: an 8GB partition that holds the contents of a 10.5.6 Leopard DVD so that you can easily install retail to the first partition.

The idea here is to make an image of your retail Leopard DVD and then use Disk Utility to 'restore' it to the 8GB partition, instead of burning it to a DVD. It will become clear to you what I'm talking about once you open the DVD image with Disk Utility. You'll want to do this because it's much easier, not to mention faster, to install from a partition on your HDD than it is to install from DVD.

Once you've got Chameleon set up on the EFI partition with your required patches and modifications, you then use it to boot straight into the retail 10.5.6 installer on the 3rd partition.

You might want to use the bigger drive for Windows and the NTFS storage partition if that's where you spend most of your time. If you have a huge media collection you can still access all of it from within OSX, you just can't write to it. There are NTFS drivers for OSX that work (Paragon NTFS, and MacFuse with NTFS-3G) but personally I prefer to keep it read only.

Come Snow Leopard, there may be a fully functional HFS+ driver for Windows. Until then you can use Transmac or MacDrive under Windows for R/W access to your HFS+ partitions. It will be no surprise that I don't trust those either, but they can be useful.

When formatting as GUID the invisible EFI partition gets created automatically like on a real Mac. 
 
The problem with this is you'd need a third hard drive to juggle all your data around when making the changes. Or, unless you have a Blu-Ray burner, a hell of a lot of blank DVD8 discs and a dependable DVD burner.

[brunoxyz]

hey thanks a lot for all that info,...  although I am not sure about doing the partitioning like you said,  I don't completely understand the image part, I'll re-read it later..   for now I am going to try installing chameleon on a different drive to see if it shows the extras folder...   I will format the whole drive anyway and reinstall both OS because like you said the partitions are messy. my storage partition is about half full... not sure I can backup all that stuff..   mainly all planet earth discs in HD lol.

[brunoxyz]

Oh I forgot to ask, do I need to somehow uninstall the chameleon bootloader before installing it in a different partition?   

 I assume I can install it on a different partition by choosing a different location during the package installation, is that right?

[Gringo Vermelho]

I've edited my post to clarify the 'restoring the retail DVD' part.

Something must have gone wrong during the install process, maybe you've even found a bug. Unfortunately I have no experience with running off an MBR partition, so I can't help you.

Try installing Chameleon 2.0 on top of where it is already. Use the installer package, but download the binary package too, it comes with documentation. Link below.

You will not be able to install Chameleon 2.0 on any of your other partitions. I'll leave you to guess why!
 
http://chameleon.osx86.hu/file_download/27/Chameleon-2.0-RC1-r431-bin.tar.gz

[Gringo Vermelho]

I totally overlooked something (thanks FlagCarrier over at IM)

You extra folder may have the 'hidden' attribute set.

While at the desktop press cmd+shift+g and type /extra

That should take you to the extra folder - if it's there, but hidden.

[brunoxyz]

hmm, I'll try that, I found somewhere how to unhide files,,  I executed a command that unhid all files, supposedly, but I will try that.   

The image idea sounds good, and I own a leopard retail cd but I didn't know how to make it work so I installed iATKOS and it worked perfect just with AHCI driver and something else, and some audio kexts

I read you can patch the retail and do it yourself,,   and since my motherboard is a badaxe2 seems like it would be fairly easy, is there a guide I can use to do so?

thanks! sorry for asking so much

[Gringo Vermelho]

Follow the general outline that I've posted for you and fill in the blanks by searching.

The idea is that the EFI partition holds Chameleon 2.0 and all the patches you need to get retail working.

The same patches that allow you to boot from the partition that holds the contents of the retail DVD and complete an install, will subsequently allow you to run retail.

I can't tell you which patches you need, that's for you to discover.

AppleDecrypt.kext is mandatory and most people need disabler.kext for disabling AppleIntelCPUPowermanagement.kext.

You can pluck them out of your iATKOS install DVD using an app called Pacifist, or simply grab them from the extensions folder on your existing installation.

[brunoxyz]

I will do that,  looks like I only need about four patches in total, including those you mentioned.

[brunoxyz]

hey Beerkexd,  just wanted to thank you, the folder was there, I was able to find it like you said, so now I could customize it.  I'll upload a couple of themes soon