does cham work on a GPT drive without using EFI partition? If so how?

[greenman]

I have a working vanilla system on one disk using munky's bootloader and EFI partition with the few kexts I need.

on my other drive I want to install chameleon. (It had been a kalyway install)

both drives and all partitions etc are GUID

so I've booted into my regular install (using the munky EFI etc) copied the whole vanilla system across to the partition I want to boot from on the other drive (using super duper, which normally works fine), and installed chameleon, standard (non EFI partition) install, copied my kexts into extra and rebooted selecting that hdd in the bios

at first chameleon didn't even boot. I just got half a screen of rubbish characters - I then tried various other things including installing the EFI partition version, and installing manually.

at one point i got the bootloader to start, but it could only see the bootable partitions on the OTHER drive! of course it couldn't actually boot from them since they don't have the chameleon boot file or an extra folder

when i manually removed the part of the install on the EFI partition, and reinstalled the regular version, I got to boot0 starting and saying boot1 error , but boot1 has been manually installed on the correct partition.

here's the message i get:

boot0: GPT
boot0: testing
boot0: done
boot1: error

how do I check if boot1 is installed correctly?

there must be some incompatibility or something that i don't know about... I've looked through this forum, but can't find anything relevant (and the search function seems to only partially work!)

can anyone help? do you have to do something different for GUID/GPT? I don't think my copied system is the problem since chameleon mostly hasn't got that far...

[greenman]

to clarify, I've only seen guides and info on how to install chameleon on a GPT drive using the EFI partition, or on a MBT drive using the Extra folder at root.

is it actually possible to install on a GPT drive and not use the EFI partition?

[Blackosx]

is it actually possible to install on a GPT drive and not use the EFI partition?

I have put together a guide for a retail install which puts Chameleon on it's own partition and not the EFI partition. It's specifically for the GA-EP45-DS3L but you can get a general overview from it. It's not a manual install but uses the installer. It's on Insanely, look for showtopic=173651

See if that helps you

[greenman]

great guide, but it assumes that you are starting with an empty drive.... most of the info is stuff I know, it sort of glosses over how to make sure that all the chameleon bootloaders operate correctly, since I guess the installer is supposed to take care of that.

I have data on another partition on the target drive, so I don't want to reformat/repartition, just install chameleon as the only bootloader on that physical drive.

is formatting or repartitioning the drive really needed?

does chameleon need its own partition? can it go on the osx partition? i've only seen instructions for doing this on MBT drives.

I'm fairly confident on getting the right tweaks for my mobo in extras, but I'm ignorant about the low level stuff involved with bootloaders.

at the moment i just need to get chameleon starting up and trying to boot the system , if the system boot fails because it needs different kexts or plist etc I can deal with that ok

[Blackosx]

Chameleon can be installed on the OS X partition on a HD with a GPT using the installer, I used to have it this way with a retail install. Just select a standard install and point it to the OS X partition.

[greenman]

ok, good, that's what I initially assumed and what I originally did. However it didn't work, so there must have been something else wrong.

Does the chameleon installer overwrite any other bootloaders?

what can I check to understand and fix my Boot1 error as described above?

[Blackosx]

Well best way I can think of (sorry if it's not exactly what you need) is to write the files again but to the partition you want, not the EFI partition and for that I am going to send you back to where you have already been http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,649.0.html.

and to quote straight from munky's guide..

./fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdiskX - this puts the stage 0 bootloader onto the target disk
dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXs1 - this puts the stage 1 bootloader onto the target partition (EFI partition)

where X is the info you get from diskutil list

Is this any help?

[greenman]

well, i've already tried this, but maybe I got it wrong, since I don't understand the fdisk and dd commands

it seems straightforward though, you just have to select the correct value for X to select the partition you want...

and isn't this what the installer should do when run in the default mode for a standard install?

incidentally, i ran the Chameleon installer on my munky EFI booted osx partition by mistake once. oops I thought i'd broken my munky bootloader, but no it still works, so is chameleon not overwriting it? so lucky escape for me, but i don't understand it.

[greenman]

well , I've given up for now getting Chameleon to boot in the stndard install. I reinstalled it with the EFI HFS version and it now works

non of my systems will boot from it though, even though I have exactly the same kexts in my extra folder that I have to load in my munky EFI booter on the other disk which works.

why?

I guess thats another thread, but startup is hanging on speedit.kxt although the same system and extras are fine from the munky bootloader on the other disk....

[Blackosx]

Here's some more reading for you that might help..
http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,323.0.html
http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,358.0.html

[greenman]

I got it all working. woot.

I needed a new dsmos, no idea why, the old one works with the old bootloader...

also no idea why I could only get it to work on the EFI partition install, but I guess that will do, now to sort out a EFI partition mounting and unmounting script.

I even have sleep working on 10.5.8 with dsdt and no disabler.kext

[18seven]

Mentioning 10.5.8 initially would have helped get you there faster.

[greenman]

is dsmos dependent on the bootloader?? (or vice versa)

I can understand dsmos needing to change with a new system version maybe, but then why would 10.5.8 boot from the munky bootloader with the old dsmos?