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Chameleon => Bug Reports => Topic started by: Doraemon on April 14, 2009, 10:40:05 PM

Title: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: Doraemon on April 14, 2009, 10:40:05 PM
Hi all,

I installed Chameleon 2RC1 on a GPT fresh install of iPC 10.5.6 (vanilla) using only a patched nForceATA kext for my mb chipset:

When I try to boot after POST, I select my OSx86 hdd with Chameleon 2 installed, the screen is black and then the computer reboots, POSTs, and repeats: infinitely booting, POSTing, booting, etc. but never loading the Chameleon boot loader.

I've read through the forum, I don't see a topic opened for this issue though in the initial comments on the blog posting of Chameleon 2.0 there was at least one other user who appeared to have this identical problem. I apologize if I've missed it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

Cheers!

EDIT: I booted into Parted Magic 4.0 to see what flags Chameleon assigned to my partitions, my GPT drive looks like this:

{unallocated (23.54 MiB)}
{/dev/sda1 (hfs+) /media/sda1 (Leopard) (23.90GiB) (no flags)}
{unallocated (128MiB)}
{/dev/sda2 (hfs+) (Theta) (119.90GiB) (no flags)}
{unallocated (128MiB)}
{/dev/sda3 (ntfs) (Vista) (24GiB) (msftres)}
{/dev/sda4 (fat32) (EFI) (200MiB) (boot)}
{unallocated (64.62GiB)}

Not sure if that helps...

UPDATE: I can now boot with Chameleon 2RC1. I'm not exactly sure what changed but I was abled to boot into my Leopard partition with the iPC install DVD (Chameleon 1.0.11) and then used the manual install method, since that point I have been able to boot with Chameleon 2.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: ksudeadeye on May 01, 2009, 09:16:12 AM
Hey All:

I've been having a similar problem. I'm trying get OSX 10.5.6 (retail) running on my workstation (Asus P5B-D mobo).

I have Kalyway 10.5.2 installed on a 16GB thumb drive and I'm trying to use it to install the retail DVD ISO on an external 320 GB hard drive. Kalyway runs great. I can install the retail DVD ISO, the 10.5.6 combo update, and Chameleon (v2.0RC1) to the external drive without an issue.

Once I reboot, I set my BIOS to boot off the external drive. Then I see the following lines flash briefly on the screen (similar to Kalyway's boot process):

boot0 : GPT
boot0 : testing
boot0 : done
boot1 : /boot


Then the machine suddenly reboots. This loops over and over again. Chameleon never loads.

I've attached screenshots of the parition tables for the thumb drive (Kalyway) and the external drive (retail). The only difference I can see is that the thumb drive's EFI parition is FAT32, while the external drive has an HFS+ EFI partition. In both cases the EFI parition is the boot partition. I've also mounted the external drive's EFI partition and verified that Chameleon has been installed.

Not sure where to go from here. I've tried booting to the Kalyway install CD and setting the startup partition like Doraemon suggested, but it still doesn't seem to work. Thanks in advance for any help.

-ksudeadeye

Thumb Drive
(http://www.crypticrage.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/osx_repair.jpeg)

External Drive
(http://www.crypticrage.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/osx_retail.jpeg)
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on May 01, 2009, 10:44:35 PM
Once I reboot, I set my BIOS to boot off the external drive. Then I see the following lines flash briefly on the screen (similar to Kalyway's boot process):

boot0 : GPT
boot0 : testing
boot0 : done
boot1 : /boot


Then the machine suddenly reboots. This loops over and over again. Chameleon never loads.

Can you post your currently used com.apple.Boot.plist? If you have a @Hz setting in your Graphics Mode setting in the boot.plist, try to remove the @frequency part.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: ksudeadeye on May 02, 2009, 04:42:58 AM
Here's com.apple.Boot.plist (from the EFI partition). I haven't modified it at all.

Code: [Select]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: rocksteady on May 13, 2009, 04:18:49 PM
Here's com.apple.Boot.plist (from the EFI partition). I haven't modified it at all.
Assuming that you're in a all SATA setup and that SATA is setup as AHCI (not as a bastardized SATA/IDE mode), 
try to add a Timeout option in your com.apple.Boot.plist

Code: [Select]
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>5</string>

Kinda anecdotal info floating around, but works for some Asus boards.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: popophobia on May 15, 2009, 04:51:48 AM
I have the same problem. For both retail install on my 2 HDDs. Both of them have timeout of 3. I'm using munky EFI partition.

Before this, chameleon 2 RC1 loads just fine on XxX distro install. Wonder if the EFI partition messes up something...
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 23, 2009, 01:11:28 AM
Same problem here on a MSI 945 Platinum. HFS partition is second primary of SATA HD, and first primary is NTFS. Chameleon 1.0.11 works fine.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 27, 2009, 06:45:14 PM
Same thing with RC2.
Is there a debug version, so I can try to find out what's causing the reboot?
Version 1.0 works fine on this system.
Thank you.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on July 28, 2009, 04:29:59 PM
Chameleon 2 needs the new boot1h code updated on your hfs partition to able to load 63.5k+ boot2 images.
The same goes if you use your EFI partition for the booter.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 28, 2009, 05:49:24 PM
Hi, thanks for the reply.
I did manual install, wrote boot1h to HFS partition using dd, and do not use EFI partition.
What else can be wrong?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on July 28, 2009, 05:55:22 PM
so how far do you get? do you see the boot0 .. boot1 outputs? Can't you press any key to get to the boot menu somehow?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 28, 2009, 06:18:36 PM
I see no messages, it just reboots (well, I think boot0 message is there, but it flashes so fast I can't see). If I replace /boot with version 1.0.11 it works fine.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on July 28, 2009, 07:29:56 PM
Ok, may i have your first 3 sectors of your HFS partition please?

you can extract it with dd:

sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskXsY of=napalmHFSHeader bs=512 count=3

... also you may give a try to debug loading boot with boot1hp/boot1he.

boot1hp goes in place of boo1h to your partition, and boot1he should be dd'ed to at sector 40 of your disk:

sudo dd if=boot1hp of=/dev/rdiskXsY bs=512 count=2
sudo dd if=boot1he of=/dev/rdiskX bs=512 count=8 seek=40

First send me your HFS header only.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 28, 2009, 07:42:21 PM
Sure.
The computer with this problem is at home, I'll send you the first 3 blocks of HFS partition as soon as I get there.
Thanks again.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 28, 2009, 10:21:19 PM
Here goes the HFS header.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on July 28, 2009, 10:37:34 PM
Thanks, it seems fine.

The next step could be to try booting with boot1hp/boot1he.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 28, 2009, 11:34:06 PM
Test with boot1hp and boot1he shows info on attached screenshot, then reboots when key is pressed.
Running "sudo dd if=boot1he of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=512 count=8 seek=40"
got message "dd: /dev/rdisk0: Resource busy"
so I wrote it in Linux using /dev/sda, is it a problem?
Thanks for your attention.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on July 28, 2009, 11:47:19 PM
All seems fine. Just wanted to make sure if your issue resides somewhere in boot1h/filesystem level or in the next stage. You can revert back to the non-verbose boot1h. Can you try to boot Chameleon without GUI?

Add the below key to your boot.plist:

Code: [Select]
<key>GUI</key>
 <string>n</string>

Anyway, the best would be to add some debug output, then we can narrow down where the booter fails.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 28, 2009, 11:58:05 PM
Reboots even with GUI disabled. The key must be the first in the file?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on July 29, 2009, 12:57:06 AM
Well, i can't say anything more without adding some debug output.
Also the key order doesn't matter. Btw what CPU/motherboard/VGA do you have?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 29, 2009, 01:08:54 AM
Motherboard: MSI 945 Neo Platinum, Intel chipset (ICH7), VIA RAID (VT6410, not in use)
CPU: Pentium 4 EMT64
Video: ATI Radeon X1550 (tested with a Geforce 6600LE too)

Would you add the debug info in boot?

Thanks.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 29, 2009, 03:27:11 AM
I installed Chameleon 2.0 RC2 in a USB stick, booted it in the same computer, and it works. But from SATA HD, reboot.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on July 29, 2009, 09:13:47 PM
And do you can boot your SATA hdd partition when booting from the USB?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on July 29, 2009, 09:39:48 PM
Yes I can.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: ksudeadeye on August 01, 2009, 06:43:19 AM
napalm/zef:

I tried installing Chameleon 2.0 RC2 on a USB drive to see if I could get the same results napalm did. The drive is the same one I've been using with Kalyway already loaded on it (FAT32 boot partition). During boot, the screen quickly displays some more garbage and Darwin x86 loads up like it normally would.

This is the text that flashes on the screen before Darwin appears, I never see the Chameleon GUI...

>00000080
<00000002
000000C1
00000048
*<00064028
JH00064028
]-0006402A
=00060001
}*!-00091428
=009007E
Y

Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on August 01, 2009, 07:32:16 PM
ksudeadeye, when I installed Chameleon 2 on a USB drive I used HFS MBR partition. Did you use FAT32? Maybe because that it boots Darwin without showing the GUI.
I noticed that if you have an invalid entry in com.apple.Boot.plist, Chameleon ignores the entire file and boots Darwin.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on August 23, 2009, 10:49:37 PM
Is Chameleon 1.0.11 source available? I'd like to compare it with 2.0 because 1.0.11 boots fine from my SATA HD and 2.0 only works from external USB drive. Thanks.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: zef on August 24, 2009, 11:23:47 AM
Is Chameleon 1.0.11 source available?

You can get the sources for the 1.0.11 version here:

http://chameleon.osx86.hu/file_download/7/Chameleon-1.0.11-src.tar.gz (http://chameleon.osx86.hu/file_download/7/Chameleon-1.0.11-src.tar.gz)
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: yushir0 on August 25, 2009, 06:21:43 PM

boot0 : GPT
boot0 : testing
boot0 : done
boot1 : /boot



That happened to me when i put another theme, not the default one, as the default one (ie on the Default folder inside Theme there was a theme different from the one it came).

Just restored the original theme and solved (chamaleon could boot the other them with the Theme string, it's some kind weird that it needs the original theme to boot with GUI).
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on August 26, 2009, 07:21:20 AM
In Chameleon 1.0.11 ReadPCIBusInfo( &bootInfo->pciInfo ) is called in scanHardware()
I try to add this to Chameleon 2.0-RC2 and it doesn't reboot, it starts without GUI, but when I select to boot Mac OS X it reboots.
Any ideas on this?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: Kabyl on August 26, 2009, 11:51:13 AM
In Chameleon 1.0.11 ReadPCIBusInfo( &bootInfo->pciInfo ) is called in scanHardware()
I try to add this to Chameleon 2.0-RC2 and it doesn't reboot, it starts without GUI, but when I select to boot Mac OS X it reboots.
Any ideas on this?

You need to check all the changes made in that part of the code.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on August 26, 2009, 06:55:35 PM
You need to check all the changes made in that part of the code.

There are lots of changes in that part of the code, version 1.0.11 doesn't even have the scan_platform() in libsaio.
I see these messages at boot
Code: [Select]
TSC: Reported FSB:    0.0000MHz, corrected FSB:  200.977053MHz
TSC: Verification of clock speed failed. Fallback correction was performed. Please upgrade bootloader.
TSC: Frequency =    3215.632049MHz, FSB frequency =  200.977053MHz, bus ratio = 16
Maybe there's some incompatibility with calculate_freq()?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: Kabyl on August 26, 2009, 08:03:02 PM
I see these messages at boot
Code: [Select]
TSC: Reported FSB:    0.0000MHz, corrected FSB:  200.977053MHz
TSC: Verification of clock speed failed. Fallback correction was performed. Please upgrade bootloader.
TSC: Frequency =    3215.632049MHz, FSB frequency =  200.977053MHz, bus ratio = 16
Maybe there's some incompatibility with calculate_freq()?

The messages you posted are not from the booter, you're using the voodoo kernel.

Try building the booter with 'make embedtheme DEBUG=DEBUG_FREQ'.

Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on August 26, 2009, 09:30:14 PM
With embedtheme it reboots even calling ReadPCIBusInfo()

DEBUG_FREQ shows correct values, I think... it's a P4 LGA775 EM64T
CPU Model: 4 - CPU Family: 15 - CPU Ext. Family: 0
CPU Multiplier: max: 16 current: 16
TSC Frequency: 3216MHz
CPU Frequency: 3216MHz
FSB Frequency: 201MHz
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: Kabyl on August 26, 2009, 10:58:32 PM
And why are you calling ReadPCIBusInfo() ?
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on August 27, 2009, 12:39:02 AM
And why are you calling ReadPCIBusInfo() ?

Because it's what is done in scanHardware() in version 1.0.11, which works in my computer.
In version 2.0 scanHardware() calls scan_platform() and it reboots my system, so I tought that maybe calling the old ReadPCIBusInfo() would prevent the reboot, and it actually does, but it's not of much help as the GUI is not shown and Mac OS doesn't boot.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: ksudeadeye on September 01, 2009, 03:22:50 AM
I installed Chameleon 2.0 RC2 in a USB stick, booted it in the same computer, and it works. But from SATA HD, reboot.

I finally got mine to quit rebooting. Had to remove the HDD from the external USB enclosure and plug it into the mobo directly.

Not sure if that means Chameleon doesn't like external USB drives or not, but no matter. Progress is good stuff! :)

Thanks again for the help guys.
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on September 17, 2009, 02:23:57 AM
Tested RC3, it doesn't reboot, but hangs at
boot0: done
boot1: /boot
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: geneg1 on October 02, 2009, 07:18:30 AM
I was having a very similar problem with a GUID-partitioned drive that worked great with Chameleon 1 but constantly rebooted before getting to the GUI with Chameleon RC1, 2, and 3. Here's how I fixed it:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=163790&view=findpost&p=1287287 (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=163790&view=findpost&p=1287287)
Title: Re: Automatic reboot; Chameleon not loading?
Post by: oldnapalm on March 26, 2010, 04:52:49 PM
Just in case there's somebody else with this problem, the bug was fixed by this patch
http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,854.0.html
RC4 is working fine.