Tag Archives: Snow Leopard

myHack 2.1

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This version is now deprecated, consult the downloads page for a link to the latest version.

This version was downloaded 1298 times.

You may notice I have skipped past the 2.0 Final release, I have been very busy in the last months and while I had been working on one I have already deprecated it by adding one new feature in particular – support for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

I have decided to remove the myHack Chameleon boot theme and stick with text only instead. The GUI is more trouble than it is worth at times and the Chameleon GUI code could really use a rewrite, should you choose to use a graphical menu you may install and configure one during post installation. I may provide one or more boot themes in the future as a separate download but what I have always aimed for with myHack is to keep things simple and to (hopefully) get as many systems booting as possible with minimal effort so I see no need for them to be installed by default.

You will also notice I am removing the EvOreboot.kext – it is no longer needed since newer builds of chameleon include a restart fix.

I have added experimental support for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. It has been tested and is working with Developer Preview 1 – The “Generic Extra” failed to boot my system personally (kernel panic on ApplePolicyControl, I will find a way to correct this using a “Generic Extra” in a future release of myHack, this is also a problem many people have with 10.7.3) – there is a simple solution to the ApplePolicyControl panic however, and that is using appropriate smbios information for your system in /Extra/smbios.plist. As I already have one I have used on both Snow Leopard and Lion I proceeded to move beyond testing and simply copied my Lion Extra’s onto the USB stick – after that the ML installer booted and OS X 10.8 installed without problem.

I call this experimental support because I can not and will not provide/disclose any information regarding OS X 10.8 that would violate my ADC NDA via this blog or the forum until the official public release is made. Additionally I do not know what changes are in store for 10.8, so while I can confirm myHack 2.1 will work for Developer Preview 1 with an Extra that works for you in Lion, I have no way to know how it will work with future releases.

I have not included an OSInstall Mod for 10.8 DP1 in this release. If you are one of the few ADC subscribers out there who still use MBR partitions on your hackintosh but would like to give ML a test run – Nawcom has posted an OSInstall bundle on his blog here. Installation is self explanatory, simply overwrite the files in the appropriate locations with the files included in the archive.

 

Changes from 2.0 RC4(.1):

  • Updated Chameleon to 2.1svn r1822*[1]
  • Added experimental support for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion*[2]
  • Added MBR OSInstall Mod for OS X 10.7.3 Installers*[3]
  • Bugfix: Passwords containing a $ symbol will now be accepted.
  • Removed EvOreboot.kext.
  • Disabled graphical boot menu.
  • Removed myHack boot theme.
  • Polished off Chameleon modules installation method.

*[1] I have edited Chameleon 2.1svn r1822 to include support for OS X 10.8 – these modifications have not yet been added to the official Chameleon trunk. This new build of Chameleon does resolve the bug that many experienced on RC4(.1) – bug info and resolution was posted here and here.

*[2] Tested with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Developer Preview 1 – May not work in future versions. You will have to point to the InstallESD.dmg manually by use of the “Browse Manually” option for now. The Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app itself will only be supported after the official public release.

*[3] Credit goes to Nawcom for taking the time to cook this up for us the other day.

Todo:

  • Update myFix
  • Find more time to improve myHack & myFix further

Make sure to read the release pages for myHack 2.0 RC1, RC2, RC3 and RC4 if you have not done so already, for a complete list of changes, contents and features.

Additional details of the myHack app’s contents will be maintained on the downloads page. Credits and further instructions will be maintained on the guide page.

Please post thank you comments and successful Mountain Lion installs on this post but for support or to report a problem you encounter – please use the myHack forum instead.

myHack 2.0 RC4.1

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This version is now deprecated, consult the downloads page for a link to the latest version.

This version was downloaded 42431 times.

This is just a minor edit of RC4′s resources. arch=i386 in boot plist caused more trouble than it was worth, i thought it might make things easier on people who relied on older kexts that are 32bit only, since 64bit apps can still run in userspace as long as there are x86_64bit instructions available in the CPU regardless of if the kernel itself is running i386 or x86_64 I didn’t think it would cause any trouble.

But it does cause some trouble, because some 32bit only kexts loaded for people who weren’t expecting them to load – this is what resulted in some blank screen issues for a few people with some graphics cards (x3100 was referenced in particular for one users report).

So anyway no reason to really download all over again, but just remove arch=i386 line from org.chameleon.Boot.plist or type arch=x86_64 at the boot prompt if you are having any issues with the latest version of myHack.

Download was updated and is still available on the myHack 2.0 RC4 release page, if you have RC4 already though please don’t waste the bandwidth – you can just edit the plist in Resources.

myHack 2.0 RC4

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This version is now deprecated, consult the downloads page for a link to the latest version.

This version was downloaded 42431 times.

So I tracked down the cause of the FPE (Floating Point Exception), thanks to one of the people reporting the bug providing me with a kernel dump. The reason why I couldn’t reproduce the error is obvious, I am on an x86_64 kernel, the error would only occur on systems running legacy_kernel which forces i386 only operation. The cause? I was using a long integer for calculating the byte count for file transfers…

Why is this a problem on i386 systems?

64bit systems have a long integer range of −9223372036854775808 to +9223372036854775807

32bit systems only have a range of −2147483648 to +2147483647

So when the byte count reached over +2147483647 it starts subtracting and goes all the way back to −2147483648, then division by zero happens and the universe unravels.

Summary of changes from myHack 2.0 Release Candidate 3:

  • Bugfix: Resolved floating point exception on i386 systems
  • Increased resolution on file transfers that are less than 1MB to 1KB for more accurate reporting
  • Updated Chameleon to revision 1332
  • Updated Patched_10.7_AppleRTC.kext to new version see blackosx’s comment HERE for details
  • myHack now installs Chameleon modules
  • Cleaned up and further optimized code – should launch faster now
  • Removed x86_64 instructions to lighten binary further
  • Updated myHack Chameleon theme
  • Added arch=i386 kernel flag to default org.chameleon.Boot.plist

Todo:

  • Update myFix
  • Something special that will be revealed once it is ready

Make sure to read the release pages for myHack 2.0 RC1, RC2, and RC3 if you have not done so already, for a complete list of changes, contents and features.

Additional details of the myHack app’s contents will be maintained on the downloads page. Credits and further instructions will be maintained on the guide page.

Feel free to comment on this post but for support or to report a problem you encounter – please use the newly opened myHack forum instead.

myHack 2.0 RC3

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This version is now deprecated, consult the downloads page for a link to the latest version.

This version was downloaded 1703 times.

Moving right along… A bug was reported a few times that I was sure I had resolved in beta testing, but with all the focus on Lion installation I seem to have overlooked some of the code for Snow Leopard installation in the release candidates (RC1/RC2).

So after releasing RC2 which was to address a number of issues, I went over this forum post again and decided to attempt to reproduce the error. Which I did. I have fixed this problem. myHack 2.0 RC3 will now prepare working installers from OS X 10.6 and 10.6.3 sources without any problems.

Also I have tweaked a few other things – I made a couple of small cosmetic adjustments to the output log and I have removed SleepEnabler.kext from the generic extra. I have also replaced ElliottForceLegacyRTC.kext with a Patched_10.7_AppleRTC.kext that I made. I have tested it and confirmed it is backwards compatible with Snow Leopard. Which is great because the ElliottForceLegacyRTC.kext was based on source code from OS X 10.5 and causes kernel panics on some newer hardware.

I triple checked to verify everything works properly with an OS X 10.6 installation by creating and booting to a freshly made installer several times. It works perfectly.

Summary of changes from myHack 2.0 Release Candidate 2:

  • Bugfix: OS X 10.6/10.6.3 Installers will now function correctly.
  • Removed SleepEnabler.kext and ElliottForceLegacyRTC.kext
  • Added Patched_10.7_AppleRTC.kext
  • Some minor cosmetic refinements to output log.
  • Added tr to included utilities.

Make sure to read the release pages for myHack 2.0 RC1 and RC2 if you have not done so already, for a complete list of changes, contents and features.

Additional details of the myHack app’s contents will be maintained on the downloads page. Credits and further instructions will be maintained on the guide page.

Feel free to comment on this post but for support or to report a problem you encounter – please use the newly opened myHack forum instead.

myHack 2.0 RC2

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This version is now deprecated, consult the downloads page for a link to the latest version.

This version was downloaded 129 times.

This release was made to address several issues that some users encountered with RC1. I must note that the issues were caused not by the way RC1 was coded but rather permissions or corruption issues on their own systems.

However, being the case that what we are trying to do here is help people get clean installs on systems that may be unclean to begin with I do want to do whatever I can to make sure this tool will work on even these damaged systems, at least to whatever extent I can.

Summary of changes from myHack 2.0 Release Candidate 1:

  • Completely rewritten progress bar functionality, no longer relies on CocoaDialog for progress bar display, embedded in application window instead.
  • No longer runs file copy process in background, it now runs directly in a pipe.
  • No longer needs to write/read files to/from /tmp.
  • Chameleon installation routine will now flush the boot sector prior to installing chameleon.
  • Force unmount of target prior to erase (prevents an error if the device is in use and can not be unmounted normally).
  • Refined UI appearance and log output.
  • New Icon/Logo – Contributed by blackosx

Make sure to read the release page for myHack 2.0 RC1 if you have not done so already, for a complete list of contents and features.

Additional details of the myHack app’s contents will be maintained on the downloads page. Credits and further instructions will be maintained on the guide page.

Feel free to comment on this post but for support or to report a problem you encounter – please use the newly opened myHack forum instead.