maybe i can dream of getting an installed Leopard partition on my EEE PC using the instructions.

will the OS X install play nicely with my existing grub2 ?

i suppose that Windoze still insists on being in the primary partition of the first drive…unless someone has found a way of tricking it..meanwhile it can stay in its VBox !

“I’m a PC, and removing the Windows partition from my hard drive was my idea.” – with thanks to KdotJ who is active on ubuntu forums tho’ his signature seems to have changed …

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1475969 netbook/ desktop
http://guide.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1474865 windows in VirtualBox

i found these useful hints
http://maketecheasier.com/13-ways-to-customize-ubuntu-netbook-remix-for-better-usability/2010/02/07
and plenty of relevant material at ubuntu forums for adjusting & enhancing the netbook experience.

i’ve put some work into my current Ubuntu install based on 9.10 karmic nbr2 and am very happy with the results

screenshots of my work in progress at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoI4wRVVjBs

you make some very pertinent points in yr post about the power of NBR systems and the pitfalls en route . . to the bootable Linux CD that is solid enough to mount a challenge to the desktop monopoly, and offer a painless route for users to verify ( and if necessary patch) their new system beofre commiting to an install( which would also need to provide a seamless dual-boot scenario for those who wish to continue using other OS).

i hope that 10.04 Lucid as a new long-term support release may be that wished-for system.( tho there are still issues notably with wifi)

envisage a process . .
download .iso or boot from CD
install iso to bootable USB( woth persistent storage)
boot from stick to test and patch for target computer. ..

boot options –
run live CD “original” . . the starting point., ignore persistent data
run live CD “vanilla” . . the ( current )starting point., ignore persistent data
run live CD “patched for my system”
install “vanilla”
install “patched” – ( if patch tests all passed )
( and the usual safe modes )

patched would offer a diagnostic system test as per MS
with an interactive patch dialogue ( to stand in for the hours of hunting down and fixing problems )
the user can skip this and proceed and has the option to resume the process either from within the session or at the next boot.
once satisfied the user can proceed to an install .. probably via remastersys creating a fresh .iso which we can then use to repopulate our USB
whi
we’d need plenty of space on the USB drive –
i’ve been struggling to keep everything within my 4Gb root filesystem ( no fancy mounts) with my present karmic.

room for – the original .iso
the vanilla machine – presently the entire content of the USB
the patched machine – which starts the same as the vanilla machine

and plenty of time for the various scripts to shunt things about between iso’s and
bootable images.

i’ve sen some suggestive leads about chain loading from a number of .iso images on the same stick but at that point decided to settle for one stick at a time for the time being !

Jumping thru hoops indeed . .

i had no wifi or other problems once i’d got a running karmic9.10 but en route . .

after a sdd crash i fouond myself with only ubu 8.04 on my stick.
this booted and installed correctly so the next step was to get a 9.10 installed.
tried this with several unsuccessful iterations when the previously booting stick decided not to . .

who knows whether the cat mbr.bin ( intended to write the MBR of the stick ) had any effect or was superceded by manually running grub-install from ubu 8 to the stick.

.. more than we ever wanted to learn about grub n mbr n such !

but finally got to boot casper on the stick and from there sucessfully installed 8.10 over the existing install ( no formatting ) preserving some useful stuff . .

i’m an EEE PC user planning an imminent move to Ubuntu Lucid & Debian Sid plpanning to repeat the 8.04->9.10karmic process with Lucid if necessary iin the event the vaunted/ problematic upgrade path fails.

i’m hoping to be able to upgrade my machine rather than do a fresh install, tho i have by now got .iso’s of my present install and backups( dumps ) of gconf.

if all goes well i should be within striking distance of reliably creating bootable sticks from arbitrary .iso sources,

i’ve been using virtualbox ( non-free ) to preview the various iso’s

i’m writing now on a live session USB system created from eb4 – which is an NBR derivative using debian sid as well as ubuntu repos. touch wood it’s been fast n solid all day – with working wifi, sound, video and a good ubuntu desktop.
when i reboot to my 9.10 i shall have a good look at the USB disk to see how it works and if/ how it differs from the 9.10 version.

scuse the long post . .
Best Regards

As trying to boot the DVD I’m left with “System config file /com.apple.boot.S/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.boot.plist not found”. Any idea of what to do?

Thanks,
Marcus

The Elements by Tom Lehrer is pretty incredible too…

I sit here with my TC that just underwent surgery too… I have a Macbook, bought a hard drive docking station and slipped it in, and can’t read the info either. Did you get your situation worked out?

I told them how stupid to replace the drive but offer nothing in retrieving my data. It is their known issue and they are just going to destroy it – but sadly, the drive itself is fine! I wish I could keep IT and return the rest of the time capsule. Seems silly to destroy a perfectly good 1TB hard drive.

Anyhow, I hope you worked out your data retrieval and I hope to do the same too very soon.

AppleHDA should provide a better solution – but I was never able to get it working properly (at best, sound broke up to static all too frequently). Given the time that’s passed, this could well now be much more stable.

As I mentioned before, the necessary permissions on the EFI partition make accessing it as root to simplest way to interact with its contents – just stick to Terminal.app and remember to become root (‘su – root’ followed by root’s password or ‘sudo su – root’ followed by your password. Set root’s password from the installation media if necessary, and note that the latter only works if your user also has a password set).

I have updated to 10.5.7 as per your instructions without a problem but still have mic issue and skype not working.

I have also found a download to install AppleHDA ktext from Mystiquemac but am unable to open the Extension directory as it states that i dont have permissions.

Please can you help.

Regards
Andrew.

Everything is working except this mic and skype lockups up if you try and make a call – no call just text chat is fine.

I have downloaded AzaliaAudio2.pkg installed it then installed Audieee NC10.dmg

But the external and Internal Mic don’t work.

I hope you can help on this then I will try and leave you alone as everything else I need is fine. Ps I am still on 10.5.6 as i thought it might be best to stay put what do you think?

Cheers
Andrew.

No need to apologise – we all have to start somewhere… and especially in this case, where the fault is entirely mine! I had a few little utilities in my Extensions directory, which would work out the dependencies for a given kernel extensions or similar. So that these could still be run, there’s a line in the update.sh script which makes them executable again. The problem is, I stopped shipping these scripts and so the update script outputs this error. It’s definitely not a problem, but feel free to edit the update.sh script to remove the chmod line which reverts ‘*.sh’.

With older versions of OS X, deleting the kernel extension cache file from the Caches directory improved the reliability of booting after modifying kernel extensions, especially if their dependancies changed. I suspect that removing it is no longer necessary – but doing so does very little harm and should still improve reliability when extensions are modified.

Hope this helps,

Stuart

Thank you for the reply, I think logging at all the work that you put into helping people. I think that you should be knighted and I’m sure that lots of people would agree.

Right, just so you understand why i’m asking I have not used Mac OSX before only for basic web browsing functions. But I should pick it up with more reading which I will do, as I use to have a technical IT job but now only manage others.

Anyway, I have created and run the script as follows just to check that I’m doing it right, and I also have a question on why you have to run the rm command. I’m sure i’m not the only person asking as I thought that the update looks at the Extension folder on the EFI not OSX partition.

Please see what i did below.

andrews-macbookair11:~ Andrew$ sudo ./mountefi.sh
Rebuild caches by running “update.sh” in /Volumes/EFI, and
“rm Extensions.mkext Extensions/Caches/com.apple.kext.info”
in /System/Library/

Please remember to “umount /Volumes/EFI” once finished…

andrews-macbookair11:~ Andrew$ sudo /Volumes/EFI/update.sh
Updating EFI boot cache…
chmod: /Volumes/EFI/Extensions/*.sh: No such file or directory
Update succeeded

andrews-macbookair11:~ Andrew$ cd /Volumes/OSX/System/Library

andrews-macbookair11:Library Andrew$ sudo rm Extensions.mkext Extensions/Caches/com.apple.kext.info
andrews-macbookair11:Library Andrew$ sudo umount /Volumes/EFI

Why does it give and chmod error when updating.

I’m sure I’m missing the point somewhere.

Sorry for the lack of knowledge – but I want to get it working as I use it every day.

Regards
Andrew.

Great news – it’s always good to hear of an installation which worked!

(The NC10 seems to be very picky about what USB devices it’ll boot from, so a significant minority of people are finding the even the NC10′s BIOS doesn’t see a bootable device even with the USB keys plugged in – which gives the boot-loader no chance of working!)

The EFI partition is, by it’s nature, completely hidden until manually mounted.

There is a script to do this in the very first comment, but many people are unsure of how to make use of this.

If you open Terminal.app and type the following:

cat > ~/mountefi.sh
#!/bin/bash

sudo mkdir -p /Volumes/EFI
sudo mount_hfs /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/EFI

echo "Rebuild caches by running \"update.sh\" in /Volumes/EFI, and"
echo "\"rm Extensions.mkext Extensions/Caches/com.apple.kext.info\""
echo "in /System/Library/"
echo
echo "Please remember to \"umount /Volumes/EFI\" once finished..."

… and then press ctrl+D, at which point the script will be created. Then type “chmod 755 ~/mountefi.sh” to make the script executable, and “sudo ~/mountefi.sh” (Mac OS no longer support SUID scripts) to execute the script and mount the EFI partition.

You must have a password on your account for this to work – ‘sudo’ will not accept blank passwords. If you don’t want to set a password, then become the root user (“su - root“) and repeat all steps to recreate the script as root. This, in turn, requires that a root password be set. The easiest way to do this is to reboot with the installation USB devices inserted, and once the Mac OS installer has launched look at the Utilities menu – one of the options here is “Password reset” (or similar).

Once the script has successfully run, a new disc icon for the EFI partition will appear on the Desktop – but I’d advise avoiding this. Instead, the partition is best accessed from “/Volumes/EFI/” and is best interacted with from a Terminal session – and for permissions reasons, probably as the root user.

Finally, as the script prompts, please remember to “cd ; sudo umount /Voumes/EFI” once you’re finished – Finder won’t allow you to eject the disc, and leaving the partition mounted could potentially lead to corruption (as the volume is not checked when the OS boots, or at any other point).

I seem to remember that I tried Skype, and it just worked – but bear in mind that there are a never-ending combination of graphics drivers and BIOS over-rides out there, so what works for one installation may not be good for another. Skype has also recently been updated, and I can’t say whether this is make anything different at all, better or worse.

Upgrading to 10.5.7 should be fine. 10.5.8 introduces changes which require additional patches (I’m afraid that you’ll have to Google it) which cause OS X to think that the NC10 lacks a battery, and there were some clunky work-arounds. I understand that there’s now an elegant fix which obviates the need for these, though. Even so, I’d suggest that 10.5.7 is the fastest and most compatible release of OS X to run on NC10 hardware. I’ve not looked in to running 10.6.x – but (certainly at least initially) this required a patched kernel in order to even boot. This would make an upgrade from an existing 10.5.x installation likely the easiest method to pursue – but it seems that there’s enough hackery involved that you’d actually need to research the current state-of-the-art and work out a plan of attack of how to get there yourself to have any chance of understanding what the system is doing, and how to fix it when it inevitably breaks

(And it’s probably worth waiting for the imminent release of 10.6.3 even then)

Thank you for creating this guide. I am writing this on my NC10 OSX installation.

When i performed the following step – MacOS Installer.dmg everthing worked fine and i can boot without the USB drive. However i cant find the partition EFI so cannot continue with the update steps.

Please can you help.

Also I have read the full 63 page blog but am still unsure which update to perform. ie. 10.5.6 etc…

One other thing is have you managed to get skype working?

Regards
Andrew.

I wasn’t using a retail version, but I’ve got it installed now.

I’ve gotten almost everything working, function keys for brightness, following Tea’s DSDT.aml, sound, wi-fi. The only thing I’m missing now is Intel Speedstep. It seems like I am stuck at 798MHz and CPUi only shows one processor. I’m not sure what’s wrong.

Any ideas?