OSX86 issue : how to customize chameleon RC4 used by easyBCD ????

I too would like to know if there is any progress. I would really like to be able to edit the com.apple.boot file and still have it boot correctly. Or even an alternative. Someone????
 
Having problems too. The kext loaded from the Chameleon RC4 iso are the wrong ones for my system like for many people. I keep getting kernel panics.

Any attempts to edit the iso makes it unbootable. By the way the Chameleon bootloader project has been upgraded to Chameleon 2.0 RC5.

Can support be re-added again for booting with nst_mac .efi like on the older beta builds? I would take the latest boot file from Chameleon, rename it to nst_mac.efi and put it in the NST folder. Things were working fine back then.
 
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For a long time I have been using easy bcd to boot 3 different windows and 1 linux but resorting to the bios to boot osx.
I have just tried the latest beta 2.0.3 120 and have a very similar problem to this thread.
I deleted my linux entry as I know if you have more than one "other" os you need neo-grub and I wanted to just try and add OSX first.
When I choose the osx entry it takes me to a Chameleon bootloader but not the one I see if I choose my osx hard drive from the bios choices.
This other Chameleon lists osx (and my windows) entries but when I choose osx the computer just restarts.
Is there a fix at the moment or is it work in progress, if it is in progress I am happy to wait patiently for a new version and carry on with the bios.
Mike
 
Like everyone else, i am having problems, but instead of video issues, other issues exists that cause kernel panics when loading osx via chameleon rc4 and easybcd. If i were to boot directly from the osx partition using a configured chameleon rc5, everything works perfectly. I ended up using a program called Lizard (can be found at kexts.com) which makes a bootable iso using your current .plist files and extensions directory. After making the iso in osx, i added a newentry into easybcd using the portable/external media method and selecting the iso. The biggest problem is that the iso needs to reside in a directory with no spaces so i currently have it sitting in my root (c:\). This method allowed me to finally boot into osx through easybcd, however, i believe a better approach would be to configure chameleon through easybcd natively (fingers crossed). On the bootup, easybcd still uses chameleon rc4, but seems to use the custom kexts...
 
Computer guru, thanks for the updates! I look forward to rc5 integration, but for some (like myself), the default configuration of chameleon will not boot (hardware issues) so specific kexts, etc are necessary. Any possibility of that functionality finding its way into easybcd?
 
frbowen, believe me, I would like nothing more. However, I have never received *any* help from the OSx86 community whenever I bring this topic up.

I have no problem writing the code to make it happen. I just need to know HOW to configure their bootloaders to look where I need them to.
 
If you have a way of customizing the Chameleon bootloader without needing to boot into the OS X to do so, I'm all ears.
 
Computer guru, any news on the RC5 implementation? can you make a estimate time for when we will have a beta build with it included?
 
Hello!
I had the same problem, took me a long time to understand what was wrong in the first place, since i'm a total newbie in the macos stuff. I finally managed to boot snow leopard with easybcd, and have my system working fine.
I replaced the default easybcd nst_mac.iso with the latest iboot iso (2.6) (which I obviously renamed to nst_mac.iso), rebooted and entered successfully my snow installation. The iboot iso reads the com.apple.boot.plist file from within its Preboot.dmg file, inside its extra folder. This boot.plist file there contains some flags that are necessary for my system, arch=i386 to boot snow with 32bit kernel and have all my drivers working fine(like the wireless netgear wg111v3), and PCIRootUID=1 to make my geforce gtx 260 work fully.
The iboot.iso has another com.apple.boot.plist file, outside of the preboot.dmg, in its extra folder, which is ignored (luckily cause it hasn't any useful flags there).
Iboot 2.6 uses the chameleon 2 rc5 r700 build.
Hope this all makes sense and it helps someone else out there.
(it would be nice if easybcd used the boot.plist file iboot uses, I think it covers a wide range of systems).
 
Hello crushtest,

Thank you!
I'll update this in the next build. I appreciate your doing the testing for us.

Addendum:

I don't understand why iBoot uses its own copy of mach_kernel?
 
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Why iboot uses its own kernel and what purpose does it serve I dont know.(does this have to do with why it reads its boot.plist file from the preboot.dmg?)
You should probably ask the iboot team in their forums, assuming it will help you to perfect the easybcd implimentation.
 
Do you need only the flags or also the kexts?

I mean, if EasyBCD's nst_mac.iso had the latest Chameleon (r700) and the ability to modify the kernel flags, is that enough?
 
I think that it is enough at least in my case. My system is pretty similar to original mac setups so I'm sure it would work . Both those flags I mentioned don't need any special kexts (from my understanding). But I see no harm in including the kexts included in the official chameleon binaries (as an example, I have in front of me chameleon rc4-r684 binaries, and the kexts are in the folder : Optional Extras->Extensions->(/10.6 and /common folders).
What would work best is if easybcd didn't use its own boot.plist file but link to the one already in the hard drive (in the root/Extra folder). That would also make sure that no kexts would be needed to be included in the easybcd installation, the ones in the hard drive would be used instead (but if I read the previous posts correctly you don't have the documentation to allow you to link to the hard drives boot.plist file so scrap this)
If you need me to to test beta easybcd's with the above ideas, I'd be happy to help.
 
That's exactly what I'd love to do. Unlike with iBoot, it is infeasible for EasyBCD to come with 30 megabytes worth of kernel or kext for the various configurations out there.

I think I'm going to end up downloading the Chameleon source code and see if I can't find out a way to either hack the code or the resulting project to pull this off, but I'm really *really* strained for time and have a lot of other projects and components (for NST and for my day job) that take a priority over Mac support.

I appreciate your willingness to help, and will definitely let you know.
 
This may sound stupid but I have to ask... Why do you need chameleon or any bootloader for that matter to come with easybcd? Why cant the program just use a method to point to the 200mb efi partition created by snow leopard and let it boot from the hard drive as it would if it was the first disk in the computer the one the bios points to to boot from??? I am new to this hackintosh stuff but it seems a lot simpler than trying to hack chameleon and or replace chameleon with iboot, chamiera, iboot legacy if you need that or anval etc.. the person with the hackintosh install would just have to have a boot loader installed on their mac osx partition and it will use the kexts off the mac partition etc... I am especially having issues with this as like other here i cannot boot using easybcd with its chameleon rc4. in snow leopard it wont use my graphics, wifi and is slower than molasses yet when I boot off my iboot cd or my unibeast created lion install flash drive which has chimera on it i think, its perfectly fine. in lion easybcd gets to the apple screen with animation like its going to load and then just restarts every single time. i have no issues booting off the hdd when i put it as disk 0 either. I have a perfect setup with my extras folder and the boot file on the hdd and cannot get it to work with easybcd by editing the nst_mac.iso in the nst folder or the one in program files(x86)\neo technologies\easybcd\profiles, or adding a preboot.dmg like you suggest. All I want to be able to do is either replace chameleon rc4 with whatever boot loader I want or just have the program point to my already perfect setup on my hdd..

Addendum:

Also you asked if anyone knows how to customize chameleon without booting into mac, I'm not sure if you mean getting into the dmg files but there is a tool out there called dmgtoiso and i have used it before a few times to convert dmgs to isos just to write them to a cd or dvd in windows and know that it works. once you convert it to an iso you can open it and edit anything you wish as if you were in mac. If that helps, awesome, if its not what you're looking for sorry
 
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