Some More Bytes

This is a guide to install OsX 10.6.2 Snow Leopard into a Medion Akoya Mini, MSI Wind and clones for dummies like me.

In this second part of the guide, we’ll use the USB drive that we created in the PART I OF THIS GUIDE to install Snow Leopard in the Netbook. The guide continues in PART III.  The process is a bit long, but it is pretty easy to follow the indications.

As I stated in the first part, the credit does not go to me. I mainly followed a guide from a spanish forum written by Q3Soft here (spanish), which seems to be translated from a now unavailable guide on the old msiwind.net forum by 18seven and Dalton63841 (who I believe can be found now at insanelywind.com). You better go register at insanelywind.com, cause there are some files you will need to download from the forum. Anyway, it is the best place for netbook hacking so it is a good information resource.

So, Let’s Go!.

Install the OsX on the netbook hard disk

1. Plug the USB drive in and boot the netbook. Press F11 at start (F2 depending on your netbook model) to choose the booting device, and select the USB drive. The OsX Install will boot.
2. Select the Language.
3. Once the language is selected, instead of going on with the install process, select from the top menu bar Utilities->Disk Utility
4. In the disk utility, select on the left panel the netbook hard disk, and click on the Partitions tab.
5. In the Partitions tab, select 1 partition. The partition type will be Mac Os Plus (Journaled). Asign a name to the partition. I called it Hackintosh.
6. Press the Options button and select GUID partition table schema.
7. Apply changes. The resulting partition will be a little smaller that it was before formatting it. This is because the GUID partitions, uses a hidden 200-300Mb partition to handle the EFI boot and the kernel extensions. Later in this guide we’ll add those required extensions for our netbook.
8. Check that your language is correct in the upper right corner.
9. Let’s go on with the installation.  You need to select the hard disk where the OsX will be installed. If you called it like me, it will be Hackintosh.
10. Press the Customize button. Uncheck the Printer Compatibility, and check the options X11, Rosetta and Quicktime 7. Unfold the  Available Languages Node, and select only the language you’re goint to use.
11. Apply the changes, and start the installation process. It will take about 20 minutes. Remember to move around the mouse every now and then, because after 10 minutes the screen seems not to reflresh, giving the impression the computer is dead. When the installation finish, the computer will reboot itself, but it will not boot OsX. That’s because we need to install now the EFI boot system into the netbook main hard disk.
12. So, we will need once more to boot from the USB drive. As mentioned before, the USB drive must be pluged in, press F11 on the BIOS boot screen and select the USB drive as boot device. Chameleon will boot, and this time, select Hackintosh (our netbook disc) instead of the USB Drive (Install DVD) boot as we did before.
13. Select your country. Continue.
14. Select your keyboard type. Continue.
15. When asked if you want to transfer information from another hard disk, or time machine, answer NO. Continue.
16. Enter your registry information, or whatever comes to mind. Continue.
17. Some more questions you should answer. Computer placement and so. Continue.
18. Create the user account. Use a password. Continue.
19. You should be able to see the OsX main desktop now. A lot of things will not work, so it’s better not to start playing with it yet, but don’t worry, we’ll fix all of this.

Install the EFI Boot system on the netbook hard disk

20. We’ll need this four files (Contact or leave a comment if any link is dead):
    • Chameleon 2.0 RC3 r658: A newer version of Chameleon. Brose the right side of the website for releases, and select the file: Chameleon-2.0-RC3-r658-bin.tar.gz
    • Vanilla.zip:  Some kexts.

    Unzip all these files into your Downloads folder. Then you can delete the zip files if you want.

21. Open a Terminal (Applications->Utilities>Terminal)
22. Type:
    sudo -s
    hit enter, and type the password of you user (the one that you created in step 18). Do not pay attention if you see somehing like Error 35 in the output. This will give you root permissions until you close the Terminal, so don’t do it, ok?
23. Let’s see how are our disks called. Type in the terminal:
    diskutil list
    You will see 2 hard disks. One of them will be probably called disk0, which will have a GUID_partition_scheme and it will have the capacity of your netbook hard drive. This is our main hard disk. You will see that it has a partition called Hackintosh (or the name we selected). It will have, just before the Hackintosh partition, another one without name and of type EFI. This will be where we’ll install the booting system. Write down the identifier of this partition. Probably disk0s1.
    The other disk that you see, will be the USB drive that you have plugged in, which you can identify by the BOOTLOADER partition in it that we created in the first part of this guide.
24. So, assuming from now on that the EFI partition of the last step was called disk0s1 type in the Terminal:
    newfs_hfs -v EFI /dev/disk0s1
    This will format the partition with HFS filesystem.
25. Now we need to mount somewhere this unit to start adding things there. In the Terminal:
    mkdir /Volumes/EFI
mount_hfs /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/EFI
    Now it should be accesible from Finder.
26. We need to create some folders. Create a folder called Extra and hanging from this one, two folders called Extensions and Themes. In the Terminal:
    mkdir -p /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Extensions
mkdir /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Themes
27. Now we need to install chameleon into this partition. You should have unzipped the chameleon tar.gz file into your Downloads folder. So, from the Terminal:
    cd ~/Downloads/Chameleon-2.0-RC3-r658-bin/i386
fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0
dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk0s1
cp boot /Volumes/EFI
28. Load more chameleon files into the EFI partition. From the Terminal:
    cd ~/Downloads/Chameleon-2.0-RC3-r658-bin/Optional\ Extras
cp -R smbios.plist Themes /Volumes/EFI/Extra
29. Unmount the EFI unit. From the Terminal:
    umount -f 7Volumes/EFI
rm -rf /Volumes/EFI
fsck_hfs /dev/disk0s1
    You should see in the output: The volume EFI appears to be OK.
    Now this is the default EFI boot system. Now you need to setup the specific kernel extensions to support your netbook.

Install specific kernel extensions for MSI Wind/Akoya and clones

30. First thing we need is to setup the UUID.kext file.It must be filled with your MAC, a number that identofies your wireless card. Click on the upper apple icon on the toolbar, and click on About this Mac. Click on the left menu the Network section. If it is empty, it means that your wifi card is not currently detected by OsX. This is expected in the Medion Akoya E1210, and in the Advent 4211B. If this happens to you, you probably will have a Realtek RTL8187SE card which comes bundled with a lot of netbooks. You’ll need the Realtek utility both to operate the wifi card and now, to get the MAC and configure the UUID extension. Proceed to next step.
    If by chance, you see here your wifi card, and you can see its MAC congratulations. Your card is well detected by OsX. Proceed to step 33. Personally, I bought from Ebay a Dell 1500 wifi card (BCM4312) and it works like a charm jsut by adding a PCID to the native airport driver. I would definitely advice this.
31. Ok, so you have one of the RTL8187SE card?. Well go here and download the driver. Just unzip, install and reboot. Do not unplug the USB drive!. If you do, you will have a kernel panic because your netbook’s hard drive EFI boot is not ready yet. Press F11 on the BIOS boot screen and select the USB drive as boot device again. Chameleon will boot, and you’ll select Hackintosh again.
32. Now your card should be detected, and it should automatically start the realtek utility. In the “Link Status” tab you could see your MAC, as well as in the Profile Explorer we opened in step 30. Just write it down.
33. Now in Finder, go to Downloads/Vanilla/EFIkext/ and right click the UUID.kext file. Select “Show package content”. We need to edit the file info.plist.
34. Oen info.plist in the text editor, and locate the long numeric chain ending with 0016174EE065. Replace this number with the MAC address you wrote down. Save and close the text editor.
35. Now we need to edit the ooting device ID. To do so, open Disk Utility (Applications->Disk Utility) and right click on the Hackintosh (or whatever you called it) partition. Select Information. A window will appear. The string that we need is the Universal Unique Identifier. Copy it.
36. Now go to Downloads/Vanilla/boot.plist and edit the file com.apple.Boot.plist. Locate the <dict> tag. We need to paste the next text just after it:
    <key>boot-uuid</key>
<string>HERE THE STRING THAT YOU COPIED</string>
    Maybe you get a syntax error when you save the file. Do not worry about it. It is normal.
37. Ok, almost there! Now, there’s a script in your Vanilla folder that will patch the intel GMA950 driver to fix the resolution in your screen, and another one that will update the kexts in the EFI partition and rebuild the kernel cache. You need to run those scripts now, and after every OsX update that could touch any driver. In the Terminal:
    cd  ~/Downloads/Vanilla/EFIkext
sudo -s (and enter your password)
./27ae.sh
./update.sh
    It will take some time to finish.
38. Now let’s update the boot.plist file. From Terminal:
    cd ~/Downloads/Vanilla/boot.plist
./update.sh
    You’ll only need this script now.
39. Now let’s mark the Hackinsosh partition as active. Assuming that the netbook hard drive was disk0 (you can check it again using “diskutil list”). From the Terminal:
    fdisk -e /dev/disk0
    And answer the questions with:
    p
f 1
w
y
q
40. Now you can unplug your USB drive (eject it from the desktop first) and reboot your computer. It should reboot just fine, with proper resolution, and without the help of any external drives.

The sound

41. First, download the OsX86Tools, as we’ll need it later. Now, the original guide suggested to download the VoodooHDA.kext and install it though OsX86Tools to make the internal mic work. (Start OsX86Tool, Select Install Kext, and select the just downloaded VoodooHDA). However I think this step is not necessary. In the Vanilla Folder you downloaded, I already introduced the Slice’s VoodooHDA, which has some improvements over the standard voodooHDA. So by now, it should be already loaded in your system and working:D. The only thing that we need is to setup the correct levels on the Prefpane that comes with the Extension.
42. To setup the Prefpane, go in Finder to Downloads/Vanilla/Prefanes/VoodooPrefs/ and double-click VoodooHDA.prefpane. Select Install for all users. The pane will be installed, and accesible from the OsX Settings panel. You can now play with levels to see which fit your needs.Setting up “speaker” and “recording” level at max level , and “monitor” at mid level should work.

Tweaking “About this mac” info

43. If you want to modify some of the information in the About this mac screen for aesthetics purpose, you can do it through the OsX86Tool. Start it,  and select “Modify About This Mac”. You can set the CPU string, and the RAM info to match your netbook.

The trackpad preferences pane

44. Macs have a great trackpad that our netbook has not. But we can make the trackpad config pane to appear in the settings pane with a simple tweak. This will work in the Medion Akoya E1211 for sure. I can’t tell about the others. Edit the file /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Trackpad.prefPane/Contents/Info.plist (you’ll need root permissions, so fire a Terminal, type “sudo -s” whithout the quotes, and launch “TextEdit” again, without the quotes from the Terminal and delete these two lines in the file:
    
<key>VendorID</key>
<integer>1452</integer>
    Now the panel will appear in the OsX Settings pane, and you will be able to customize the parameters.
45. If you’re still with me your hardware should be working fine. Webcam, wifi, ethernet, keyboard and trackpad, video resolution. All of it. To check the camera, fire ichat with the webcam turned on. To check that CoreImage and Quartz Express are working, just start FrontRow. If it works, it is working fine.

Updating Snow Leopard to 10.6.2

46. Now we need to update OsX to 10.6.2. The main problem here is that from 10.6.2 the Intel Atoms processors are no longer supported, so if we just update using the software updater and reboot, the computer will not boot and we’ll have a nice Kernel Panic. Fortunately some russian guys patched the kernel to allow 10.6.2 work almost vanilla in our netbooks. You could always use the 10.6.1 kernel, but, the new one seems absolutely stable, so why not update? First download the kernel from here (at the end of the post you’ll see the links) or here. It contains a single file. Unzip the file in your Downloads folder, and rename it mach_kernel_10_6_2.
47. Dowload the C10.6.2 combo update from apple website to your Downloads folder.
48. Let’s make a backup of our actual kernel.From a Terminal:
    
sudo -s             (and insert your password)
cp /mach_kernel /mach_kernel_10_6_x
49. Now install the combo update, but (and there’s not enough bold here) DO NOT REBOOT THE COMPUTER AFTER THE INSTALLATION FINISH.
50. Now restore the 10.6.1 kernel. Well check that everything in the OS is fine with a reboot. From the terminal:
    
cp /mach_kernel /mach_kernel_10_6_2_original
cp /mach_kernel_10_6_x /mach_kernel
51. Now, as we said before, we run the kext patching scritps:
    cd ~/Downloads/Vanilla/EFIkext
./27ae.sh
./update.sh
52. Now you can reboot. Everything will go just fine. Now you’re running 10.6.2 with the 10.6.1 kernel. Your system should be stable, but anyway we’ll use the 10.6.2 kernel.
53. Basically, what we’ll do is to replace the 10.6.1 kernel with the patched 10.6.2. Besides that, there’s an important kext that we should update as well, because it changed for 10.6.2.So, assuming you unzipped the kernel into your Downloads folder, run in a Terminal:
    sudo -s   (and type your password)
cp ~/Downloads/mach_kernel_10_6_2 /mach_kernel_10_6_2patched
    (this way we will keep all the kernels in /. The 10.6.1 (renamed 10_6_x), the 10_6_2original, and the 10_6_2patched.
    cp /mach_kernel_10_6_2patched /mach_kernel
cd ~/Downloads/Vanilla/EFIkext
mv SleepEnabler.kext ./_Disabled/SleepEnabler_10.6.1.kext
cp -R ./_Disabled/SleepEnabler_10.6.2.kext ./SleepEnabler.kext
54. Again, we run the kext patching scritps:
    ./27ae.sh
./update.sh
55. And that’s it. Congratulations. Reboot and enjoy. You’re running 10.6.2 in your netbook. Everything should work by now. It’s been a long process, but once it’s done, you can enjoy an almost Vanilla system, without scripts patching things over there like other OsX86 distributions. Your netbook only loads some kexts at start, but the rest of the system remains untouched, making safe for further updates (executing the scripts as mentioned before, and just restoring the kernel if the update has changed it).If you find any mistake in the proces or any  dead link please leave a comment.

Update: There’s a Third Pard of this guide. There I post some kernel extensions updates that will make the netbook even more stable, and maybe will solve other problems that you may face. Take a look at it to see if something helps you.