If you have been looking for imformation about virtualizing LEopard or Snow Leopard, you’ll probably stumble upon this two sites, which contain most of the useful information. However, when it comes to Snow Leopard, information is spread across hundreds of posts, and most of it is for MS Windows only.

There’s another attempt using empire-efi here, which didn’t worked for me.

I just wrote a guide myself about how to get Snow Leopard working under Ubuntu 9.10 and Virtualbox 3.1.6r59338 and I was about to post it. However, I found another guide, for windows, which will work flawlessly under Linux with some minor tweaks, and has step-by-step screenshots, so I guess there’s no need to duplicate the content there.

Here’s exactly what I did to get things working:

First you need, a Leopard OsX86 working virtualbox machine. To get Leopard working, download any OsX86 distro and install it following this guide. I used iDeneb 1.6 and worked fine.

You DO NOT need to patch the VirtualBox files in order to get Leopard working, so just create the VM without applying any patch.

The only difference you’ll find is that under Linux, the required file to edit will be(assuming you named the virtual machine LeoVM) :
/home/your_user_name/.Virtualbox/Machines/LeoVM/LeoVM.xml

Then, there you can add the required line:

<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal2/SupportExtHwProfile" value="on"/>

The Leopard installation should go without a problem, and boot fine. Everything you need to know is on the guide I linked before.

Now the tricky part. Install Snow Leopard.

You should use this guide. It is really detailed and easy to follow. I used a retail SnowLeopard 10.6.3 image, and worked perfect for me. However, since the guide is for windows, you’ll need to take into account the following changes:

When you create the machine for Snow Leopard (page 13 of the guide), you need to edit the file (assuming you named the VM SnowLeoVM) :

/home/your_user_name/.Virtualbox/Machines/SnowLeoVM/SnowLeoVM.xml

and add ONLY the following lines:

<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal2/Devices/e1000f/0/Trusted" value="integer:1"/>
<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal2/SupportExtHwProfile" value="on"/>

Now we need to patch the Virtual Machine files. The thing is that we need support for SS3 instructions, and ACPI v.14 which is not supported by default in Virtualbox 3.1.x. If you’re using the OSE edition, you can patch the source and recompile the whole thing. However, if you’re using the standard edition, you’ll need to binary-patch the files.

You can find more information about the patches in the comments section in this post. SOME of the info is not correct, and some other is incomplete, so be careful and read everything before doing any patch. I am using the GHex to patch them.

The files to patch are:
/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxDD2.so
Every occurence of : 11 00 05 00
Changed for : 14 00 05 00

/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxDD2GC.gc
Every occurence of : 11 00 05 00
Changed for : 14 00 05 00

/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxDD2R0.r0
Every occurence of : 11 00 05 00
Changed for : 14 00 05 00

/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxVMM.so
Every occurence of: 04 C5 01 00 00 00 31 C9
Changed for: 04 C5 01 02 00 00 31 C9


I am providing the files for VirtualBox 3.1.6.r59338 HERE. Just run the patch or unpatch scripts to do the job, or open them to take a look at the files that will be copied and do it manually.

And that’s it.  You should have a Snow Leopard VM working fine. In the guide I provided you have explained how to solve the video resolution problem, which is pretty straightforward.

The network works fine, but you need to set up the static ip address for the interface, and connect/disconnect cable from the Virtualbox menu to get it working. The rest works fine. Of course it will not fly, but it is enough to try the iphone SDK under linux.

Here the first and second parts of the article.

I’m using  a custom eclipse installation. The ubuntu repositories package is too old, so I always update my eclipse installation from the eclipse website. I install it to /opt/eclipse. If you’re using the default installation package, just look for yor install forlder, probably somewhere near /usr/share.

Now, I assume you installed the subclipse plugin, a nice SVN client. This client uses JavaHL libraries to communicate to the svn program istelf, and  unfortunately, this libraries installation is up to you. If you do not have them, subclipse will complain about missing libraries each time you need to do somthing svn-related. So, to fix if:

1. Install the javaHL libraries:
   sudo apt-get install libsvn-java
2. Tell eclipse where to look for them. Edit the file /opt/eclipse/eclipse.ini (or /your-eclipse-path/eclipse.ini), and locate the line:
   -vmargs
   Now just below this line, add the following one:
   -Djava.library.path=/usr/lib/jni
3. Happy coding!.

First thing was, of course see if the great Unetbootin supported OsX. Not the case.

Well then. I know it can be done with dd. Should I do anything special to do it under OsX?

Then, a simple google search will drive you to the most copied manual excerpt ever. You will see this steps in a lot of sites:

Download the desired .img file

Open a Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/)

Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices

Insert your flash media

Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)

Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)

Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m (replace /path/to/downloaded.img with the path where the image file is located; for example, ./ubuntu.img, /dev/rdiskN is faster than /dev/diskN). If you see the error dd: Invalid number `1m’, you are using GNU dd. Use the same command but replace bs=1m with bs=1M.

Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes.

Reboot (and boot from the usb device) and enjoy.

And then, if you’re like me, you will go directly to download the ubuntu image from the ubuntu server to make the process. You will go through these steps and, uh! oh!, surprise! It does not work!.

Well, give it another try. From the beginning again. Nothing. The pc does not boot from this USB drive. What the hell am I doing wrong?

Well, you are downloading an iso file, while you should be downloading an img file. Ahhh, did you think it was the same? I did. Three times. I was wrong!

Then you’ll notice that there are no img files available to download. So?. Here it comes. Run as root (sudo -s):

hdiutil convert "path/to/the/file.iso" -format UDRW -o "path/to/the/output.dmg"

Of course, the first “path to the…” should point to the downloaded iso image, and the second one to the file you want to create as this command’s output.

Now, do it again from step 2 using the dmg file instead of the iso one. It will work this time!

The flash version in the ubuntu repositories, is the 32 bits version of the famous plugin. In fact, it shouldn’t be working in a 64 bits browser. Here’s where ubuntu makes some of its behind-the-scenes magic, and installs and configures for you a wrapper named nspluginwrapper.

Nspluginwrapper is a software layer which provides an appropiate environment for the plugin to run (i386) in other platforms which it is not supposed to work. So Ubuntu, automatically installs the wrapper, and configures it for you. Unfourtunately, this magic comes with a little bug somewhere casing the flash plugin to fail – sometimes – .

It turns to be quite annoying when it fails, because instead of a crash, or not showing the flash content (and clearly showing that it has crashed) it just blocks the “click” in the flash content, creating confusion about what’s not working, the flash plugin, the flash content, the browser, the mouse, the finger etc…

Here’s a workaround to fix the click problem:

• Edit the file : /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer  (as root, use sudo from console or gksudo from the “run” dialog)
• Add the following line BEFORE the last line of text:

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

• Save, and restart your browser.

This should be enough to solve the problem. It is possible that the npviewer script gets updated losing your changes.

If you realize that it is failing again, maybe this is the case, and you should redo this workaround.

UPDATE: If you feel brave, you can try the really-64bits-flash version of the plugin, that will work with the 64bits browsers. This will bypass all the nspluginwrapper magic mentioned above. Someone created a script, to get rid of the unnecessary packages and install the flash player  for AMD64. There are precise instructions in the Ubuntu Forums.

Keep in mind that Adobe 64 bits  flash player is in alpha stage, so it can be unstable.

Unfortunately, Songbird is not on the offcicial ubuntu repos, but you can install it anyway thanks to the guys at Getdeb who made the package for you. To install it just download the package from HERE and install it with your favourite package manager.

I had at first some problems with this new version, but after a bit of reading, I saw that was a common problem. There some conflict with the package libvisual-0.4-plugins that cause the Sonbird player not to start. This package comes preinstalled in systems with NVIDIA video cards, and for what I have seen, it is not an important part of the system and it has no big dependencies. You most probably want to remove this package if you’re experiencing some problems with this last version.

I tried to add the repositories of the Songbird Nightly Builds, but I found the current version (1.3.0a) quite unstable, and not compatible with most plugins, so I decided to leave the stable 1.2.0 version.

• If you want to try though, here is the repo you need to add to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/songbird-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/songbird-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

• Add the signature by typing in a console:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 5719E347

And now you will always have the lastest development build of Songbird available in your preferred package manager app.

Anyway, here it  is:

The wifi: I’m using here a Dell 1935 wifi card, wich is automatically configured in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, using the propietary drivers (wl driver).

The next steps (ndiswrapper) are required in Ubuntu 8.10. Recent kernels, as the ones shipped with ubuntu 9.04, already have included the appropiate drivers for the Ralink wifi card.

The medion akoya comes with a Ralink 2860 wifi card. This card could be used under linux using the ndiswrapper and the windows driver. To do so, download from your preferred site (I used medion website) the windows drivers for the wifi card, and extract them to a directory.

• Install the package ndiswrapper with your preferred package tool. We need to insert into de kernel the ndiswrapper module. To do so from a console run:


$>sudo depmod -a
$>sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
$>echo 'ndiswrapper' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
$>sudo ndiswrapper  -m


• Now we need to blacklist the rt2860 module that actually comes shipped into the kernel. Do so running:


$>echo 'blacklist rt2860' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
$>echo 'blacklist rt2860sta' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist


• Then, to activate the windows driver through the ndiswrapper, we need to execute (in the directory where you extracted the windows drivers and the file rt2860.inf is located):


$>sudo ndiswrapper -i rt2860.inf
$>sudo ndiswrapper -l

The wifi device should be visible now, and after a reboot, the network-manager should recognize it and automatically set it up.

The webcam works fine with the uvc driver. Look at this other post, as it is explained there how to set up this driver.

TWEAK1: After an ubuntu clear installation, the power management system, forces the hard disk to spin down at random intervals, producing an annoying click. It is said, that this kind of aggresive power management may not be the best choice for a long lasting drive.If you  want to get rid of it, just edit the file /etc/hdparm.conf and add at the end of it:

command_line {
hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda
}

This will prevent the hard disk to spin down, while keeping some kind of power management. It’ll do it after the next reboot though. If you want to activate this tweak now, you can run from a console:

$>sudo hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda

TWEAK 2: In 8.04, after  recovering from the suspended/sleeping state, the sound stops working. This can be solved by adding the next line at the end of the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base:

options snd-hda-intel model=targa-2ch-dig

This(sound after sleep problem) is solved in Ubuntu 9.04.

TWEAK 3: There is a problem with the intel video drivers shipped with the 9.04 (at least in the first versions)  making very poor performance with the compiz effects.

More info about the bug itself, and how to solve it can be found here.

Basically, if you don’t want to read the whole post, what you should do is:

• Download THIS script and save it to /usr/local/bin

• Make it executable:


$>sudo chmod +x /usr/local/binfixmtrr.sh


• Make it run at boot:


$>sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/fixmtrr.sh /etc/gdm/PostLogin/Default


• And last but not least, edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add this lines under the “Device” section:


Identifier    "Configured Video Device"
Option        "AccelMethod"        "exa" #uxa
Option        "EXAOptimizeMigration"    "true"
Option        "MigrationHeuristic"    "greedy"
#Option        "Tiling"        "true"

In the original post recommends to use UXA instead EXA, but I obtained best results using the EXA old acceleration method, as well as deactivating the tiling option.

Other minor tweaks I did in this install:

• Change the font size to accomodate gnome in the small screen:

System>Preferences>Appeareance>Fonts>Details> Change value from 96 to 83

• Install firefox plugins “hide menubar” and “fission” to accomodate the browser to small screens.

And ready to go…

If you’ve reached this point, and have any other suggestions, I’d like to hear about them. Thanks.

Gnome Clever Windows Mockup

It seems that the default installation of the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty comes with the Open Source Java instead the Sun one. If your not too picky about non oss, I will recommend to use the sun java virtual machine.

To change this setting, just be sure that you have installed the packages sun-java6-bin and sun-java6-jre.

Then, in case you want to make the Sun JVM the default one in the system, you can do it by running from a console:

$>sudo update-alternatives --display java
$>sudo update-alternatives --set java /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

This way, the next time you open any java application, /usr/bin/java will be called, that is a symlink to /etc/alternatives/java, that now points to the Sun JVM instead the open source one.

However, I have tried some music management/players applications, and although Rhythmbox and Songbird are quite nice, I like Amarok to be my main player.

Amarok is on the official ubuntu repos (Amarok 2), and since it is a a KDE app, you’ll need some KDE libs in your system to execute. For what I have read, it gives some problems in some ubuntu default installations. Avoid them with these simple steps:

• Install the amarok package, and it’s dependencies with your preferred package management tool.

• Make sure that the packages libphonon4, phonon, and phonon-backend-xine are going to be installed. If not, install them manually.

• Install the following packages:


systemsettings, ffmpeg, gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg, libxine1-ffmpeg


• Run systemsettings (the KDE control panel app), and go to Multimedia. Click on the Backend Tab and move xine to the top of the list in case there’s more than one. Click apply.

Now you can start your Amarok2 player from the appz menu, and it should work just fine.