Clone of working drive stalls during boot-up (Apple logo with progress bar)

[DeclanZee]

Hello all,


I'm new at this but being rapidly schooled during my week and a half of installs, failed installs, forum reading and persisting in trying to get my first build up and running.


Thank you to the community and many who have posted over the months and years to help me get as far as I have.


This computer is aimed at motion graphics work, which is why I went with the components I did.


In my naivety thinking the fact that it's really close to Yo Mang's successful build of a few years back would help; quickly realizing that stuff changes rapidly enough that I'm finding my own way.


Anyhow, the general pattern is I successfully install from my USB, get everything up and running and it seems solid ... only later to have boots start stalling unless in safe (-x) mode.


I've at this point stripped the process down, aiming to start simple and go piece by piece to see where the failure is.


But in order to do so I need to be able to reliably clone my existing working install.


Which brings us to this post.


I have a successful, repeatable installation process (details below) and I have numerous times gotten Yosemite up and running on my system. It seems happy. Mac profiler recognizes the machine, processors, graphics card. At this point I'm holding off on Audio and Ethernet because, like I said, trying to keep this very basic until I know it's stable.


So I have this working on my 2 SSDs, each install created from my USB.


The issue right now is ... when I try to clone one of those drives (using CarbonCopyCloner in "traditional" clone mode and following up with an install of the latest Chimera using the stand-alone installer) and try to boot from the clone, I get the stall. Details of the stall are also below.


I don't want to proceed until I have a way to reliably back up what's working, so I'm hoping someone can help.


Also, may help others as I'm following 5 or 6 threads with what seem to be similar problems.


The install process that works:

I have followed the standard process in the guide, so am just noting my particularities:


After creating my USB stick I need to enter flags of dart=0 nv_disable=1 npci=0x2000 to boot up and install.


Once installed I can boot up from my Yosemite (SSD) drive with flags dart=0 npci=0x2000


To keep things very simple I'm not worrying about other drivers for now, and just using EasyBeast install option with nothing more (nothing more seems necessary for basic operation, with my setup.)


Once that's done, I'm modifying my org.Chameleon.boot.plist with an added line so my kernel flags section now reads:


<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>dart=0 npci=0x2000</string>
<string>kext-dev-mode=1</string>

(lines 1 & 3 above are original, only the second line is my modification.)

At this point I have a working drive that boots from power on into the Yosemite login screen (I've modified boot priority in BIOS of course so it tries this drive first.)

I can (and have) repeated this on a second SSD (actually I have repeated this numerous times.)

Oh and a tip for anyone else new at this like me: I have also learned that the first thing I do is go to system settings and disable automatic updates *before* I ever connect to the internet. I also disable sleep, since that seems to be problematic on some systems. In short, trying to make sure no system processes break what is now working.


The clone that doesn't boot, and what I've learned and tried:

So I have a partition ("Recovery") on one of my hard drives, intending to keep this simple, working "emergency" boot from which to work from as I troubleshoot my install further. (Formatted GUID Partition table so should be bootable in Mac OS)

As mentioned above I am using CarbonCopyCloner to make a traditional clone of one of my working installs (while booted in from the other working install) and use the Chimera installer to install Chimera on that new drive.

When I boot up from that partition ("press any key" select that partition) in any mode but safe (-x) it hangs on the Apple Screen.

When I use verbose mode it stalls on one of many "ATHR: unknown locale 21" lines.

In an attempt to troubleshoot this based on this info I removed the WiFi Card in case that was the problem; in that case I don't see the "ATHR: unknown locale 21" lines, but it hangs after "[IOBluetoothHCIController][SearchForTransportEventTimeOutHandler] -- Missing Bluetooth Controller Transport!"

(And my instinct agrees with Jamdox that what's hanging here is after that and the bluetooth is not the problem. Also since that didn't solve things I have put the WiFi PCIe card back in its slot. )


But beneath all this, and more troubling is my main question:

Why would a (theoretically) identical clone of a drive that boots, not boot?

I do need to reach a point where I can reliably back up what's working, in order to proceed.

If you've read all this detail I thank you for your time.

I am new at this so if there is more information I can provide that will be helpful, please let me know.

Thanks!

EDIT: Here (as fast as I could take them at the top) are pictures of the verbose boot up through the point where it hangs.

It actually stalls on line 140 for 10 or 15 minutes or so, before spitting out the last line.

 

[DeclanZee]

[Update]

Per Hackintoshe's response (to my earlier thread but to this issue, thanks!) I have now tried the following in case these would have any effect:

Creating my clone on a single partition drive. I tried formatting the drive both through the "Erase" tab and the "Partition" tab creating one partition, GUID. To my knowledge these should be identical, but heck, trying every variable.

Bootup from the clone still hangs in the same place.

Then on a whim I moved the connector to MB SATA port 0 (which is usually in the main, working drive) to the newly cloned recovery drive just in case this had to do with the physical port.

Again no luck, boot still hangs.

Thanks in advance for anything else to try.

My two original installs, created directly via the USB stick are continuing to work (thank goodness) but I do need to have an effective backup solution as I move forward.

(BTW on my first go-round I tried Time Machine but could not restore my time machine backup as it would not appear in the Disk Utility menu, as others have noted here.)

 

[Going Bald]

[Update]

Per Hackintoshe's response (to my earlier thread but to this issue, thanks!) I have now tried the following in case these would have any effect:

Creating my clone on a single partition drive. I tried formatting the drive both through the "Erase" tab and the "Partition" tab creating one partition, GUID. To my knowledge these should be identical, but heck, trying every variable.

Bootup from the clone still hangs in the same place.

Then on a whim I moved the connector to MB SATA port 0 (which is usually in the main, working drive) to the newly cloned recovery drive just in case this had to do with the physical port.

Again no luck, boot still hangs.

Thanks in advance for anything else to try.

My two original installs, created directly via the USB stick are continuing to work (thank goodness) but I do need to have an effective backup solution as I move forward.

(BTW on my first go-round I tried Time Machine but could not restore my time machine backup as it would not appear in the Disk Utility menu, as others have noted here.)

Have you tried with CarbonCopyCloner or with SuperDuper? The free version of either will make you a working clone - all you need do is clone your drive, launch MultiBeast and select only the Chimera boot loader, build and install, making sure you change the target drive to your clone. You should now have a bootable clone of your OS.

 

[tlm182]

Have you tried with CarbonCopyCloner or with SuperDuper? The free version of either will make you a working clone - all you need do is clone your drive, launch MultiBeast and select only the Chimera boot loader, build and install, making sure you change the target drive to your clone. You should now have a bootable clone of your OS.

This will also fix the Boot0 error as well, my clone drive had that issue before I installed Chimera on it via multibeast or standalone installer through OSX.

 

[DeclanZee]

Have you tried with CarbonCopyCloner or with SuperDuper? The free version of either will make you a working clone - all you need do is clone your drive, launch MultiBeast and select only the Chimera boot loader, build and install, making sure you change the target drive to your clone. You should now have a bootable clone of your OS.

Thanks for the responses, Going Bald and Tim182!

To clarify, all of the clones above were made using CarbonCopyCloner, which I've used for years on Macs.

That may not have been clear in my original post since I abbreviated ("CCC") ... I've edited it now.

After the clone is complete I am using the Chimera 4.0.1 Standalone Installer to re-install the Chimera boot loader and yes, targeting the drive I just cloned to.

This should do exactly the same thing as "launch MultiBeast and select only the Chimera boot loader," correct?

I can certainly try SuperDuper, and will, but everything I've done above should work, correct?

By "traditional clone" in the original post I meant the most basic option in CCC which is delete everything on the source that is not on the original. In each case I was also starting with a freshly formatted partition.

Thanks!

 

[DeclanZee]

Update:

Okay, I created a successful bootable clone, thanks for the suggestions.

Here's what I did:

1. Erased the problem drive using 1-pass zero-out (just to be safe) with Disk Utility

2. Complete (erase and write all files) clone using SuperDuper in "free" mode

3. Installed Chimera using the standalone installer, targeting the newly cloned drive.

This worked!

It remains a mystery to me why SuperDuper succeeded where CarbonCopyCloner failed. I'd be curious if anyone has any ideas. (My zero-out pass could have made a difference, but since this takes 2 hours on this drive this is not ultimately a practical backup solution if it ends up being necessary.)

Then, testing further, I partitioned one of my 2TB drives with a recovery partition, and tried to repeat the process to the new partition.

That bootup failed with a "boot0:error" message.

I forced boot to one of my working drives and am now zeroing out that drive.

I am much relieved to have a working cloning procedure, though ultimately I would love to be able to clone my recovery boot to a partition and not have to sacrifice an entire drive.

But for the meantime, onward.

I'm new here ... do I mark this thread with [solved] at this point?

Thanks again for the help and suggestions!