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Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera

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neilhart

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Document RAID 0 install on Lion 10.7.2 using Tony's tools and a Current Version of Chimera

There are many (or at least several easy to find) RAID guides on the web. Most are not current and would have you take steps that are not required today with Lion 10.7.2. This guide is focused on using the TonyMacX86 current tools and the newest release of Chimera. You may note that I am able to login to the App Store and download files and log into iCould and have the cloud update my contacts. I can log into FaceTime but I have issues completing calls (this is no different then my other hacks so is not a short coming of this guide).

Forgive me the length of the guide.

For this process I used a system consisting of:

Gigabyte EX58-UDR3
i7-920
6 GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory
GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB
80 GB WD SATA HDDS x 3

Software used:

Lion 10.7 installer (a product of xMove and the original Lion app store download)
Chimera (Newest version/stand alone installer) (SkipFTFix=Yes not required with this loader)
Mulitbeast 4.0.3
rBoot (downloaded 10/18/2011)
DSDT.aml (from TonyMaxX86 database)
Carbon Copy Cloner
Lion 10.7.2 Combo Update (Client)
Pacifist (shareware download from CharlesSoft.com)


SECTION 1 - Clean Lion Install.

This portion is just a description of the process that I used to obtain a "clean" Lion 10.7.2 installation which I will use as the OS for the RAID 0.

To expedite the process, I partitioned one of the HDDs on another machine GUID with two partitions Mac OS Extended (journaled) and cloned a copy of Lion to the first partition and made it bootable.

Then booted this HDD on the target machine, using Disk Utility I created an 8 GB partition and cloned a copy of the Lion 10.7 installer to this third partition.

I used rBoot to reboot the machine and start the Lion 10.7 installer. I installed to the second partition. Then rebooted to the new Lion installation again using rBoot.

After going through the new account setup screens, I placed a copy of the DSDT.aml on the desktop and ran Multibeast UserBeast and appropriate selections for audio and ethernet.

I rebooted (without rBoot) to the newly configured 2nd partitioned. Most everything works:

Full resolution with acceleration (running 1920 x 1200)
Sound
Ethernet
Orange drive icons (will fix later).

I then erased the first partition with Disk Utility and using CCC, cloned the 2nd partition to the first partition and then (just for good measure) ran Chimera 1.6.0 installer for the first partition.

Rebooted to the first partition. Download Lion 10.7.2 combo update and installed it.

Rebooted to Lion 10.7.2 and reran Multibeast to roll back the audio. Everything else checks out.

Reboot to confirm Lion 10.7.2 is ready for use in the RAID 0 creation. Also cloned partition 1 to partition 2 as insurance.

SECTION 2 - RAID 0 Creation

General notes; It is advised that you live with your Lion partition that you will use for your RAID long enough that you will not need to edit the /Extra file contents after creating your RAID. The /Extra will be located in the RAID helper partitions (which are not mounted and are hidden in normal operation).

Shutdown and installed the two HDDs that I will use for the RAID 0. Re-order the HDDs as needed to have your Lion partition on the first drive that the system detects.

Boot to my Lion 10.7.2 partition on original HDD.

Open Pacifist and select Chimera package to open. Then extract the i386 folder to the Desktop. Quit Pacifist.

Copy three files from the i386 folder to the Desktop: boot, boot0, boot1h

Open Disk Utility and create the RAID-0 RAID set as follows:

Select the RAID button in the upper menu of right side panel.

Enter a RAID Set Name: I used "RAID-0"
Insure the Format is Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Enter RAID Type: Striped RAID Set

Drag the HDD icon from the left paul into the center right panel (see screen capture) for each drive.

DU1.jpg


Press the Create button; this operation take a minute or so. Check the screen capture.

DU2.jpg


Still in Disk Utility, select the RAID-0 icon in the left panel, and press the "info" button on the Disk Utility top row of buttons.

Copy the RAID Identifier on to the clipboard. See screen capture.

DU3.jpg


Drag a copy of the /Extra folder from your Lion Finder window onto the DeskTop.

Click on the Desktop Extra folder to open.

DU4.jpg


Doulble click on the org.chameleon.Boot.plist file to open it in TextEdit.

DU5.jpg


Move you cursor into the .plist file to edit the Kernel Flags (click un-lock at the prompt).

Add the RAID identifier as follows:

<string>rd=uuid boot-uuid=[paste RAID identifier] space npci=0x-2000</string>

And add two lines:

<key>UseKernelCache</key>
<string>Yes</string>

DU6.jpg


From TextEdit save the org.chameleon.Boot.plist file back to the Extra folder that is opened on the Desktop.

Using Carbon Copy Cloner, clone the Lion 10.7.2 partition to the RAID-0 Raid set.

Open the Terminal app.

Change directory to the desktop - cd Desktop [Enter]

Switch to super user - sudo su [Enter] then enter the pass word when prompted

Display a listing of the HDDs - diskutil list [Enter] see screen capture.

DU7.jpg


Note in the example that the two HDDs that make up my RAID-0 are disks numbered 0 & 1 and these numbers
are used in the terminal commands below. Note the helper partitions are number 3 (Boot OS X).

The disk that I am booted from is number 2 and the RAID set is disk number 3.

To install the boot0 file to the MBR of both disks we issue the follow terminal commands.

fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0 [Enter]
fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk1 [Enter]

To install boot1h to boot sector of each helper partition (system named "Boot OS X")

dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk0s3 [Enter]
and the system will respond with "2+0 records in, 2+0 records out, 1024 bytes transferred followed by the time required.
dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk1s3 [Enter]
and the system will respond with "2+0 records in, 2+0 records out, 1024 bytes transferred followed by the time required.

To copy the Extra folder and boot file to the Boot OS X helper partitions we do the following terminal commands:

diskutil mount disk0s3 [Enter]
and the system will respond "Volume Boot OS X on disk0s3 mounted"
cp boot /Volumes/Boot\ OS\ X/ [Enter]
cp -R Extra /Volumes/Boot\ OS\ X/ [Enter]
diskutil unmount disk0s3 [Enter]
and the system will respond "Volume Boot OS X on disk0s3 unmounted"

Then repeat these commands for the second HDD

diskutil mount disk1s3 [Enter]
and the system will respond "Volume Boot OS X on disk1s3 mounted"
cp boot /Volumes/Boot\ OS\ X/ [Enter]
cp -R Extra /Volumes/Boot\ OS\ X/ [Enter]
diskutil unmount disk1s3 [Enter]
and the system will respond "Volume Boot OS X on disk1s3 unmounted"

The following is a screen capture of my terminal session for the above.

DU8.jpg


And there you have it. Close your terminal, shutdown, remove your HDD that has the Lion 10.7.2 parent partition ( or re-order it so that the system sees the RAID-0 first - or - use the BIOS to set the system to boot one of the RAID hard drives first). Reboot to the RAID-0 - enjoy.

neil.

Post install note: I acutally ran this process with Chimera 1.5.4.1 and used the SkipFTFix=Yes to get the RAID to boot. iCould and FaceTime did not log in to the servers. I was very pleased to find the announcement of Chimera 1.6.0. Great work guys.
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

THANKS ALOT!! THIS GUIDE WORKED GREAT....I USED UNIBEAST AND SET UP A RAID ON LION INSTALL INSTEAD OF CLONING...... LET ME JUST ADD THAT TWO OF THE COMMANDS ARE MIS-TYPED IN THIS GUIDE.."cp R- Extra /Volumes/Boot\ OS\ X/ [Enter]".WHERE "R-" SHOULD BE "-R". EVERYTHINGS WORKING SOLID!...THANKS AGAIN!! :headbang:
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

booblej said:
neilhart said:
Document RAID 0 install on Lion 10.7.2 using Tony's tools and Chimera 1.6.0

\
THANKS ALOT!! THIS GUIDE WORKED GREAT....I USED UNIBEAST AND SET UP A RAID ON LION INSTALL INSTEAD OF CLONING...... LET ME JUST ADD THAT TWO OF THE COMMANDS ARE MIS-TYPED IN THIS GUIDE.."cp R- Extra /Volumes/Boot\ OS\ X/ [Enter]".WHERE "R-" SHOULD BE "-R". EVERYTHINGS WORKING SOLID!...THANKS AGAIN!! :headbang:

Hey good catch. I'll fix the typo.

Thank you,
neil
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

Thanks for the post! Great timing as I'm actually about half way through a Carbon Copy Clone of my install over to a RAID-0, saw some SL guides B4, but figured I'd better double check that Lion's handling of Extra and kext cache didn't cause any issues using the Apple Boot OSX partitions vs SL's. Glad to see you up and running! Apparently I'm a "lurker"(or just a good googler :D ), so figured I'm due for a posting of some sort. Gonna see if Chameleon Wizard will work for setting up the just the boot loader part if I run it once on each drive cause I like to use it to easily grab latest Chameleon releases real quick like. Curious on what performance gains differnt people see(or feel:D ) from running Lion off a RAID-0 set? I'm just using a pair of 1TB spinners so don't expect anything earth shattering, pre-testing the array with BlackMagic Drive Speed Test(free from Mac App Store BTW) doubled R/W speeds to just over 200mbs(no big surprise, I know). But for me, if it just feels any faster, even if its all in my head, then im happy! That and a poss work aroud for Cham's 1TB boot drive limit that I think is still unchanged. P.S. Any idea on how the EFI partitions are handled, or are they maybe ignored due to the Boot OSX partition?
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

eep357 said:
Thanks for the post! Great timing as I'm actually about half way through a Carbon Copy Clone of my install over to a RAID-0, saw some SL guides B4, but figured I'd better double check that Lion's handling of Extra and kext cache didn't cause any issues using the Apple Boot OSX partitions vs SL's. Glad to see you up and running! Apparently I'm a "lurker"(or just a good googler :D ), so figured I'm due for a posting of some sort. Gonna see if Chameleon Wizard will work for setting up the just the boot loader part if I run it once on each drive cause I like to use it to easily grab latest Chameleon releases real quick like. Curious on what performance gains differnt people see(or feel:D ) from running Lion off a RAID-0 set? I'm just using a pair of 1TB spinners so don't expect anything earth shattering, pre-testing the array with BlackMagic Drive Speed Test(free from Mac App Store BTW) doubled R/W speeds to just over 200mbs(no big surprise, I know). But for me, if it just feels any faster, even if its all in my head, then im happy! That and a poss work aroud for Cham's 1TB boot drive limit that I think is still unchanged. P.S. Any idea on how the EFI partitions are handled, or are they maybe ignored due to the Boot OSX partition?

Well where to start? I have never seen any reason for Chameleion Wizard so have never even looked at it.

I have been doing RAID 0 machines for several years and Lion caused a major disruption and thus the new guide. The Chimera 1.6.0 works in a RAID 0 build as indicated in the guide (which is simpler then it has ever been in the past).

The key to setting up RAIDs is to extract the boot, boot0 and boot1h file from the bootloader distribution. Pacifist works and is part of my standard tool set.

RAID 0 gives you added speed at some higher risk due to the number of drives in the RAID set. However with Time Machine and a recovery partition not much of a risk. The idea is to boot and run from a RAID 0 (for the speed) but keep your projects and data off on a data partition.

Now with the price of SSDs dropping, there is not much need to these RAID 0 setups.

EFI partitions are an artifact of the Mac design and Disk Utility (all recent versions) create the EFI partition as a matter of fact. Apple does not use them and only few hackers are still going to the effort to use them; just not worth the effort from my experience.

As an aside, I am running a 4 disk RAID 0 set using 500GB Seagates for my daily work machine which is on Lion 10.7.1 and is up 24/7. On this machine I run VMWare Fusion and two virtual machines (XP Pro and Ubuntu) concurrently. OS X is the best OS from my perspective.

neil
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

hangs at "Loading OS" on mine...

sigh, time to go through it again...

Do you have to delete the chameleon.plist out of the /extra folder on the actual RAID drive - or it just ignores it and loads from the helper partition?

Can't even get the bootloader screen up.

Just fun'in with this. The Velociraptor is plenty fast for my needs...

Excellent writeup up though. I've been messing with the insanelymac version of this methodology, but would rather keep my box tonymacx86 all the way, as I've had real good luck with Iboot, Rboot & Multibeast.

Rick
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

I'm dumb - burnt out.

reconfig'd the drive order, and just copied/pasted the commands verbatim.

Worked like a CHARM.

Another day of debugging and I'll be ready to migrate my old box over and retire it...

WHOOOO HOOOO!

Rick

Am I correct in assuming, that if this thing ever blows up - I can re-do it, then restore from a TM backup?
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

great post :clap: :clap:
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

SickRick said:
I'm dumb - burnt out.

reconfig'd the drive order, and just copied/pasted the commands verbatim.

Worked like a CHARM.

Another day of debugging and I'll be ready to migrate my old box over and retire it...

WHOOOO HOOOO!

Rick

Am I correct in assuming, that if this thing ever blows up - I can re-do it, then restore from a TM backup?

With a TM backup, you can recreate the logical drive. TM restore would not regenerate the contents of the helper partitions, you would need to do that your self.

I always keep a copy of the RAID version of the Extra file along with the boot files in a local folder in case they are needed.

have fun
neil

neil
 
Re: Lion 10.7.2 RAID-0 with TonyMacX86 tools & Chimera 1.6.0

very clear and easy to follow instruction. by far the best :thumbup:

i tried to setup a raid 0 on SNOW once before but it was very difficult. will try this soon.

the EXTRA folder that gets copied over with this command "cp R- Extra /Volumes/Boot\ OS\ X/ [Enter]" is the one we edited on the desktop, am i correct?

Thanks
 
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