Re: RAID 0 - Bootable from Chimera?
RAID 0 and Chimera - SOLVED
Bootable RAID 0 on GA-EX58-UD5* using Chimera bootloader to load Sapphire ATI HD 6870 in SL 10.6.7
OK, So I solved the boot issue - and here is how I did it. I had a problem installing my Sapphire ATI 6870 with the Chimera bootloader and the bootloader that Andy posted here. Primarily because I was installing it to a RAID volume - and I couldn't get the volume to be bootable by itself, because the Chimera package and Andy's package didn't install to the physical drives. I always needed the iBoot CD or another hard drive to boot into the Snow Leopard. To get around this, I was able to install Chimera i386 boot files onto the small partitions in the various 'slices' or 'disks' of the RAID volume.
For anyone using the GA-EX58-UD5 and most likely any other GA board - this method worked brilliantly for setting up my RAID volume as a bootable disk with the ATI 6870 graphics card - with any luck and kext investigation this may work for you too.
I used digital_dreamer's 10.6 Hackinstaller script to install the Chimera boot loader onto each of my RAID 0 slices. dd's script doesn't have the Chimera bootloader preloaded. So I had to put the Chimera boot files into his script manually, by package extracting out the i386 folder from the standalone Chimera boot loader, and then placing the folder into the ~extra/bootloaders folder for the Hackinstaller script.
The beauty of digital_dreamer's script is that it will automatically detect RAID volumes when installing a bootloader. It applies the bootloader files to the small boot partitions of each RAID slice/disk. (It writes these files to partition you normally 'lose' when creating an array - or at least that is how I understand it.)
So, if you are trying to figure out how you are going to boot in with this this card on a software RAID volume I have shared my installation method. I am sure there is a better way to do this, but this is how I went about it.
What you will need for the bootable RAID volume with your ATI 6870 card:
1 drive with SL 10.6.7 already installed. (I used the simple Tonymac solution.)
10.6.0 Retail and Combo Update
Digital Dreamer's 10.6.7 Hackinstaller script
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... pic=185097
Chimera Standalone v1.4 - tonymacx86
viewforum.php?f=125
Pacifist for Mac
http://www.charlessoft.com/Pacifist_Doc ... tions.html
ATI Kexts from 2011 MBP Install DVD - Compiled by ^Andy^
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... try1655159
Netkas ATY_Init for ATI HD 6870
http://netkas.org/?p=798
Preparatory Phase: Getting the Hackinstaller Script ready...
1. Download Chimera and download Pacifist. Extract the i386 folder out of Chimera using Pacifist. *I only extracted Chimera with Pacifist because I didn't know where else to find the Chimera boot files for bootloader install
2. Download the Hackinstaller script folder by digital_dreamer
3. Open the Hackinstaller folder - and locate the ~Extra/Bootloaders folder.
4. Take the extracted Chimera i386 folder and place it in another folder and give it a name - I called my folder "Chimera v1.40" and added an "Extra/Themes" folder within the new "Chimera v1.40" folder. (I don't know if you need to add a themes folder - but I did. I just made another folder set Extra/Themes and placed them in my newly named "Chimera v1.40 folder") Place the Chimera v1.40 folder into the ~Extra/Bootloaders folder in Hackinstaller.
5. Open the 10.6 folder (for SL) and take all of the 6870 Kexts packaged by ^Andy^ and the the ATY_Init.kext that was realeased by Netkas for the 6870 and place them in the graphics folder. This large bundle of ATI kexts will replace any of the kexts already in for graphics folder for the Hackinstaller script.
***Note - If you are not using a GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard you may need to install some other more specific kexts to the various folders for you build - dd's GUIDE will help you.***
Installation Phase: 10.6 install then 10.6.7 Combo Update
6. Now that you have got all of the kexts and bootfiles in place within the Hackinstaller folder for the Hackinstaller script to read you should start installing 10.6.7 onto the RAID 0 drive (or any other HFS+ volume).
7. Same ol' drill: start the installation of 10.6 and then combo update to 10.6.7 to your target disk. I did this by opening up the OSinstaller.mpkg on Snow Leopard Install DVD disk image - you can find it in the hidden files on the disk under System/Installation/Packages/OSinstaller.mpkg. A disk image is a faster way for you to install the OSX - takes me about 7-9 minutes on my new SSDs. It iis faster and quieter than listening to the optical drive spin up for 15-20 minutes. Run combo update 10.6.7. use the ShowAllFiles app that is included in multibeast.
Hackinstaller Script Phase: Setting our drive up to boot
8. Run the script file...
9. Select the RAID array as the installation location
10. and start with option 2, 3, skip the OS X installation - because it is already installed, 5, 6, and 7.
The script automatically detects that you have a RAID 0 drive - and will install the bootloader to each slice and give it the right UUID-number for the bootloader to boot to or 'target' - no terminal work needed!
22. Modify your com.apple.plist (choose 9). If you are using the ATI 6870 add a new argument for AtiConfig, and then choose your framebuffer - mine is Duckweed. Then you may want to turn on or off verbose argument in the kernal flag selector of the script. You can set SL to run in 32 bit or 64 bit mode with the arch=i386 or arch=x86_64. You can edit your plist however you want... - My ATI 6870 card boots fine with 64 bit. - And has been pretty stable
and there are many other modifications that you can do with dd's script.
Now boot into your RAID drive without another boot disk. You can set up your RAID disks as the primary boot disk in your BIOS by changing boot priorities.
Thanks digital_dreamer for the best OSx86 script ever, Netkas for the graphics card development and all of the other developers for making the various hardware OSx86 compatible!
Sweet... and that is how I solved my boot loader problem with Chimera, my 6870 card, and my RAID volume on my two OCZ drives. - I want to get 4 drives in the array eventually!
Happy Hackintoshing!
: : student_al : :
So would you mind marking the thread title as [SOLVED]? Just edit your 1st post in this thread and add [SOLVED] in front to the Title.