Idea: Fastest noob or restore install method

[NINE]

Today I was able to get the machine to sleep properly - I finally have a machine I can take out on the road. Sleep was the last major hurdle preventing this machine from outside adventures. There are still issues - it is a work in progress - and eventually I'll start in on making it a Snow Leopard machine. For now it is quite a good Leopard 10.5.8 netbook. Here are some of the things I found interesting during the process.

I used the Restore.dmg method from binglax09 (thanks much by the way!). This worked pretty fast. At first I was having difficulties with the installation. I thought it had to do with the BIOS - a backdating to the f.05 was performed (the machine had f.18). This seemed to make a difference although it could have been using the NetbootMaker that actually made that bit work. I did have some difficulties with passwords and in the end had to solve this issue by resetting them for all the accounts in the install.

Most things were working pretty well - except for sleep. I checked out the boards for sleep issues. I found Bryan's sleep fix. This was very exciting - except it didn't work.

More digging around and putting off I stumbled on LeMaurien19's 2 gig ram card post. This didn't seem relevant to my sleep issue - yet it looked interesting, and indeed it was a gem. Reading through thread I learned that many people had found that amount of ram they had installed could cause the sleep to fail. Well that's an easy test - out came the 2 gig card and in went the 1 gig card. It worked beautifully - exactly the way Bryan had posted in his thread. I don't know if it was just the ram issues or a combination of Bryan's fix and the ram.

Further in the ram card thread posts lead me to believe that by editing the DSDT file I should be able to get the system working with 2 gigs. Several people have done iDeneb 1.3 reinstalls with 2 gigs installed and have it functional. It would appear that now is the time to learn about DSDT files.

Most systems I've tested are working great. binglax09 has already dealt with the two CPU threads, turning on Quartz (GPU action), getting the screen resolution, etc. The two things currently deficient that I've checked are ethernet - it sees no connection, and the mic input doesn't work. The audio out is very quiet as well. These are fairly well known issues. I haven't tested the audio in/out port, or bluetooth/ cellular modem (I don't have a bluetooth or cellular modem card). The web cam does work, and the LED indicating that camera is on works as well. Wifi worked straight away and has continued through most of the hacking about that I've done.

The track pad is working and has all the features - however it drives me nuts. The features are there - the quality just isn't. I've put a lot of time in to adjusting the parameters and it is still jumpy, imprecise, fails with treed menus. I've found it to be such a hassle that I've been screen sharing (yes this works quite well!) to work on the machine. When forced to actually use the mini directly I've been using a mouse. From looking at the Extensions folder the VoodooPS2Controller.kext is loaded and it is the VoodooPS2 preference panel that I've used to adjust the track pad. It is quite possible that I have a bad track pad.

Speaking of kernel extensions - from the Terminal a handy command is kextstat. It displays status of loaded kernel extensions - this can be quite handy for debugging.

Hey binglax09 - if you have a chance could you let us know the configuration of the machine on which you made the Restore.dmg - things like the BIOS version, ram, passwords, what kexts you used etc. Thanks man - this is a great idea, and you've performed quite a service for the group.

NINE

[helenc]

First of all thank you SO SO much for this wonderful creation!
OSX runs like a dream on my mini.
I am AMAZED!!!!

The only problem I have is the same as hellguide's (Tue Dec 01, 2009 7:52 pm)
I also can't get it to boot off the internal drive.
I'm thinking about buying the little internal HP Mini flash drive (there's an 8GB now)and using that.
But maybe there's a simple fix I can do to make it perfect?

Thank you thank you!

[temq]

How can I thank you enough, this saved me a lot of time and nerves.

BTW. Here are instructions how to add additional display languages to os x:
http://warp101.blogspot.com/2008/12/changing-mac-os-x-leopard-language_17.html

I downgraded to FW F.05 F.

However whenever I go to sleep mode and would like to return from it I only get black screen.

How to fix this (any other Bios version working better) or some kext thingy?

Another problem is the restart/startup relialility. Almost on every startup/restart I get stuck at the apple logo with no squares blinking under it. I have to force restart and usually then it works, I see the moving circle under the apple logo and system starts.

Also I'm unable to change the screen brightness (with the FN + f3 and f4 buttons)

Please help!!

[paaguti]

My 2 cents:

I installed Ubuntu 2009.10 first creating a primary partition w/ FAT32 format and an extended partition,
where I installed Ubuntu. Then I created a MacOS install on an external USB drive and restored this install
into the FAT32 partition. Using GRUB2 as primary loader, I can boot both into Ubuntu and into MACOS.
(As a matter of fact, I'm posting this from MacOS and Safari

By all means, restore is the fastest method

[Cell]

Hey binglax09 - if you have a chance could you let us know the configuration of the machine on which you made the Restore.dmg - things like the BIOS version, ram, passwords, what kexts you used etc. Thanks man - this is a great idea, and you've performed quite a service for the group.

NINE

Yes, I would like to know this also. I cant upgrade past 10.5.5 because I cant use the .05 bios due to my wifi/bluetooth card.

[Cell]

Got the restore.dmg and it worked on my 110-1100 Tord with Bios f16. Most things work but I am having some issues.

Cant adjust the brightness with the function buttons. (Which makes using OSX on battery worthless with my 3-cell)

Have to wait awhile after booting into OSX before clock appears which gives beach ball on icons around it while not appeared.

I know there is a fix but I have yet to fix system profiler.

Im also dual booting with Windows 7 and it works great. Except for the time seems to mess up when booting between the 2 OSs.

Cell

[judoka03g]

Im excited to try this out!! I have a question though before I start, would it make a difference what bios im on? should i update to the latest bios before i start? thanks.

[judoka03g]

Ive run into a problem. downloaded the Restore.dmg, formatted my external HD to mac os journaled. Now im at that step where I should now restore the drive with the restore image as the source. but i get this message " unable to attach "restore.dmg" (no mountable file systems)"


when i tried to mount the .dmg file from finder i get the same message

" the following disc images failed to mount"
"Image: Resotre.dmg, Reason:no mountable file systems"

Did i not do something right? whats could be the problem? please help me out. thanks

[judoka03g]

^^^ Can some one please help me out? TIA

[NINE]

Hey judoka03g,

It is possible that you've gotten a bad down load.

Are you using Disk Utility to mount the image on a Mac?

NINE

[judoka03g]

Nine,

Yes, I did use Disk Util to restore the external HDD. Ive downloaded the .dmg from tpb again just to be sure. if it indeed was a bad download, i hope this time, with the new DL the install goes without a hitch.

Was curious though. do you think the problem could be with the external HDD i am using? i used an old 80gb hdd i had. Partitioned it, 1 partition 40gigs in fat32 and the other half in Mac os Journaled. The restore DMG is stored in the fat32 partition and without transfering the Restore.dmg to the Mac, I restored the Mac Os Journaled partition.

I had to do this because i downloaded the file with a PC. Hence the extra step of transfering it to another HD to reformat/restore with a Mac.

Could this have affected the mountability of my .dmg file?

Should the .dmg file be on the hard drive of the mac to be able to restore/mount it?


TIA

[judoka03g]

I finally got it to work. I think it worked this time because i transfered the dmg to the mac HD before restoring it to the external HDD. Its working great! i am having an issue though with waking up from sleep. when i close the lid it sleeps (fans turns off) but when i lift the lid the screen remains black though its actually awake already, the backlight just doesnt turn on. is there a fix for this?