Manual install of OSX

G

ghazban

Registered
Here's a nut for you Mac OS X gurus to solve:
How to do a MANUAL osx install, without booting from the cd, to another partition???
Look on your cd, you'll find several packages, of which BSD.pkg and Essentials.pkg seems to be the most important, but I can't find the "base install" package (wich I can chose when I install from the cd). Also, there's this file "OSInstall.mpkg" which won't open on double-click or in Pacifist, can that file have something to do with it???
I need to do this, so please help...
 
Originally posted by ghazban
Also, there's this file "OSInstall.mpkg" which won't open on double-click or in PACIFIST, can that file have something to do with it???
Click to expand...

I know about pacifist...
The problem is that I can't find the baseinstall.pkg, since it doesn't exist...
Somehow, the installer installs all the other files manually, by copying files from the cd...
I want to do this, without the installer, and asks for help from some osx guru.
 
In installing from the CD, you are normally installing a new kernel. That can only be done when you're booted from some other disk.

Pacifist only does .pkg files, not .mpkg. .mpkg just have pointers to a number of .pkg files, I believe, so you should be OK just to run Pacifist on each .pkg in sequence.

That said, look closely through the contents of the .mpkg file, read the scripts in there and understand what they do.
 
yeah i think scruffy is right. look here:
/Volumes/Mac OS X Install CD/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.list

it is a list of required and optional packages. there are a few other scripts in there, but no OS stuff. i think everything you are looking ffor is in Essentials.pkg
 
Yeah, I took a look inside the mpkg, and it just included the links to the packages, and instructions on which files to make invicible afterwards...
The problem is that there aren't any package for the Baseinstall, as the installer calls it...
And yes, I am trying to install the OS on another partition...
I THINK that the baseinstall, actually just copies a few files from the cd (mach and those files) to the disk...
Those files ARE very important, without them, I can't chose the disk as the startup disk...
If you run the installer from the cd, you'll se that it installs "basic install" or alike first, and then the other packages....
 
Originally posted by scruffy
In installing from the CD, you are normally installing a new kernel.
Click to expand...

and HOW do I do this manually, without booting from cd, but booting from other partition than the destination...
 
if you want to install manually, i think it would look something like this:

1. extract Essentials.pkg (and any optional packages, like BSD subsytem)

2. copy the kernel to / and make a symlink.

3. bless the system folder.


i have not tried it, and i don t know that it will work, but i have looked through the contents of essentials. all the directories are there: /etc /var usw. what i am guessing is that the perflight and postflight documents in OSInstall.mpkg do certain things like copy over the kernel. since i this file is binary, i cannot read it so i m not sure what it does.

again, it looks like everything is in essentials.pkg, and all you need to do is copy mach.sym and mach_kernel, link mach to mach.sym, and bless the system folder (use the bless command).
 
A manual install, eh?

All right. Get a *really* powerful microsope, and put the Mac OS X CD under it. There should be a lot of little bumps in concentric circles.

Now open up your computer, take out the hard drive, and open it up so that you can see the discs. Using a small, sharp implement, copy the bumps you see on the OS X cd onto the hard disk. It will take a while.

I may have missed a few details, but that's the general idea. :p

-the valrus
 
Originally posted by lethe

2. copy the kernel to / and make a symlink.
Click to expand...
a symlink??? what's that and how do I do one? (sorry for sounding newb'ish)


Again, it looks like everything is in essentials.pkg, and all you need to do is copy mach.sym and mach_kernel
Click to expand...

BIG problem, mach.sym isn't on the cd!
Might that have something to do with the "symlink" I see above?



Oh I see, there's a terminal commando symlink... that helps... but what's the mach.sym really?
 
I m sorry, i spoke to soon. there is no mach.sym on the CD, so you can t copy it. however, don t fret! because look what i found here

Installing the new kernel

Now put the kernel in place by copying it to the root of your startup disk.

% sudo cp ~/Darwin/xnu-201.5/BUILD/obj/RELEASE_PPC/mach_kernel /

The mach.sym file will automatically be generated during system startup.
Click to expand...

so it turns out that you don t need to make that file. the system will do it for you when you start up.

so just forget about mach.sym, and do mach_kernel. this page doesn t mention anything about making a symlink to mach, so maybe we don t have to worry about it either? i don t know. i still think you should do it. like this:
Code: 
% ln -s /mach_kernel /mach

OK so try all these things. i am a little eager to see if this works. if it does it will be a neat trick! and, if they release jaguar as an update CD, and they make it harder than the 10.1 to turn an update CD into a full install, then maybe we can use the tricks we learned here to do it.

important to remember to bless the system folder and to run update_prebinding i think, so do that. if you have questions about using those commands, post back, we will help (or just read the man pages)
 
The updating of prebinding, I did through pacifist... (couldn't figure out how to do it properly in the console...)

the bless I did as following:
bless -folder "/Volumes/MacHD/System/Library/CoreServices" -bootinfo /usr/standalone/ppc/bootx.bootinfo

was that correct???
I could use some help with the bless command...



Well, here's the result I got from the above installation:
I COULD chose the "new X partition" as the startup disk, wich I couldn't do before....
It even started on that disk...
Here's the problem:
When the "Happy mac" comes up and that spinning wheel starts to spin, the computer hangs or something like that...
It just spins and spins and spins...
And after 15 min, I didn't want to wait anymore, so I restarted back into my original system.
So, how should I use bless really? and how should I use update_prebinding?
Or maybe it's another file that need some work...
 
If you have another computer with firewire you can install a second copy of OS X on that and then transfer the files to the selected partition on the machine which needs a manual install, make sure that you get the invisible files too.

This should work, yes? Me and the mac genius had a discussion about installing on computers without CD drives.

If your computer has a broken or no CD drive, and you have another firewire eqipped computer, you can put the install disk into the extra computer and boot up the computer you want OS X on while holding down the T button. This basically makes you computer act like a firewire drive. Conntect the two computers with a firewire cable after the firewire symbol comes up on the screen. Boot the extra computer from the disk you inserted by holding the C key, when OS X asks what volume to iinstall OS X on, you should see the drives from your main computer listed also. Basically this extra computer will read the CD data and then transfer it to the computer in question. Neato.

Hope that was your problem.;)
 
Actually, I have a functioning DVD-rom...
Nevertheless, I want to install the OS, without BOOTING from the cd.
I mean, I shouldn't be impossible, I mean the data is there, I just have to copy it somehow... (to another partition than the startup)

Here's some more info I got (I booted from the CD and checked out the installation)

Base system: 325238 K
Essential System Software: 464808K
BSD: 81243K

So, the conclution:
It won't due to just install the essentials (and optional BSD) and then copy the mach_kernel...
The mach_kernel isn't really 325MB :p
So I'm guessing that the installer actually copies all the system from the cd (except the install packages and SOME OTHER FILES) and then installs the Essentials over that so that some files gets replaced.
That's my guess, and I hope that somebody can help me solve this mystery that's behind the scenes in the mac os x installation...
 
So whats the real reason for not wanting to boot then? Is this just a little experiement?:)

Cool, good luck to you, I wouldn't know where to go from there. If you're just looking for the subsystem you could install darwin, but you problably knew that.:rolleyes:

Well, mabey if you figure this out a few of us here could turn it into a nice little program.
 
Or I could make in into a nice little program myself =)
Maybe that was the intention of this thread from the beginning =D
you never know
 
half off topic: why would i WANT to compile a new XNU kernel for my system? that's one question i don't see answered on the related webpage.
 
fryke: here is one reason that i had to build my own xnu kernel: the kernel supports IPv6, but it is not turned on by default. i test IPv6 at our old site, so i built xnu with IPv6 support in it. this is of course obsolete with jaguar. but you can achieve more with a custom kernel. you might also want a brand new kernel out of cvs, if you are a developer testing new functionality, or looking to see if a bug was fixed. remember that this is an open source kernel, and there are lots of people working on it, that will need to be constantly rebuilding their kernel to make it better. these are the instructions for doing that. linux users are used to this: they rebuild their kernels all the time. welcome to the world of open source software, when you can upgrade when you want to, if you need new funcitonality, instead of when your vendor decides you should upgrade.


ghazban: perhaps you are right about the OSInstall package. i will try to look into it a little more, but i don t really know where to look.

In the mean time, can you try this: boot from the manual install partition with the verbose flag, so we can see exactly where it is failing. to do this, either go into OF by holding command-option-O-F after power on, you will get a prompt, and you can type setenv boot-arg -v, or else you can just boot your functioning OSX partition, and type nvram boot-args "-v".

then boot your manual install partition. it should give you lots of text messages, instead of the spinning beachball.

oh yeah, there is a third way to boot verbose. hold command-v as it starts up. this method is not permanent. it wont stick for more than one startup. whichever method you re most comfortable with.
 
regarding your use of bless,

according to the man pages, the bootinfo file should be in the same folder as that specified by the -folder flag:
Code: 
bless -folder "/Volumes/MacHD/System/Library/CoreServices" -bootinfo /Volumes/MacHD/System/Library/BootX

BootX is the file that i find in CoreServices, and that file is not contained in Essentials, so i am assuming this is where it gets created.


the update_prebinding should look like this, i think:

Code: 
update_prebinding -root /Volumes/MacHD
 
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