Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 19, 2002 2:00 AM |
willschou1 |
There is a utility called "BootCD" which makes a 650 mb Disk Image it finds and puts all the needed files for booting a CD in OSX on this disk Image. The files for booting an OSX disk are large maybe 300mb or so. But this still give you 350mb or so of room for adding files to the disk before burning it useing the burn function of Disk Image in OSX. It can be used for running Utilities making a fixit repair disk etc. This sounds too good to be true but Ted Landau of MacFixit fame recommends it on his new website. Also says it works with Jaguar. My question is would this be possible on our XPF booted machines? Is there anyway to boot a CD from OSX for us? Will S |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
October, 07, 2002 2:50 PM |
OSXGuru |
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The reason for the discrepancy about BootX is that BootX needs to be installed in a special way for Old World machines. On New World machines, it is enough that the BootX file is in the correct location. On Old World machines, that file needs to be "unpacked" in a special way, and then the location of the "unpacked" file needs to be written in the partition map. What XPostFacto does is unpack the BootX file to a file called "BootX.image" at the root level of your Mac OS X drive. Then it writes the location to the partition map. So when XPostFacto reports that the BootCD CD doesn't have BootX installed, it means that the special procedure required for Old World machines has not been performed. I know how to work around the problem, and plan to have this working in version 3 of XPostFacto. |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
October, 07, 2002 4:15 AM |
willschou1 |
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New version of Boot CD v.5 came out this weekend. So I of course had to try it! Well it is an improvement over the older version. It now makes the Disk Image without hanging and shows the screen for adding apps and lets you add them. It also has a RAM disk which you can choose the size of. I'm not sure how that would be used in OSX. It is impressive it somehow senses what files your machine needs to boot and includes all the needed files in the disk image. It does indeed include "boot x" I don't think there is any "boot x" on the OSX install except for the one installed by XPF. So it must be the correct boot x for my machine? I followed all of the info and burned to a disk. I then booted into OS 9.1 and checked to see what XPF had to say about booting it. The same message as before. "This disk can not be booted as it doesn't contain Boot x.' However it is now telling a lie!!! I can see boot x it seems to be in the correct place and everything. Also both it and system show icons so seem to be blessed files. Next I booted into OS X Jaguar and living dangerously tried to boot from within OSX. I loaded the disk and restarted and held down the c key. It seemed to maybe look at the disk and to my surprise booted into OS 9.1 . Next I tried again but this time held down the shift,option,apple and delete keys(which is the normal thing in OS 8/9 with my clone) It did spend some time looking at the disk and almost looked like it might boot then suddenly rebooted quickly into the normal Jaguar disk. Even this is a big improvement on the last test. The previous version of boot cd threw my NVRAM a real mess which took a lot of work to clean up. This at least just doesn't boot. Ryan any comments ????Will S PS.Oh yah, this version has a much improved read me file and says something like" may or may not work with old world machines like the beige G3 |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 23, 2002 4:54 PM |
OSXGuru |
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Yes, I'm pretty sure that something like this will work in version 3 of XPostFacto. In fact, you won't have to modify the CD at all. It will work sort of like an install works today. |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 22, 2002 9:15 PM |
ggorbet |
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I am also very interested in being able to boot from a CD into OSX, specifically on an S900. I would like to make a copy of my Drive !0 emergency disk, with XPF extra goodies to make it work on my unsupported platform. Any hope future enhancements to XPF will make this possible? |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 20, 2002 6:26 PM |
OSXGuru |
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I'm not entirely sure how to go about installing BootX on the CD. It isn't simply a matter of copying a file somewhere. You need to make sure that the file is not fragmented. Then, you need to write the location of the file to the partition map of the drive. So it is not a trivial thing to do. XPostFacto does it for SCSI drives and ATA drives, but I'm not sure how I would do it for disk images that will be burned onto CDs. But I don't think it will be necessary ultimately. XPostFacto can set up the boot process so that you can boot from a CD without BootX installed. You just need a "helper" drive that does have BootX installed. That is how XPostFacto sets up the install process, for instance. But XPostFacto won't offer to do that for a BootCD CD at the moment, because it looks to see whether it is an install CD (and it isn't). But I can eliminate that test easily enough. Once I've made that change, booting from a BootCD-created CD would be like doing an install--you would select a disk to install to (even though it is not really an install). I'll test this out and let you know how it goes. |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 20, 2002 3:11 PM |
willschou1 |
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Ok, I started up in OS 9.1 checked the cd which by default is called" Emergency Boot CD" at least some of the XPF .kext files are in system/library/extensions. I clicked on XPF 2.2 and chose Emergency Boot CD as startup. I got the message "Emergency Boot CD' is not bootable (Bootx has not been installed) no real surprise there. So how can I install boot cd on the cd image before burning it? I know how to do that...what I don't know is where to get bootx and where it needs to be ie what folder or just loose on the cd's desktop/open folder? The last version of XPF I currently have that includes the source files is I think 2.2 beta7.This has a bootx folder it also has the oldWorld .pkg folder but those don't look to be in a usable form. Any help or ideas? |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 20, 2002 2:44 PM |
willschou1 |
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Thanks fpr taking the time to read my at least sort of off topic subject. I just ran "bootcd" again so I could take a look at the files on the image it makes. It would appear that it includes the XPF files! This is a surprise to me but I just looked in the extensions folder in library folder and there they are. "Patched Apple NVRAM.kext etc I don't know if includes all of them or not and it is difficult to know since there is no longer a list of files for the current XPF. But if it includes some of them perhaps it is smart enough to include all that are needed for startingup the CD??!! Chances are it doesn't include the patched bootx. Is this a hidden file or how would I check for it? I tried booting the cd I made a few daya ago by restarting in OSX and it did a major screw up of my NVRAM. I had to disconnect all my hard drives remove battery unplug push thecuda etc and boot from a OS 9cd etc to get back to normal. The worse problem in over 2 years of running OSX. i didn't think I was going to get it to work again. So if I understand correctly this cd may boot from OS9 using XPF? I will be brave and try it after looking to be sure the XPF extensions are on the CD. thanks for your time and hard work. Will S |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 19, 2002 10:37 PM |
OSXGuru |
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On second thought, there may be a reasonably simple way to make this work. Assuming you have used BootCD to create a CD which would boot on supported systems, XPostFacto ought to be able to get that CD to boot on an unsupported system, in the same way that it gets the original install CD to boot. The problem is that, at the moment, XPostFacto probably won't let you do this, because it won't realize that the CD you created is an "install" CD (because it won't have the install packages on it). But that can be fixed easily enough. I'll do some work on this and see if I can get another version out. |
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RE: Anyway to boot a CD in OSX? |
September, 19, 2002 10:31 PM |
OSXGuru |
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It is something I need to look into. There are basically two issues involved. First, the CD would need to contain the kernel extensions needed for older machines. That is fairly easy to do. Second, BootX would need to be installed on the CD in the correct way for older machines. That is harder, as it requires modifications to the partition map. I haven't actually tried BootCD yet, but I'll take a look at it and see what I can do. |