猴子

My Hackintosh

I guess I never posted a picture. The bunny is Frank Kozik’s Smorkin’ Labbit.

Hackintosh - Mac OS X update to 10.8.3

I waited a few weeks to update my Hackintosh from Mac OS X 10.8.2 to 10.8.3 in order to make sure any issues were dealt with by others. Instead of using Software Update from the App Store, I downloaded the Combo Update package from Apple. Using the Combo Update is the recommended way of updating Hackintoshes. However, there were quite a few reports of successful updates applied by using the App Store updater.

In any case, after applying the update, my Hackintosh would not boot. I basically had to go through the entire build process again. I actually "doubled up" because there is a new version of Unibeast for 10.8.3. So:

1. Remove graphics card
2. Use Unibeast 1.5.3 to reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.2
3. Boot safe mode (-x) from HD using Unibeast, then re-download Mac OS X installer from App Store.
4. Download new Unibeast 1.7.0 from Tonymacx86, and create new USB Unibeast flash drive.
5. Boot from Unibeast 1.7.0 to reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.3
6. Reboot from HD using Unibeast, and run Multibeast. At this point, I still couldn't boot from the HD without Unibeast.
7. Reboot from HD using Unibeast, and install Chimera 2.0.1
8. Reboot from HD without Unibeast. (Success, finally.)
9. Turn machine off, reinstall graphics card, and reboot a final time.

Holy smokes. That only took me a week to figure out, after going through many iterations. Well, at least I'm still saving 30% or more compared to a Mac Pro.

Hackintosh build experience

Hardware, following the recommendations in tonymacx86's Customac mini 2012 Deluxe build:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77N-wifi
• CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K (over-clockable)
• GPU: EVGA GeForce GT 640, with 2GB RAM
• RAM: 2 x 8GB
• Case: BitFenix Prodigy (white)

I don't get a kickback, but I bought everything from Newegg. They have great service, and prompt delivery.

UEFI settings: Use the default set. Might want to make sure that the first graphics device to be activated is the on-board HD4000. Very important setting: Leave the "execute bit" setting alone, i.e. activated.

Procedure:

1. Use Unibeast and Mac OS X Lion (10.7) installer from the App Store
2. Do not use GPU card, just the on-board graphics
3. Hard drive plugged into SATA 3Gbps port on motherboard. The OS can hang if using the 6 Gbps ports.
4. Use Ethernet
5. Boot options -v PCIRootUID=0 GraphicsEnabler=No
6. Once Lion is installed and boots up, use Multibeast to put in these settings:
   1. UserDSDT or DSDT-Free installation (true for any UEFI board)
   2. Audio: Realtek ALCcxx - ALC892 (see Gigabyte link in hardware list above)
   3. Network: Lnx2Mac's Realtek driver
   4. Miscellaneous: FakeSMC (mandatory)
   5. Bootloader: Chimera (mandatory) -- this will be updated to a newer version later
7. Create a new admin user, and then run the Migration Assistant to restore data from a Time Machine backup

Reboot from the hard drive using the bootloader on the Unibeast USB drive. Boot options: -v GraphicsEnabler=Yes

Once it seems to be working, power down. Plug in the graphics card, and boot. Now, change the UEFI settings to turn on PEG instead (that's the graphics card). Save settings, and continue booting. I still used the Unibeast bootloader to do this. Boot from the hard drive. Boot settings: -v GraphicsEnabler=No

Once OS is running, open the App Store and buy the Mountain Lion upgrade. Cancel the installation, though. Create a new Unibeast USB drive with Mountain Lion, and repeat the above with rebooting and Multibeast.

Edit the boot settings file /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist so that there is the following pair of lines (Multibeast should have done it, but it's good to check):

 

    <key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
    <string>No</string>

 

The graphics card needs to have that setting, otherwise it will boot to a blank grey screen. From now on, it should boot from the hard drive without needing the Unibeast USB drive.

If it does not boot from the hard drive directly, where it shows error messages like "boot0: GPT, boot0: test", follow the procedure here (Solution 1) to fix it. It involves booting to Unibeast, unmounting the hard drive, and then modifying the hard drive.

So far, one thing does not work, and that is playing iTunes-bought (or free) videos and trailers. These are "protected" videos. It doesn't work within iTunes, nor does it work opening the files with Quicktime Player. So, it seems to be something to do with the DRM.

I also updated the Chimera bootloader to version 2.0.1, availble at tonymacx86.

UPDATE:

The fix for the protected video problem is to run iTunes in 32-bit mode. Quit iTunes, and then right-click the iTunes app icon, and select "Get Info". In the info window, there is a checkbox for "Open in 32-bit mode". Check it on, and there you go.

I found also that my Time Machine backups stopped working. It would attempt to do a backup and then stall after a random amount had been saved. The fix is odd: delete the file /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist, and then reboot. Mine had contained old data, artifacts of several reinstallations of the OS. After the reboot, only the two actual Ethernet interfaces were listed. That, for reasons unknown to me, seemed to enable Time Machine to perform backups as expected.

UPDATE 2:

Updated the OS to 10.8.3 and documented the process.

Fink setup for Xcode

I haven’t used fink and fink packages much, lately, since I now have a work-issue laptop with Linux. I just tried to install octave with fink, and it complained:

Can't resolve dependency "xcode (>= 3.1.2)" for package "gcc47-4.7.0-1001" (no matching packages/versions found)

Even after re-running fink configure, the error persisted. And I did have the latest Xcode installed from the Mac App Store. Turns out, one needs to do:

sudo xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

That tells fink where Xcode resides.

QuickSilver is back!

It has been years since I last used QuickSilver, a quick launch (and so much more) utility for Mac OS X. Despite that, I still keep the icon in my Dock. Well, I accidentally clicked it just now, and before I could quit it, it popped up with a window saying it was downloading an update. And then proceeded to also update several of the base plugins.

I hadn’t even noticed that it had been open sourced in 2006. It was created in June 2003 by Blacktree Software, and received rave reviews. It was quick, unobtrusive, and extensible. Apparently, the project languished between 2006 and 2010. Then, development picked up again last year. I’m not sure when the current version was released.

If you have never used QuickSilver, LifeHacker has a brief tutorial. And here is another one with a list of common tasks that can be performed with QuickSilver.

How to watch some Flash-based videos on YouTube without Flash

One of the larger annoyances of YouTube video producers is that they may restrict their video to Flash only. Even if you turn on HTML5 support, videos do not play. Here is a quick fix for some of those types videos if you use Safari.

 

The basic idea is that you change the user agent to "Safari for iPad". This makes YouTube think that you are browsing from an iPad, and it will serve up a non-Flash video.

First, you have to turn on the Develop menu. Go to the Advanced tab of Safari Preferences. At the bottom, check on “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. You will now have a Develop menu (between Bookmarks and Window).

Go to that menu, and pick User Agent. A submenu will show various browser types. Select “Safari iOS 4.3.3 – iPad”. The YouTube page will immediately reload, and in most cases, you will be able to watch the video.

I haven’t tried this trick in Chrome, yet, but will update once I do.

UPDATE: This also works to play music without Flash on Tumblr, except that you will have to select Safari iOS for iPhone.

UPDATE 2: Well, YouTube seems to have started blocking this work-around for Safari. It does seem to still work in Chrome: use the User-Agent Switcher extension.

Time Machine on a network drive

Stephen Morley has provided instructions on setting up a non-Apple network drive to work with Time Machine.

Apple’s Time Machine software made it easy to setting up incremental back-ups, with one exception: network drives (more formally called network-attached storage, or NAS). Time Machine only directly supports drives formatted with Apple’s HFS+J file system, and will eventually use all disk space on the drive. This page provides an illustrated guide showing how to set up Time Machine on a network drive, using a sparse bundle to emulate a smaller HFS+J drive.

How to Delete (or Archive) Attachments in Apple Mail and Free Up Disk Space

Apple Mail is a pretty decent email client, but it saves all your attachments in a folder deep within your user library, sucking up disk space without ever really letting you know. Fortunately, this is an easy problem to solve if you know where to look. Sort of, anyway. Apple made removing your attachments very simple, but if you want to actually save and archive them it can be a bit more complicated—especially if you're running Lion. But not to worry, we'll walk you through the whole thing. The process can be a little tedious, but it's not too tough.

via gizmodo.com

Some tips from Gizmodo about cleaning up attachments from Apple’s Mac OS X Mail application.

Convert a DMG disk image file to an ISO disk image in Mac OS X

If you ever need to convert a .dmg file to a .iso file so that the disk image can be more easily used in Windows or Linux, there is a simple way to do it from the command line:

hdiutil convert something.dmg -format UDTO -o something.iso

Update to Mac OS X Lion

I bit the bullet and updated to Mac OS X Lion last night. Had a little trouble with Safari at first: it would hang for minutes. So, I just left it alone and it‘s all better. However, when Spotlight first started to index the machine, it gave me a bit of a shock.

UPDATE: And the autocorrect looks familiar: