Rebel EFI from Psystar

[pαuℓzurrr.]

Quick Overview Featuring Psystar's newest technology for allowing for the smooth interfacing between operating systems and generic Intel hardware, Rebel EFI allows for the easy installation of multiple operating systems on a single system. The authenticated version allows for the permanent installtion of these OS's on your system, as well as providing the DUBL, supported hardware profile features and related drivers, and support for the application. Rebel EFI is free to try and download, though it will have limited hardware functionality and a run-time of two hours.

Free trial here: Download Rebel EFI

Regular Price: $89.99
SPECIAL PRICE: $49.99

Installing Snow Leopard using Rebel EFI 1. Download the Rebel EFI file, available here. 2. Burn the file to a CD. 3. Insert the Rebel EFI disc into your CD drive. 4. Start or restart your computer. 5. As computer boots up select, Boot Options or Boot Menu Key **Boot Options or Boot Menu Key differ by motherboard manufacturer. 6. Select CD ROM 7. After CD loads press enter to run the CD 8. When prompted, Eject the CD and it will ask for the Snow Leopard DVD 9. Insert the Snow Leopard DVD 10. Select Main Language 11. Click Continue, if you want to continue with the installation of Snow Leopard. 12. Click Agree, if you agree. 13. Select the disk that you want to install Snow Leopard on. a. If no disk shows, Click on Utilities on the tool bar, then select Disk Utilities. b. On the left you should see your hard drive. c. If not, a disk is not connected or cannot be read by your computer. d. After selecting your hard drive click on Partition. e. Under Volume Scheme, click current and select 1 partition. f. Under Volume Information, name your hard drive. g. Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) h. At the bottom of the window Click on the Options Button. i. Select the GUID Partition Table j. Click OK k. Click Apply l. Click Partition m. Quit Disk Utilities 14. Select the disk that you want to install Snow Leopard on. 15. Click Install. 16. When Installation completes. restart the computer 17. As the computer starts up, insert the Rebel EFI CD 18. As computer boots up select Boot Options or Boot Menu Key **Boot Options or Boot Menu Key differ by motherboard manufacturer. 19. Select CD ROM 20. Once CD loads you will see both the Hard Disk and the Rebel EFI CD 21. Use the arrow keys to highlight the Hard Drive 22. Press Enter to boot Hard drive. 23. Launch the Rebel EFI application from the CD. 24. Follow the on-screen authentication procedure. 25. Click Continue 26. Select your Keyboard 27. Click Continue 28. Select, Do not transfer my information now. 29. Click Continue 30. If, you have and Apple ID enter it now 31. If not, Click Continue 32. Enter your Registration Information 33. Click Continue 34. Create your Account Information 35. Click Continue 36. Select Time Zone 37. Click Continue 38. Click Done

I don't encourage anyone to buy this since you can build this yourself with a boot-132 cd or usb stick...

Edit 9:42:
The website just went offline completely!

Prasys posted a screenshot of a file which shows that it has lspci inside it.

Source: prasys.co.cc

[scififan68]

lmao wow that is pretty much pointless.

[TechSgtChen]

The website worked fine for me just now. I wouldn't say it's pointless, if their "supported hardware profiles" help make building a Hackintosh easier. How many users have systems that work 100% or even 95%? Complaints about bits of hardware not working fill this forum. I've never been able to get sleep or hibernation to work on my system, and that's with one of the most highly recommended motherboards and various combinations of VoodooPower, OpenHaltRestart and SleepEnabler. Assuming they can work out the bugs and offer 100% working profiles, I'd be willing to pay the $50. But that's a very tall order.

[thorazine74]

Originally Posted by TechSgtChen The website worked fine for me just now. I wouldn't say it's pointless, if their "supported hardware profiles" help make building a Hackintosh easier. How many users have systems that work 100% or even 95%? Complaints about bits of hardware not working fill this forum. I've never been able to get sleep or hibernation to work on my system, and that's with one of the most highly recommended motherboards and various combinations of VoodooPower, OpenHaltRestart and SleepEnabler. Assuming they can work out the bugs and offer 100% working profiles, I'd be willing to pay the $50. But that's a very tall order.

You mean that when the community works out the bugs and finds the most compatible hardware psystar deserves to be paid for that? Sounds really fair.

[TechSgtChen]

Originally Posted by thorazine74 You mean that when the community works out the bugs and finds the most compatible hardware psystar deserves to be paid for that? Sounds really fair.

Read the comments in the second article electro cites above. It's all about the amount of time and frustration you're willing to put into installing OSX86. If I asked a friend who knew a lot about building a Hackintosh to build me one, I'd be willing to fairly compensate him for his time. I have a mostly working system right now. I'm not going to waste days or weeks experimenting and God only knows how many restarts to try to get the final bugs out. If a company can do that for me, I'll pay them, although obviously not the full Apple premium.

[thorazine74]

Originally Posted by TechSgtChen Read the comments in the second article electro cites above. It's all about the amount of time and frustration you're willing to put into installing OSX86. If I asked a friend who knew a lot about building a Hackintosh to build me one, I'd be willing to fairly compensate him for his time. I have a mostly working system right now. I'm not going to waste days or weeks experimenting and God only knows how many restarts to try to get the final bugs out. If a company can do that for me, I'll pay them, although obviously not the full Apple premium.

I think you are missing the point, from what I can see (without buying it) they are selling a modified boot loader plus an lspci tool that connects to an online database that downloads kexts for the matched hardware, but of course only if its supported on a closed list of components, the ones they are selling with their machines. But the marketing call is "Install OS X on any Computer". That sounds like snake oil to me, its obviously not true, if you have a motherboard with a sis chipset or a sony laptop with an incompatible display controller, how is RebelEFI going to help you?
On the other hand it sounds like a big change of strategy I suppose because of the legal troubles: now instead of selling x86 computers with OS X preinstalled, they could just sell the "proven-to-work" hardware with no OS and just let the user install a bought (or downladed, who cares) copy of OS X, that way the user is the one breaking the EULA, not Psystar.

Originally Posted by Dies Not really... It looks like a "larger work" to me, it looks like they not only consolidated a few things, *maybe* made them easier to use, prettier to look at, etc. added some custom applications. Whatever BS they did, I'm pretty sure it's larger than what they started with. From: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html The FSF now considers the APSL to be a free software license with two major practical problems, reminiscent of the NPL: * It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with other files which may be entirely proprietary. * It is incompatible with the GPL. See section 2 of the NPL for the reference above http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/netscape-npl.html In any case, there is really no sense in us arguing about it. We're not lawyers ( well, at least I'm not ) and this isn't a court. I also don't enjoy pissing off people who contribute to the community. The only point I was trying to make is that it cracks me up when people release their code to the public under a pretty liberal license then get pissy when someone does something they don't like with it. Seems very childish to me. Either don't release the code at all, release it under a restrictive license or deal with it. In the end it doesn't really matter because if someone really wants to steal your code they will. Not much can be done about it in some cases, even if you have a legal department at your disposal.

In my opinion you can split RebelEFI in 2 parts:
- The DUBL bootloader (OSXLINUZ & INITRD)
- The RebelEFI app (REBELEFI.PKG)
Even if you consider the whole package a "larger work" (even though its arguable that it is, it could be seen as just a bundle of 2 different pieces of code) based on Boot132, dfe, chameleon, pcefi or whatever, they would still have to release the code for DUBL.

Originally Posted by genex agree initrd is not a regular id some can confirm if it is a encrypted or what ?

I think its encrypted somehow, or compressed with some unknown tool, neither gzip nor cpio could unpack it. If you open it in a hex editor you would see no clear text at all so I think its probably encrypted
If its encrypted they key has to be in the OSXLINUX file somewhere I think. There is dsa_pub.key inside rebelefi.pkg but I dont think it got anything to do with the initrd.
I dont know why they would encrypt it though, there are supposed to be only kexts inside the initrd right?
I guess that really shows their true intentions, I hope someone cracks it open very soon...

[TechSgtChen]

Originally Posted by thorazine74 I think you are missing the point, from what I can see (without buying it) they are selling a modified boot loader plus an lspci tool that connects to an online database that downloads kexts for the matched hardware, but of course only if its supported on a closed list of components, the ones they are selling with their machines. But the marketing call is "Install OS X on any Computer". That sounds like snake oil to me, its obviously not true, if you have a motherboard with a sis chipset or a sony laptop with an incompatible display controller, how is RebelEFI going to help you?

I haven't seen anything that says it only works for systems that match their specs. I'm sure there are some systems that won't work, but without actually testing Rebel EFI, I can't say how comprehensive their database is. When all is said and done, an awful lot of people are like Kabyl and me. What we like about OS X is that "it just works." We don't want to spend uncounted hours scouring forums hoping to solve minor and major problems, downloading various kernal extensions and patches hoping that one will do the job without conflicting with something else. We don't want to ask and be admonished that we should use the search function. We don't want to "learn" about our systems and how to use Terminal commands. If we wanted to do CLI work, we'd get Linux. We just want to use our Hackintoshes. Building a non-Apple Mac is still more of a black art than it is a science, although it's come a long way in the past few years. Even if you have a system configuration absolutely identical to one that works, there's still no guarantee that yours will work the same way.

On the other hand it sounds like a big change of strategy I suppose because of the legal troubles: now instead of selling x86 computers with OS X preinstalled, they could just sell the "proven-to-work" hardware with no OS and just let the user install a bought (or downladed, who cares) copy of OS X, that way the user is the one breaking the EULA, not Psystar.

I've been saying all along in Mac forums that this is what they should have been doing instead of trying to fight Apple in court.

[Kabyl]

They have to release the changes for that, since it's based on boot-132 and is under APSL, if they don't, it would be a gift given to Apple on a golden plate.

[korsabad]

[Dies]

Originally Posted by Kabyl They have to release the changes for that, since it's based on boot-132 and is under APSL, if they don't, it would be a gift given to Apple on a golden plate.

Interesting, I was under the impression that the APSL was similar to BSD.

4. Larger Works. You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered
Code with other code not governed by the terms of this License and
distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In each such instance,
You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulfilled for
the Covered Code or any portion thereof.

If I'm reading that right it would mean that I can add as much as stuff as I want and the only requirement is that I release the original code, I can still keep my code or theme or whatever private.