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Old 01-03-2009, 08:06 AM
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nfoav8or nfoav8or is offline
 
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Mac OS X LIVE DVD is here!

Thanks to the Dev Team over at InsanelyMac, the dream of a true Live DVD for OS X and OSx86 is here.

Original posts by spartango over at InsanelyMac.com:
"Not long after REVENGE's call to arms, the OS X live dvd team has struck gold!

We now have a working Live dvd construction method that is easy to follow and works quite well. In fact, it will work on either hackintosh and legit macs, depending on the kext's and boot loader used!

This method works because OSX has a disk image boot system in place to support its network boot system. IOHDIXController and kernel can take a path to disk image supplied to them, and mount it as /, via "imageboot", which recognizes a disk image as an attachable filesystem.

Further, Apple has setup a system to take a read-only disk image and attach a shadowfile to it, so that it is writeable. Intended to support a network boot system by making the user's session local and non-persistent, it is implemented in /etc/rc.netboot. Basically, vndevice (/usr/libexec/vndevice) attaches a shadow file to the dmg, and enables a copy-on-write strategy on that device--writes to the dmg are diverted to the temporary shadow file. This is much like what happens on a linux live dvd, albeit with Unionfs.

Normally the shadowfile is created on a local disk or network share, on either nfs or hfs. Under my method, the shadowfile is created on ramdisk formatted with hfs, and the system behaves exactly as if it were booted with netboot. The difference is that I specify that the dmg to boot from is local(file:///), and then manually start a customized rc script. The script behaves like rc.netboot, except i create a ramdisk and setup the shadowfile there instead of on a local disk. After that / is R/W and OS X boots normally into finder...and beyond.

More details in the link below to the InsanelyMac X Labs!

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=144128







Original pictures care of spartango over at original post.

I personally think this is a great tribute to those with larger brains than me since I've been trying to get a modified version of modbin's method to work for a while now.

I also think that people SHOULD NOT be flooding the net with versions they've created using this method. For Windows users: there are already some versions out there and any can be made to work by simply editing the image file by using Transmac. For the rest of us already using OS X... create your own. It's easy enough now with the [How-To] in place. Questions should be directed to the Dev Team but can also be discussed here at the forum (just label the thread accordingly).

Lets hope the creation of the LIVE DVD allows us to fix systems otherwise thought unfixable.

My hat goes off to the creators. Awesome job Dev Team!


(OS X LIVE image shown above created in photoshop for use on the old AMD-LIVE DVD version I was creating and later edited for this article.)


Last edited by nfoav8or; 01-04-2009 at 05:38 AM.
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  #2  
Old 01-03-2009, 10:39 AM
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Fantastic news, i've been looking forward to this for a while

Mac OS X 10.6.4 Retail || Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz || Gigabyte G31M-ES2L || GeForce 6600 GT 128MB || Realtek ALC883 Audio || Realtek RTL8169 LAN || Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB HD || Sony Dual Layer IDE DVD RW DW-D22A || Apple Aluminium Keyboard || Mighty Mouse

MacBook Pro || 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo || 200Gb HD || 2Gb Ram || NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

iPhone 4 || 16Gb
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Old 01-03-2009, 11:44 PM
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milanca milanca is offline
 
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Yes, this is definitely great stuff.. I created one the other day when i saw the thread at insanelymac. Working like a charm, great stuff. It can definitely help the community a lot.

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Old 01-14-2009, 07:42 PM
bob5731 bob5731 is offline
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I wood like a ISO of it.
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Old 01-15-2009, 02:54 AM
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nfoav8or nfoav8or is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bob5731 View Post
I wood like a ISO of it.
apparently the new Leo4All install DVD will have this feature. This is why I'm not going to upload mine. I've gotten my LiveDVD to work for my system and a few others but I don't want to post this and have everyone complaining how it won't work on theirs (because I didn't design it with this in mind).

It really is just easier to create it.

Use an "old" version of a Leopard OSx86 install DVD and update. Then follow the guide. Pretty simple steps if you ask me.

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  #6  
Old 01-15-2009, 10:40 AM
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milanca milanca is offline
 
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Yes, i agree, its pretty simple to create a LiveDVD. I created mine and it's working fine for both of my systems. Could have uploaded it, but it needs to cover good amount of chipsets. Who knows, maybe i can include it and create sort of uni livedvd, not sure though. The fact remains that it is a great thing. It can save us having a working spare installation from other disk used for recovery instead of booting off install dvd, could be used for restoring backup disk images and other various usage. Great thing.

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  #7  
Old 01-23-2009, 10:57 PM
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cmdshft cmdshft is offline
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Seems that there may be a RAM limitation to this.

I have 1GB of RAM, and a test DVD that was sent to me refuses to boot all the way. Seems there has to be at least 1.1GB of RAM or more to boot the system.

Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 (9L30) | Chameleon 2.0 RC3 | Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz 800Mhz FSB HyperThread 1MB L2 cache SSE3 1MB L2 cache works, cosmetic display of 512KB L2 cache | Asus P4V8X-MX VIA Chipset, VIA-VT8237 Southbridge | AC97 VIA8237 | Dual 1GB 333Mhz DDR SDRAM | nVidia PNY GeForce 7600GS 512MB 8x AGP DVI/TV-Out/VGA [NVinject 0.2.1; QE/CI/QuartzGL/Rotation] | Darwin Kernel Version 9.7.0: Sun Jun 14 20:48:28 IST 2009; Voodoo 2.0 Intel alpha3 :xnu-1228.12.14/BUILD/obj/RELEASE_I386 i386
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Old 01-24-2009, 02:49 AM
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nfoav8or nfoav8or is offline
 
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I think if the ramdisk size was changed in the initial build you could make it work with less RAM.

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  #9  
Old 01-24-2009, 04:09 AM
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cmdshft cmdshft is offline
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PCWiz and I are going to test some things, he's having something sent to him and we'll probably try out a script which auto-detects your RAM size to ensure best use of the ramdisk.

Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 (9L30) | Chameleon 2.0 RC3 | Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz 800Mhz FSB HyperThread 1MB L2 cache SSE3 1MB L2 cache works, cosmetic display of 512KB L2 cache | Asus P4V8X-MX VIA Chipset, VIA-VT8237 Southbridge | AC97 VIA8237 | Dual 1GB 333Mhz DDR SDRAM | nVidia PNY GeForce 7600GS 512MB 8x AGP DVI/TV-Out/VGA [NVinject 0.2.1; QE/CI/QuartzGL/Rotation] | Darwin Kernel Version 9.7.0: Sun Jun 14 20:48:28 IST 2009; Voodoo 2.0 Intel alpha3 :xnu-1228.12.14/BUILD/obj/RELEASE_I386 i386
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  #10  
Old 02-05-2009, 03:08 PM
biker69 biker69 is offline
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I hope.

I hope that this version works, i wil try, Thanks.



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