About This Mac & AppleSMBIOS in Snow Leopard

grumptink · #1 10-28-2009, 01:36 AM

Hey guys, long time stalker, first time poster

Just moved from 10.5.6 using Munky's EFI bootloader to 10.6.1 using Chameleon 2 RC3 & PC-EFI 10.5 installed on the main drive, thanks in main to sk1nhd33t's easy to follow guide.

Evrything is running very smoothly apart from two little problems, sleep *surprise* and "About This Mac" crashing. I think sleep failing might be related to my "About This Mac" problem so that's what I've been trying to fix.

I noticed that System Profiler was reporting my Processor speed and Bus Speed incorrectly so tried fixing it using Chameleon's smbios.plist, but it didn't fix my problem. I then read that the smbios.plist is only a cosmetic fix.

I decided to go looking for a Snow Leopard compatible SMBIOS enabler, but all I could find was andyvand's SMBIOS for Snow Leopard. As you can guess, it didn't work. As a randmom stab in the dark, to see if my theory was right, I set my install to use the 32bit kernel and installed the AppleSMBIOS.kext that I was using under 10.5.6. Low and behold, it worked.

From what I can see in System Profiler, it's changed my Boot ROM Version and System Serial Number, it looks like a Netkas AppleSMBIOS. But I might be wrong. What I'd like to know is, how can I patch my own 64bit Snow Leopard AppleSMBIOS based on the 32bit Leopard one.

I've attached a screen shot of the AppleSMBIOS loaded showing it's version and the Serial number values it's changed.

Cheers for reading guys

00010 · #2 10-28-2009, 01:42 AM

Thanx for letting me know how to use the SMBios.kext from leo in snow leo, just boot in -x32.

Thanx Dude/ Dudette!

BTW, Are you using a Dell?

grumptink · #3 10-29-2009, 12:37 AM

Hey guys, nobody have any ideas on how to fix my problem?

Imkantus · #4 10-29-2009, 10:59 AM

This is an ACPI compatibility issue. Do you have a fixed DSDT.aml applied?

AppleSMBIOSEFI.kext made by Chun-Nan does the fix, also - this might help you to keep using 1.4 stock AppleSMBIOS.kext - but I guess it's i386 only as well (not sure).

grumptink · #5 10-29-2009, 02:59 PM

Hey Imkantus, thanks for the reply.

Chun-Nan's AppleSMBIOSEFI.kext doesn't help, but I think it's designed to work exclusively from the EFI partition, not an extra folder on the main partition or S/L/E.

As for my DSDT, it's patched for HPET, RTC, _WAK, ALC883 Audio and the Snow Leopard CMOS reset fix.

Am I missing something?

Imkantus · #6 10-29-2009, 07:11 PM

Did you ensure, that SMBIOSEFI has been loaded, via kextstat command on Terminal?

I would alos recommend to try the SMBIOS of Andy again & to controll if the correct one has been loaded by checking the Copyright Information at Extensions section in the System Profiler - if you haven't done like that yet.

grumptink · #7 10-29-2009, 07:17 PM

Update, Chun-Nan's AppleSMBIOSEFI.kext did the trick when i dumped it in S/L/E. No idea why I didn't try that before, probably used to using an "Extra" folder

I know Andy's AppleSMBIOS was loaded correctly when I gave it a whirl. Actually, it did sort of work, as it did correct my CPU speed in System Profiler, it just didn't fix the "About This Mac" crash.

I'm happy for now, but I would like a 64bit solution so I'm future proofed.

thorazine74 · #8 10-29-2009, 08:02 PM

Try editing smbios.plist with your cpu's values.

Imkantus · #9 10-29-2009, 08:15 PM

Well the source code is avaible - so what's missing is someone to port it.

Having 64-Bit Kernel & Extensions isn't that much important as 64-Bit application still work cause the 32-Bit Kernel uses virtual address space.

@thorazine74
You're sure that just setting the values via smbios.plist fixes the "About this Mac" crash, alltough other smbios value injects he has tied didn't?

00010 · #10 10-29-2009, 09:49 PM

I have a fully 64-bit system.

I use the Vanilla kernel on my laptop. Most that can use Vanilla are fully 64bit (I think)