06 February 2011

My Current Setup

Okay, so after some deliberation, I finally decided to ditch the "official guide" route and just give you an account of how I'm running OS X Snow Leopard on my HP Mini 311 at the present.

For your reference, here's how I installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6)

Now to update to 10.6.6, once I've booted to my desktop (I used the USB booter to boot up the 311 but chose my internal hard drive instead), I just ran Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update) and rebooted.
Up to this point, the USB Installer with Retail Pack 0.9 installed would boot up 10.6.0 up to 10.6.6 with no problems at all.

But of course, we wanna stay on the bleeding edge so we're gonna follow the progress made by the developers.

Note though that there are different setups and up until now, we're all stumped at why the user experience is so inconsistent even among those who have practically identical hardware specifications like RAM amount and WiFi card. So, please don't assume this is supposed to work flawlessly and then complain :)

And as this is about sharing my current setup with you - if you wanna try it - I've taken the liberty of just getting the stuff I currently have in my system and then zipped it up to be able to discuss things the simplest possible way I can.

Pack:
HP Mini 311 05 Feb 2011

IMPORTANT!
I am no longer booting with EFI. Before proceeding with this, make sure to initialize/delete that 200MB partition from your hard drive. To do this launch "Terminal" and type this command:


sudo newfs_hfs -v EFI /dev/disk0s1


Press Enter. Type in your pasword when prompted. Enter.

My HP Mini 311-1002TU added specs:
3 GB RAM
Atheros N 9280 in half height PCI slot
Stock HP Broadcom 4312 with integrated Bluetooth (the WiFi part doesn't work, only BT)

Tools Needed:
- Lizard
- Kext Utility

What To Do:
1. Unpack the zip file you just downloaded and you'll get a folder named "HPMini311_05022011". Inside this folder, you'll see the following:

2. Launch Lizard. In the "Install and Update" tab, "Select Device" pane, click on your Mac OS X volume to highlight it. Then, at the next pane titled "Select Chameleon (bin) folder", click on the button "Select Folder":

3. In the window that will pop up, navigate to the same "HPMini311_05022011" folder. Click on "Open".

4. Back in Lizard, you'll notice that a new section "Bootloader's file" has been added. The components "Install Boot1h", "Install Boot0", and "Install Boot" will be enabled. Click on "Install Chameleon" and enter your password when prompted, just follow the onscreen messages that will follow.

5. After quitting Chameleon, go back to the "HPMini311_05022011" folder and copy the file "boot" and the "Extra" folder to the root of your internal hard drive, volume Macintosh HD for example:
*replace the boot file, when you're asked

6. Still in the HPMini311_05022011 folder, copy the contents of the "kexts" folder to your /System/Library/Extensions/:
*Be sure there are no VoodooPS2Controller.kext in /System/Library/Extensions
(else you risk a Kernel Panic later when you reboot)

7. Finally, launch Kext Utility. Enter your password to run the app. Wait for it to finish its job and then restart.

Tip: When you first restart after this, boot with the flags -v -f just to be sure. After doing this once, you can boot normally afterwards. This is just to help makre sure your kextcaches are rebuilt, no residues left.

What To Expect:
In my case, I'm on hibernatemode 0 with secure virtual memory disabled (sleepimage deleted from /var/vm/) I don't have the blank screen on wake.
Everything else is as what has always been with the HP Mini 311 - the only bane is that there's no ethernet after sleep.
Also, with this new ApplePS2Controller, I've got scrolling with Alps trackpad. You can't disable tap-to-click though (something I've never been able to disable since way back, even with all the different PS2Controllers, both Voodoo, ApplePS2 I've ever tried, so I guess this is irrelevant).


18 comments:

Pablo Esvertit said...

Hi, thanks for the updated guide! I'll try when I have a while, for sure. Now I'm in 10.6.6 (EFI) in a triple boot environment with W7 and Ubuntu. Do you expect some problem at the boot with W7 or Ubuntu after I've deleted the 200 MB EFI partition?

LeMaurien19 said...

It may pose some glitch, the worst you can expect is to have to run your Win 7 installer and run the tool to fix startup or whatever that is called.

Anonymous said...

Vous etes manifique madame. You are doing a great job there. Thanks alot from Berlin!

Anonymous said...

Thanks! This is much better than anything else out there. What does the battery on your Mini report after a full charge? Does this pack throttle the GPU as well?

Anonymous said...

I admit I had trouble with moving away from the EFI partition. 3 rebuilds later (lizard wouldn't take to the HDD and then KPs) and I nearly gave up and went back to the installer.

I then tracked down my troubles to the VoodooHDA.kext. You note VoodooPS2.kext (I didn't have this) in your explanation, but not the VoodooHDA. I still have sound, so I guess voodooHDA isn't required? Was this just a typo?

Thanks for your OSX 311c guides - they are the best.

J

LeMaurien19 said...

Right!
I'm sorry, I forgot to mention VoodooHDA.kext

The only "alien" kexts that should be in /S/L/E are the ones included inside the "kexts" folder in the zip file linked in the guide.

For those who have been following guides here at My MacBook Mini, all you need to do is look for any color-labelled kexts in /S/L/E and delete them (we've always had those non vanilla kexts color-labelled when installing via previous automated pkg installers).

Then install the kexts as directed in the guide.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the confirming. It was a good exercise to become a little more self-sufficient. I have been wholly reliant on your guides in the past ;o)

Thanks again J

LeonDeLyon said...

Hi,

Thanks for your work, I followed your instructions but I still have problems with scrolling. Perhaps a conflict with kexts, I previously installed Mowgli's Pack.
Any ideas ?
Thanks a lot from France !
Olivier

mosslack said...

Wow, I think my Mini 311 was mad at me for neglecting it for so long. I've never had such a difficult time getting just a bare 10.6 system installed. But installed it is and I'm presently updating to 10.6.6. Doing it the hard way, via Software Update. 4-6 hours is the estimate. Been awhile so I may have to pick your brain for this one. We'll see.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

If I make a fresh vanilla install from the retail disk then run the 10.6.6 combo update will the instructions on this post give me everything I need to boot?

The last time I tried I had to use the package to create the EFI boot and then delete the EFI in order to boot from root.

Thanks J

LeMaurien19 said...

@Anonym
Yep, I wrote this after wiping out my hard drive.
I only have a 10.6 DVD installer and I updated via 10.6.6 ComboUpdater.
One note though, if, like another who commented here, you have trouble with updating via Software Updater, then just download before hand the 10.6.6 ComboUpdate and use that instead.

Anonymous said...

Thanks again - I have a new hard drive, so I hoping to make my fresh install as clean as possible.

J

Unknown said...

@LeMaurien19

My mini311 is still at HF7 with EFI. I'm thinking about popping in a larger drive and redoing the whole setup with triple OS or just a different multi MacOSX setup, and I guess be non-EFI based. All of this with a GUID partitioned disk I guess.

I wanted to know if Chameleon would support a multiple MacOSX partition setup? I remember in the days when I did have a real mac, PPC based, where at boot time I could hold down the Option key and have different boot setups I could launch. I was wondering if I could do the same on the mini311, with a partition that would be SnowLeopard, and maybe another failsafe partition that could be SnowLeopard Server, assuming that is still around somewhat since Apple pulled the plug on the hardware. I'd like to have a setup like that, yet am unsure if Chameleon supports that. The final partition would either be a Users or a Data disk that would be immune to ktext and extension changes on the boot volumes.

I'm wondering if you've seen anyone that had that kind of setup, i.e. multiple MacOSX installations on the same mini311, just in different mac labeled partitions, all with chameleon support.

TIA.

Tetonne said...

last pack can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/tetonne

VoodooHDA.kext should removed be from /S/L/E
Tetonne

Anonymous said...

So... How's the battery life on these things? Are the rumblings about the 2-hour battery life true?

051R15 said...

Hi LeMaurien19, 051R15 of DisturbingNewTrend here with a question.
I'm on 10.6.6 with HF7c on my mini 311, after previously using HF6 on 10.6.4 . Everything is working great except for wifi which for some reason has gone out on me not to return yet. I'm using my old 1000's card (broadcom4xxx same # as the stock except non bluetooth version) on the full height slot since I don't want to muck around in the bios.
The thing is the card worked just fine before the upgrade, any ideas?
You're my fav Hackintosher!

Sombat said...

For those who did not remove the /S/L/E/VoodooHDA.ext and got the kernel panic complaining about VoodooHDA, Just boot as a single user and try to mount the root file system with the write permission. Then delete the said directory.

(My system is booted via Chameleon, update from 10.6.4 to 10.6.6)

Anonymous said...

@Le Maurien 19

Hello:

At the first time thankyou for the job, is fantastic.

But, I have a problem with my installation. Everything works fine applying your last configuration, and deleting the EFI patition on 10.6.6, except sleep. I can´t return to my finder after slepp, OS is working, but my screen remains black. On my previous 10.6.3, sleep works fine. My system is a Compaq Mini 311c, with 3Gb RAM and a non stock wifi card running without problems. The BIOS Version is F14.
Can anybody help me? There is a kext, BIOS, permissions problem?
Thanks a lot.