Stuff that are most often taken for granted but are important nonetheless to survive hackintoshing:
1) Know how to interrupt Darwin, the bootloader (as if you didn't know it's a bootloader, hey? Just wanted to clear out that that's not my boyfriend's name or something ;))
> by default, you've got a five second countdown before OS X actually starts booting up. During that time, hit any key on your keyboard and you'll get to the boot prompt.
2) Know your flags! United Nations member countries not included - haha, so not funny and a desperate attempt at humor.
"-v" : verbose mode - OS X normally uses graphical boot mode, so you get that screen with a grey apple and a spinning wheel at the bottom. But with verbose mode, you only get text flashing across your screen - especially useful when you want to see what's going on as OS X boots up for problem diagnosis.
"-f" : not exactly sure that this mode's officially called but I use it to force OS X to load kexts. Sometimes it happens that you've installed a kext alright but it isn't recognized by the system, you just gotta make OS X to load it against its will.
"-x": safe boot mode - when the system refuses to boot properly and you wanna go in fix stuff but want to do so in GUI, this would be the way to go.
"-s" : single user mode - when all else fails, use this. It'll boot up the system in command line mode and this is the time when you need to...
3) Know your Terminal commands - I'm a total noob when it comes to Mac OS X but I've been dabbling with Linux for quite sometime now, being weened on Mandrake Linux run computer labs in college (I studied in a state university, which, for a third world country, means no sufficient funds coming in from the government, hence the need to go open source), I've a fairly good amount of basic bash knowledge. And OS X being Unix essentially underneath the glossy Aqua exteriors, that knowledge has proven to be indispensible.
Here are some basic commands I find myself using time and again:
