[galavanter]

I believe I have been following mechdrew's instructions to the letter. They are pretty clearcut. The most challenging part for me was downgrading to Bios A04 using VMware Fusion on my Mac.

I do see many reporting success when I have had glitches, but they were really all temporary hangs and such. This mach_kernel 10.5.6 issue, I searched for it and only found it mentioned briefly, usually involving multiple OS installs...

I have wondered too if it is Snow Leopard on my iMac that is causing the problem. It had a negative effect on some installers I use to add apps to my Palm Pre phone.

But please don't think me ungrateful. This site prompted me to buy the Mini 10V, along with the fact that I spilled a Heineken on my Macbook.

This is my first post on my Mac Mini.

[oioaoi]

galavanter,

At the prompt, type "cd /Extra" to access the directory. Next, type "ls -l" to find the com.apple.Boot.plist file. Before editing this file, type "cat com.apple.Boot.plist" to browse the file contents. This file must be referred when Chameleon look up which kernel to read. In my case, the actual name of the kernel is mach_kernel in the root directory, however, the description in the com.apple.Boot.plist indicates "mach_kernel.10.5.6". So I just deleted ".10.5.6" in that line.

To modify the file, you need to be the superuser. "sudo" command makes you a temporal superuser by typing your password. "vi" is an editor program. If you are not familiar to the "vi", you better find some better way to edit the file. The file is set Read Only for general users. Before editing it, copy the file to the visible directory, change the mode to read/writable, edit the file by TextEdit, save it, and then overwrite the original file with it by command. (Would someone give him a better instruction? I'm not a native English speaker and not a unix pro either.)

meklort

Thank you for your great effort on NBI. I followed the instruction by mechdrew, and used 10.5 installer DVD plus 10.5.8 combo update. In the process, I made some mistakes and I suspect it led me to this error. I don't know. I didn't use 10.5.6, though.

[Crisu]

Good morning, oioaoi!

Editing the file com.apple.Boot.plist worked for me.

There is even an easier way for noobs.
Just have to search in finder the file com.apple.Boot.plist.

So type in finder com.apple.Boot.plist

Drag this file to your desktop, double-click it, and in the editor, you just delete .10.5.6
Save this file, and drag it from the desktop to the Extra-directory.
Just have to say "identify"...

Now I just search about how to get the trackpad smoother, it is very anoying to work with

[galavanter]

My sincerest thanks to oioaoi, Crisu, and of course meklort and mechdrew. I just booted 10.5.8 without a hitch.

I'm going across the street to show this off to my neighbor. He was bragging about his new $1200 MBP the other day. See how he likes my $280.00 Mac Mini.

Thanks again to all. Oh yeah and it tethers great via wifi to my Palm Pre.

[00cho]

I had the exact same problem. I did follow the instructions melkort reiterated. I used Mechdrew's page and followed it carefully 3 times and had the exact same problem until I found this thread. Then I followed oioaoi instructions for modifying com.apple.Boot.plist and it worked fine.

It would seem to be an error in the com.apple.Boot.plist to still list "mach_kernel.10.5.6" after I just upgraded to 10.5.8. Is NetbookInstaller supposed to change that?

Overall, my install went pretty well. I experienced a problem trying to mount the MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.8.dmg ".com.apple.DiskImageMounter[327]: load_hdi: timed out waiting for driver to load", but this was solved by mounting the dmg on another mac and copying the .pkg file over instead. Also, the bluetooth menu is still showing a greyed out "Bluetooth: On" indicating no software control of the on/off function.

Now on to fix bluetooth and that annoying trackpad.

Many thanks to all who's efforts made this process possible. (hopefully no bothans died :-p)

00cho

Originally Posted by meklort

I'm just wondering how everyone is upgrading.

You should be doing the following after you have 10.5 running
1) Install 10.5.8
2) reboot to safe mode OR to your usb install drive.
3) run NetbookInstaller.
If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll see if I can fix it.


Do *not* run NetbookInstaller before you reboot.

[ottawadave]

With my audio problems with 10.5.8 and not having audio after wake from sleep, I decided to start from scratch and use the NBI method. I also had to go and edit my com.apple.Boot.plist file to stop it from looking for the older mach file name.

BTW, audio is still gone after sleep.

Originally Posted by meklort

I'm just wondering how everyone is upgrading.

You should be doing the following after you have 10.5 running
1) Install 10.5.8
2) reboot to safe mode OR to your usb install drive.
3) run NetbookInstaller.
If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll see if I can fix it.


Do *not* run NetbookInstaller before you reboot.

[mew00]

I was having the mach_kernel error after making the 10.5 > 10.5.6 transition... before I could find this thread I ended up just reinstalling 10.5 again. This time I did Software Update to 10.5.8, ran NBI (.82, from USB) as directed after reboot, and got a kernel panic. Rebooted from USB again, ran NBI again, restarted, and somehow it worked. The only thing I changed between the first and second NBI runs was I did not check "Generate a system specific dsdt.aml file" the second time, which I had checked the first time for some reason. Second time around I stuck with just the defaults. I am now running 10.5.8, fingers crossed that I will not encounter any more problems. Thought this might be useful for someone.

[BasilJuice]

Not sure where best to post this - I have a Mini 9, not a 10v, but my problem sounds similar to the ones here. I've had a great Leopard installation working since May, but my hard drive failed last week and now I'm trying to start over again with a fresh installation on a new Runcore 32GB. (Via mechdrew's basic USB installation method.) Back in May, I used the Dell EFI method without too many problems, then upgraded to 10.5.7, then upgraded via software update to 10.5.8. All was well until the SDD failed.

So now I'm trying the step-by-step MechDrew guide via USB/Netbook Installer, which is very clear and helpful. But everything keeps going wrong just before or after the 10.5.8 update. The first time I tried it, everything went fine through the 10.5.8 update, the subsequent restart, and the safe-mode running of Netbook Installer. But then, on the final restart, I got the "can't find Mach_Kernel" message. I typed "Mach_Kernel" manually, was able to boot, but then I just couldn't get the permissions to allow me to rewrite the plist file to delete the 10.5.6 bit (see posts above). I tried everything here, including the terminal instructions, though I was a little confused by the exact wording of the latter so I may have screwed it up. I restarted and then got a depressing black screen with this text:

boot0: GPT
boot0: testing
boot0: testing
boot0: done
boot1: error

So I thought I'd just redo the entire installation, but this time I got the "can't find Mach_Kernel" message much earlier -- after the original restart following the 10.5.0 installation. I typed "Mach_Kernel" and the Welcome screen popped up, I did the registration, then installed the 10.5.8 combo update. It seemed to go fine, then I restarted and got the black screen and the "boot0: GPT" message again.

Is it possible, as someone speculated above, that the basic Netbook Installer method doesn't work well with older retail versions of Leopard? Should I try to repeat the process right from the start, hoping for better luck? This "Mach_Kernel10.5.6" thing really sucks, though I'm wary of going back to the Dell EFI method since mechdrew strongly suggests using Netbook Installer.

I could also just buy a copy of Snow Leopard, but like most of us non-tech types I'm steering clear of this until the forum leaders have had a chance to test and rework things a bit. Still, I am very sad that the basic Leopard installation doesn't seem to be working out for me. Curse the lame hard drive that Dell originally sold me -- if that had worked for more than four months, I wouldn't have any of these problems.

Thanks as ever for any help/advice.

---------- Post added at 11:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:25 PM ----------

Oops, should have identified the system properly:

Dell Mini 9, BIOS A05, 2GB RAM, 32GB Runcore SDD.

[ShakaBrah808]

Originally Posted by oioaoi

galavanter,

At the prompt, type "cd /Extra" to access the directory. Next, type "ls -l" to find the com.apple.Boot.plist file. Before editing this file, type "cat com.apple.Boot.plist" to browse the file contents. This file must be referred when Chameleon look up which kernel to read. In my case, the actual name of the kernel is mach_kernel in the root directory, however, the description in the com.apple.Boot.plist indicates "mach_kernel.10.5.6". So I just deleted ".10.5.6" in that line.

To modify the file, you need to be the superuser. "sudo" command makes you a temporal superuser by typing your password. "vi" is an editor program. If you are not familiar to the "vi", you better find some better way to edit the file. The file is set Read Only for general users. Before editing it, copy the file to the visible directory, change the mode to read/writable, edit the file by TextEdit, save it, and then overwrite the original file with it by command. (Would someone give him a better instruction? I'm not a native English speaker and not a unix pro either.)

meklort

Thank you for your great effort on NBI. I followed the instruction by mechdrew, and used 10.5 installer DVD plus 10.5.8 combo update. In the process, I made some mistakes and I suspect it led me to this error. I don't know. I didn't use 10.5.6, though.

I got as far as typing my password then don't know what to do next. I'm not familiar to the "vi". I'm so close!
Please help.
Thanks
Mike

---------- Post added at 09:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:37 AM ----------

Worked my through the newby way. Everything is running great! Thanks for all that posted on here. I couldn't have gotten through without all you hard work.

[dcabq]

Follow post 13 of this thread.