Tag Archives: Darwin Bootloader

[MacOS] Flags and Parameters for OSX86’s Darwin Bootloader

This is for the matter of completeness of my own records. You will find this on many places on the net, prolly not that well documented ;-) Anyway, the following flags and parameters may be put into Darwin before bootprocess:

flag / parameter meaning
-f Force rebuild extensions cache
-v Verbose booting shows debug information
-s Boots into single user mode (means only terminal based mode)
-x Boots into safe mode
-legacy Boots into 32bit instead of 64bit mode
“rd=disk0s1” Force to boot a specific partition on a specific drive (BSD drive notation, means disk0 = physical disk 1). Here disk1 partition 1 is forced to be booted.
“Graphics Mode=1024x768x32@75” Forces to boot with a resolution of 1024 x 768 with 32bit colors at 75Hz
“Kernel=mach_kernel” Forces to load a specific kernel, helpful for testing of new kernels.
“cpus=1” Force using only 1 CPU core, may help addressing issues
“idlehalt=0” May solve stuttering and shuttering on dualcore CPUs
“platform=X86PC” Forces to not use powermanagement (disables ACPI)
“platform=ACPI” Forces to use powermanagement (enables ACPI, but may crash your system)