Tag Archives: Mac OS X

[MacOS] VMWare Fusion 2.0 beta to include McAfee Antivirus

VMWare has released VMWare Fusion 2.0 beta for MacOS X. Fusion will integrate McAfee Antivirus solution with an upgrade and update plan for 12 months. Moreover Fusion 2.0 will be available as a free update for Fusion 1.0 customers.

Further features:

  • Application sharing: link filetypes from MacOS X to run a specific Windows program (on your guest) and vice versa, link filetypes within your virtual machine to run a specific MacOS program (on your host)
  • McAfee VirusScan Plus Subscription for 12 months
  • Language Support: Exptended Spanish and Italian Language support
  • Folder Mirroring: Link your documents, pictures etc. folders from within your Windows VM to your host’s documents, pictures folder.
  • Automattic Snapshots for further protection against viruses
  • Keyboard and Mouse shortcut mapping: link special Windows commands like “insert” “print screen”  to unused F-Keys like “F13″, F14” and so on
  • Improved DirectX integration thru hardware accelerated 3D graphics: even running 720p or 1080p videos smoother

Downloading the beta version as demo requires registration on VMWare site (go here). A free beta serial key is provided aswell.

See official VMWare trailer here:

[e-Biz] Psystar countersues Apple

Mac clone manufacturer Psystar said to countersuit Apple for anticompetitetive business practices on Tuesday (see our recent report here). For this operation Psystar hired antitrust specialist attorney Colby Springer from Carr & Farrell.

Psystar will file sues on the basis of two U.S. american laws to prevent monopolies and cartels (see Sherman Antitrust Act and Clayton Antitrust Act). Tying MacOS X to Apple labeled hardware only is “an anticompetitive restrain of trade”, said Colby Springer. Psystar wants the District Court from Northern California to rule Apple’s End-User-License-Agreement for MacOS X invalid.

Stay tuned…

[e-Biz] Open Tech: The Next Mac Clone Manufacturer

Open Tech inc. – a previously unknown company is in the starting blocks to provide Intel based computers that are able to run MacOS X. We hackintoshed seniors may be irritated by such an announcement since almost any Intel based computer is able to run MacOS X, nowadays.

In contrast to Psystar, who is currently being sued by Apple for copyright violation, Open Tech inc. will not pre-install MacOS X on their computers. As there is currently no more information available, stay tuned for more news…

[iPhone] XPwn Command Line Utility released

As member of the iPhone Dev Team, planetbeing today released “XPwn”. He describes “XPwn” as an experimental pwnage tool for Linux. Although XPwn was proposedly developed for Linux users, it actually is a cross-platform tool for command line users. Update: It does not support firmware 2.0 yet.

Warning

The XPwn tool is not intended to be used by newbies. That’s why it’s called experimental pwnage tool. It provides a command line interface only, what means you can dreadfully screw up your iPhones using it. The first version of XPwn seemed to have issues when writing the NOR firmware. Although planetbeing has obviously fixed this problem, we really recommend to wait for Pwnage 2.0.

XPwn’s versions

Experimental Pwnage comes in different flavours:

XPwn’s features

Experimental Pwnage implements many of Apple’s proprietary container formats: img2, 8900, complzss, iBootIm, dmg, HFS+/HFSX.

Nice work. Congrats to planetbeing. See XPwn hackint0sh thread here.

[MultiPlatform] TrueCrypt 6.0 released

TrueCrypt is the leading open-source software to encrypt drive volumes. It supports Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. Version 5.1 has been released just 3.5 months ago in march. Now the Truecrypt team has released version 6.0 with the following features:

  • Parallelized encryption/decryption on multi-core/multi-cpu systems – thus demanding less time for the en- and decryption operations
  • Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2008: run encrypted operating systems from hidden volumes (!)
  • Windows Vista, 2008: encrypt whole drives (incl. extended/logical partitions)
  • MacOS X: Create hidden volumes

Anyway: Permanent decryption has been removed from TrueCrypt’s bootloader, in order to support hidden operating system volumes. Permanent decryption now has to be done using the boot disk.

Enjoy a major step in to more privacy and download TrueCrypt 6.0 here.

[MacOS] HowTo Update to MacOS X 10.5.3

Update 02.07.2008: MacOS X 10.5.4 is out now. See our notes here.

I. Abstract

Three days ago (May, 28th) Leopard update 10.5.3 has been released. It solves several security issues and application issues (read details here). So sumed up: you should update. Being on a Hackint0sh we need to take some things into consideration because we cannot use the built-in auto update.

The following article shows how to upgrade your Intel based Hackintosh to version 10.5.3. The approach is pretty much the same like updating to 10.5.2 and can be applied to both updates.

One limitation: the whole update process is currently only applicable to close-to-original-mac-hardware and is being done manually. Note: we did not test this on AMD based Hackintoshs.

Note to first timers: after having installed the update. The updater asks you to reboot. Do not hit the restart button eventually, instead read on. Some more steps need to be applied before you are allowed to reboot. Don’t say, we didn’t warn you!

II. Enable root user

In case you did not enable root user access to your system yet, this is a good time to do that. This has been described a thousand times elsewhere, so we won’t delve into this too deep:

  • Open Directory Utility.app
  • click the Lock to allow changes (!)
  • then Edit > Enable root user > supply password of your choice

III. Obtain update package

For manual update we need to get the updater.

IV. Back up important data and custom kexts

Backup important data like

  • documents
  • emails
  • muzaq
  • videos
  • downloads etc.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you in case anything goes wrong for whatever reason. After having done the backup of your personal data, do the backup for your system specific kexts.

Most simple way is using a terminal. Do the following:

  • hackint0sh$ su
    (provide root password)
  • hackint0sh$ cp -r /System/Library/Extension/KEXT-I-WANNA-BACKUP /TARGET/FOLDER/KEXT-I-WANNA-BACKUP

That kexts might be:

  • Audio
  • LAN
  • WLAN
  • Graphics Adapter etc.

This highly depends on your hardware. I am running an ASUS P5LD2 VM DH with a Sapphire HD 2600 XT. In my case I only need to backup my Natit.kext device driver and dsmos.kext, because history taught me a strange lesson once.

V. Use monitoring script

Since AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext would simply kill our systems we need to make sure it does not become loaded into the kernel. So netkas supplied a little command line, which monitors the install of that file and if found removes it. You need to be logged in as root:

  • hackint0sh$ while sleep 1 ; do rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext ; done

This command line must run until the end of the update.

VI. Process the update

Just mount your downloaded MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.3.dmg and begin your update. When the update process is complete

! ! ! ! _ d o n ‘ t _ i n s t a n t l y _ c l i c k _ r e s t a r t _ ! ! ! !

Instead of restarting, stop the while command line from step V. Stop it by hitting CTRL and C and read on, but don’t restart your system, until we say it.

VII. Modify startup script

Sadly, we are not running OS X on original hardware. The consequence is we are missing a chip for the fan control that holds a specific key (Alexander Graf told about the details here – german only). This key is necessary to run the graphical interface Aqua of Mac OS X (in fact: this key decodes the binaries – details about the binary protection are provided by Amit Singh here).

To make a long story short: we don’t want the operating system to look for that specific chip and key, we can supply it easier (via emulator). Netkas provided the emulator called dsmos.kext (kernel extension) for that problem as well.

Simply do the following (I assume you know how to use nano, you can also use vi or whatever you prefer).

  • hackint0sh$ nano /System/InstallAtStartup/scripts/1

In that 1 file there must be a line of code like this (old)

  • /System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext

This needs to be changed to this (new):

  • /System/Library/Extensions/dsmos.kext

Then save and exit. Using nano simply click CTRL and X, you will be asked if you wanna save before exiting.

VIII. Restoring kexts

We highly recommend you are logged in as root on a command line. In step IV. you saved your specific kexts. Now is the time to recover them to this folder:

  • /System/Library/Extensions

We will not explain how to use the copy command: this is the learning curve for today 8-))

IX. Reboot your machine

After having restored your system specific kexts. You reboot your machine. On first reboot, screen will not show the GUI but will show a black screen for about 3 minutes. It will then reboot again and it will take about 3 minutes again to show you the GUI (in our case the login window).

Shouts fly out to Netkas who’d better call himself +netkas and to Davil Elliott ;-) Live long and prosper, dudes!

And finally a word by our sponsor, who reduces our costs for this project at least a bit. Take them advertisments into consideration, would you? Thanks in advance!


[MacOS] Install Leopard from .dmg Image to your System

“and first for something complete different”: Muzaq… coding or administrating system can’t do without gooood muzaq. Check our latest tunes here :-)

This time we’re gonna install Leopard from a .dmg image instead from DVD. The purpose is having a repair and recovery system by the hand in case you need it. My story is this: after having had a clean install of Leopard finished and having had applied all the updates, my MBP simply crashed again and again (two mouse pointers error – I found a solution in the meantime: that bug belongs to the Leopard Graphics Update – read it here howto fix it), since at that point I could not fix it, I then decided to reinstall. Something seemed fishy and would hopefully be gone after another fresh install. But as you expect: the same problem occurred again. I then decided to restore my previous tiger install and installed the Leopard DVD to a second partition. This way nothing can stop me, whereever I am, whatever does not work…

Ok what to do now?

I assume

  • You don’t have a bootcamp partition installed
  • means your harddrive is single partitioned
  • You got Tiger installed
  • You know the size of your harddrive (you can also find out in “Disk Utility”)

Now, let the game begin…

    1. Insert Leopard installation DVD into your drive
    2. Start “Disk Utility” to make a .dmg image of your installation DVD (see picture)
    3. click the Mac OS X Install DVD (highlight it) and choose New Image

 

beforedmg

  1. Choose Read as type of image and name it Mac OS X Install DVD(see picture)

    makedmg

  2. Wait forever (15-20minutes)
  3. Close Diskutility and
  4. Open terminal and enter:
    sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 139G "HFS+" "LeoInst" 10G
    (in this example the total harddrive size is 149GB = “139G + 10G”)
  5. This command resizes the first partition to 139GB and generates a second partition formated in “HFS+” with size of 10GB. The name of the second partition will be LeoInst (disk0s1 is in this case the EFI partition – see here, what makes the EFI partition so interesting, system partition starts at disk0s2 – that’s the partition we’re gonna resize and split into disk0s2 and disk0s3)
  6. After having executed this command successfully you need to reboot
  7. After reboot open “Disk Utility” again
  8. You should now see two partitition on your harddrive (see picture)

    LeoInst

  9. Click on the second partition named “LeoInst”
  10. Click “Restore”
  11. As Source choose your Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg image (should be located on the desktop!)
  12. As destination drag and drop the second partition called “LeoInst”
  13. click “Restore”
  14. Wait about forever to have the DVD copied to your drive (again 15-20mins)

    diskutil01

  15. Close Disk Utility
  16. Go to “System Preferences” and choose “Startup Disk”
  17. Choose your Mac OS X Install DVD (which is in fact now a partition) as start volume
  18. reboot system and install Leopard

Additional notes

These instructions are intended to be applied to genuine Apple systems rather than HackMacs. In my case I used my MacBook Pro. Because of the different .kexts to be applied to HackMacs this guide will not work for those systems! Be warned!