Target Disk Mode - Revision history

AshleySueMas at 20:22, 21 February 2014

2014-02-21T20:22:34Z

Liliana at 18:57, 17 July 2013

2013-07-17T18:57:39Z

Scellef: /* EFI Based Systems */ Added Trial 2, included next steps for Trials 3 and 4

2012-08-21T22:23:39Z

EFI Based Systems: Added Trial 2, included next steps for Trials 3 and 4

Scellef: Categorized

2012-08-21T21:28:00Z

Categorized

Scellef: Note about PCMCIA 1394 Expansion card

2012-08-18T17:54:47Z

Note about PCMCIA 1394 Expansion card

Scellef: Described resources, added another. Clarified 'why it shouldn't have worked' section of Trial 1.

2012-08-15T03:03:48Z

Described resources, added another. Clarified 'why it shouldn't have worked' section of Trial 1.

Scellef: Added Trial 1, added link to Resources, formatting

2012-08-15T02:45:41Z

Added Trial 1, added link to Resources, formatting

Scellef: Whoops. Added caveat to HFS+ and Linux.

2012-08-15T02:00:17Z

Whoops. Added caveat to HFS+ and Linux.

Scellef at 01:59, 15 August 2012

2012-08-15T01:59:48Z

Lynnae: /* Installing Ubuntu onto an Intel Mac via TDM */

2012-08-14T23:52:50Z

Installing Ubuntu onto an Intel Mac via TDM

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:22, 21 February 2014
Line 75:		Line 75:
	**http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/what-makes-a-volume-bootable		**http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/what-makes-a-volume-bootable

−	~~[[Category:Mac Development]]~~	+	[[Category:Macintosh Archive]]
−	[[Category:Macintosh]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:57, 17 July 2013
Line 76:		Line 76:

	[[Category:Mac Development]]		[[Category:Mac Development]]
		+	[[Category:Macintosh]]

@@ Line 43: / Line 43: @@
 * If Ubuntu doesn't load, reboot and hold down ''Option'' to bring up Boot Camp's bootable devices list.  You should see an option for "Windows".
 * By all accounts, this should not have worked, as rEFIt needs to be installed in such a way as to communicate with Boot Camp (Mac's builtin bootloader).  Additionally, the hybrid GPT/MBR model that early Intel Mac firmware made use of relied on essentially a hack to synchronize GPT and MBR maps across different partitions (volumes in Mac-a-nese), and communicate them through BIOS emulation.  rEFIt explicitly ensure the two tables are synchronized by virtue of <code>gptsync</code>, or something similar.  Unfortunately, this is the biggest success to date. [[User:Scellef|Scellef]] 03:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
-==Wiping systems
+====Hybrid GPT/MBR -- Trial 2====
 ===Resources===

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:28, 21 August 2012
Line 55:		Line 55:
	* General overview of Mac's bootstrapping process, requirements, Mac EFI, and ''Volume Blessing''		* General overview of Mac's bootstrapping process, requirements, Mac EFI, and ''Volume Blessing''
	**http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/what-makes-a-volume-bootable		**http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/what-makes-a-volume-bootable
		+
		+	[[Category:Mac Development]]

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 *I installed the pre-seeded network image to an Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, and it will not boot.
 **Will see if installing via CD works any better (Intel Macs should be able to do this just fine, PPCs will be tricky because the host machine has to be able to boot from this disk too, I imagine there won't really be instances where this is an issue).
-*I installed the pre-seeded network image to a 27" Aluminum iMac, and it booted gloriously.
+*I installed the pre-seeded network image to a 27" Aluminum iMac and a Core 2 Duo Mac Mini, and it booted gloriously.
 ==Installing Ubuntu onto an Intel Mac via TDM==
@@ Line 42: / Line 43: @@
 * If Ubuntu doesn't load, reboot and hold down ''Option'' to bring up Boot Camp's bootable devices list.  You should see an option for "Windows".
 * By all accounts, this should not have worked, as rEFIt needs to be installed in such a way as to communicate with Boot Camp (Mac's builtin bootloader).  Additionally, the hybrid GPT/MBR model that early Intel Mac firmware made use of relied on essentially a hack to synchronize GPT and MBR maps across different partitions (volumes in Mac-a-nese), and communicate them through BIOS emulation.  rEFIt explicitly ensure the two tables are synchronized by virtue of <code>gptsync</code>, or something similar.  Unfortunately, this is the biggest success to date. [[User:Scellef|Scellef]] 03:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 ===Resources===

@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 * Reboot the Mac (the PC can do whatever; rebooting the Mac is analogous to removing a USB drive).  Probably, you'll have to wait around for a while, but it should eventually boot.  Mac OS can purportedly "bless" other operating systems to load (relatively) seamlessly with its firmware.  See [[Target Disk Mode#Resources|Resources]] for more information.
 * If Ubuntu doesn't load, reboot and hold down ''Option'' to bring up Boot Camp's bootable devices list.  You should see an option for "Windows".
-*By all accounts, this should not have worked, as rEFIt needs to be installed in such a way as to communicate with Boot Camp (Mac's builtin bootloader).  Additionally, the hybrid GPT/MBR model that early Intel Mac firmware made use of relied on essentially a hack to synchronize GPT and MBR maps across different partitions (volumes in Mac-a-nese), and communicate them down the line.  rEFIt explicitly ensure the two tables are synchronized by virtue of <code>gptsync</code>, or something similar .
+* By all accounts, this should not have worked, as rEFIt needs to be installed in such a way as to communicate with Boot Camp (Mac's builtin bootloader).  Additionally, the hybrid GPT/MBR model that early Intel Mac firmware made use of relied on essentially a hack to synchronize GPT and MBR maps across different partitions (volumes in Mac-a-nese), and communicate them through BIOS emulation.  rEFIt explicitly ensure the two tables are synchronized by virtue of <code>gptsync</code>, or something similar.  Unfortunately, this is the biggest success to date. [[User:Scellef|Scellef]] 03:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 ===Resources===
-*http://www.1394ta.org/press/WhitePapers/TargetDiskMode.html
+* History and overview of Mac's Targeted Disk Mode
-*http://www.rodsbooks.com/ubuntu-efi/index.html
+**http://www.1394ta.org/press/WhitePapers/TargetDiskMode.html

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 Target disk mode is a fancy firmware feature provided by Apple since 1999. It essentially allows you to boot a Mac as if it were an external hard drive, and read the hard drive on another machine via firewire. Turns out, the host computer (the one reading the target drive) doesn't have to be running OSX, it just has to be able to read the file system on the drive. For our purposes, we won't be reading data, just over-writing the drives with a new operating system. Linux can read HFS+ just fine*, no problem, anyhow. So there.
-<nowiki>*</nowiki>A caveat is that Linux will not be able to create, write to, or mount HFS+ filesystems without the <code>hfsprogs</code>, <code>hfsutils</code> and <code>hfsplus</code> packages (in Debian-based distros).  Depending on whether you're booting a live environment, a console-based installer, or a standard installed environment, these packages may not be available.<br>[[User:Scellef|Scellef]] 02:00, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
+<nowiki>*</nowiki>A caveat is that Linux will not be able to create, write to, or mount HFS+ filesystems without the <code>hfsprogs</code>, <code>hfsutils</code> and <code>hfsplus</code> packages (in Debian-based distros).  Depending on whether you're booting a live environment, a console-based installer, or a standard installed environment, these packages may not be available.  Most every PPC release of Linux has these packages included from the outset.  Alternate-installer x86 images frequently do not.<br>[[User:Scellef|Scellef]] 02:00, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
-http://www.1394ta.org/press/WhitePapers/TargetDiskMode.html
+==Testing Done Thus Far==
 *Hardware detection kit does not show the drive on the 1394 PCI bus slot, not useful for detecting hardware on the target machine, just the host.
 *Disk wiping via Floe works well. Too well.
-*Live Ubuntu or Debian boot detects the target drive
+*Live Ubuntu or Debian boot detects the target drive.
-**Should try this with a Mac with data on it to see how the live boot deals with the file system, should be fine
+**Should try this with a Mac with data on it to see how the live boot deals with the file system, should be fine.
-*I installed the pre-seeded network image to an Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, and it will not boot
+*I installed the pre-seeded network image to an Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, and it will not boot.
 **Will see if installing via CD works any better (Intel Macs should be able to do this just fine, PPCs will be tricky because the host machine has to be able to boot from this disk too, I imagine there won't really be instances where this is an issue).
-===Installing Ubuntu onto an Intel Mac via TDM===
+==Installing Ubuntu onto an Intel Mac via TDM==
 *Turn the target Mac off
 *Connect the target Mac via firewire to a Linux box or another Mac
@@ Line 25: / Line 24: @@
 *Be sure to select the correct hard drive during the installation or you will loose everything on the host computer
-;Need instructions for EFI-based systems
+===EFI Based Systems===
-testing with rEFIT
+* Newer revisions of Mac firmware added traditional BIOS MBR support.  Newer Mac systems tend to have this updated firmware and, accordingly, can image and then boot from drives using our standard installers without issue.
-;Need instructions for UEFI-based systems
+** ''TODO'':  Need to investigate flashing and updating Mac firmware.
-seems to work with preseeded image
+** ''TODO'':  Need to determine range of Intel Macs capable of supporting BIOS MBRs from later firmware revisions.
-;Need instructions for PPC-based systems
+* If using firmware that doesn't outright support MBRs, then a hybrid GPT/MBR solution must be implemented.  I installed Ubuntu using the live image from the network by following the steps in the following section

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ''Work in Progress''
-Target disk mode is a fancy firmware feature provided by Apple since 1999. It essentially allows you to boot a Mac as if it were an external hard drive, and read the hard drive on another machine via firewire. Turns out, the host computer (the one reading the target drive) doesn't have to be running OSX, it just has to be able to read the file system on the drive. For our purposes, we won't be reading data, just over-writing the drives with a new operating system. Linux can read HFS+ just fine, no problem, anyhow. So there.
+Target disk mode is a fancy firmware feature provided by Apple since 1999. It essentially allows you to boot a Mac as if it were an external hard drive, and read the hard drive on another machine via firewire. Turns out, the host computer (the one reading the target drive) doesn't have to be running OSX, it just has to be able to read the file system on the drive. For our purposes, we won't be reading data, just over-writing the drives with a new operating system. Linux can read HFS+ just fine*, no problem, anyhow. So there.
 http://www.1394ta.org/press/WhitePapers/TargetDiskMode.html

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 *Connect the target Mac via firewire to a Linux box or another Mac
 *Figure out what kind of bootable media you want to use for the host computer (insert a disk into optical drive, make sure the external drive you want to boot from works, check your boot order, etc)
 *Turn the target Mac on while holding down the '''T''' key
-*The subject screen should switch to a blue screen saver with a yellow firewire symbol
+*The target screen should switch to a blue screen saver with a yellow firewire symbol
 *You should be able to read the target drive from the host computer Disk Utility app
 *Reboot the host computer and select the boot option you want to use
 *Be sure to select the correct hard drive during the installation or you will loose everything on the host computer