Mac users waited many long years, but MacOS now has native window snapping, just like Windows 10. Click and drag a window to one of the four sides or four corners of your display, and a. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. Interestingly, I reinstalled the OS a week ago, and the problem was fixed (for a while). Sometime after that, when I was installing software and whatnot, it went back to this weird mono with echo. So, last night I did an archive and install of the OS, and it was fine again - until I ran software update (installing 10.5.7 and the other current.
Blog 2020/5/7
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Here are some notes on how I set up an installation of OS X Tiger (10.4)on an emulated PowerPC G4 using QEMU,on a modern x86_64 Mac.
This setup was performed using QEMU 5.0.0 (obtained via brew install qemu).
Note: at some point during this process -cdrom /dev/cdrom seems to have stopped working, but -cdrom /dev/disk2 works.
Step 1: Initial installation
In this step we will format the disk and perform the initial OS X installation.
Download a copy of the2Z691-5305-A OS X Tiger installation DVDand burn it to a physical DVD.
Note: for some reason qemu does not seem to be able to boot .iso files of the OS X installation DVD (using -cdrom tiger.iso),but if you burn that .iso to a physical DVD and then use -cdrom /dev/disk2, it works.
Boot the DVD to verify it works:
If you see the grey Apple logo, the DVD is working correctly with QEMU:
Quit QEMU and create a 127GB QEMU disk:
Boot the install DVD with the disk attached and being the installation. QEMU will exit when the installer reboots.
When the installer reaches the disk selection screen, there will be no disks to choose from, because the disk has not been partitioned yet:
Start up Disk Utility:
'Erase' the disk to partition and format it:
Quit Disk Utility and the installer should now see the newly formatted partition:
The install will take quite some time (over an hour). When it completes, it will reboot, which will cause QEMU to exit (due to the -no-reboot flag).
At this point you may (physically) eject the installation DVD (from your host Mac).
Mark the disk as read-only to prevent any accidental writes to it (which would cause any snapshots based on this disk to become corrupt):
Step 2: User account creation, system updates
In this step we will create a user account and install all of the system updates.
Create a snapshot of the disk (think of this as forking the hard drive):
The system updates can either be installed using the Software Update utility (iteratively repeated across many reboots),or you can download and install them manually.
The manual route is quicker because some of the updates are bundled, and you don't have to wait on Software Update to detect which updates have / haven't been installed yet.
To install the updates manually,download (on your host Mac) item #29 (Tiger_Updates.dmg_.zip)from the 'Mac OS X for PPC' pageof macintoshgarden.org.
Unzip that file and convert the dmg to a DVD image:
We can now use tiger-updates.cdr as a virtual DVD with QEMU.
Boot the G4 and create a user account:
Note: if you plan on using Software Update rather than tiger-updates.cdr, you man omit the -cdrom tiger-updates.cdr line from the above command.
Note: this boot may take several minutes to get started.
This install was set up with user macuser and password macuser:
This installation was set up with the Central timezone:
Disable the screen saver and power-saving features:
Open up System Preferences and:
- Display & Screen Saver -> Screensaver -> Start screen saver -> Never
- Energy Saver
- Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for -> Never
- Put the display to sleep when the computer is inactive for -> Never
If you did not use Software Update, open up the Tiger_Updates 'DVD' and install all of the updates:
If you go with the updates DVD route, make sure you run Software Update at the end just to be sure you've covered everything.
Mark the snapshot read-only to prevent accidental writes to it:
Step 3: Web browser, video player, text editor
In this step we will install TenFourFox, VLC and TextWrangler.
Create a snapshot of the disk:
TenFourFox is a fork of the Firefox web browser which is currently supported on Tiger/PPC.Their website links to the latest version,FPR22.
The latest version of VLCfor Tiger/PPC is 0.9.10,which is still available from their downloads page.
Chained Echoes Kickstarter
The latest version of TextWranglerfor Tiger/PPC is 3.1,available via Bare Bonesor macintoshgarden.org.
Strangely, no combination of using Disk Utility and hdiutil to create .dmg or .cdr images of TenFourFox.app seemed to work with Tiger:
Note: in retrospect, perhaps this was an APFS vs. HFS+ issue?
I resorted to burning TenFourFox, VLC, and TextWrangler to a physical DVD and passing it through to QEMU.
Note: even burning to a physical CD-ROM didn't work -- it had to be a DVD.
Drag the applications into /Applications.
Shutdown the G4 and mark the disk read-only:
Step 4: Xcode, Tigerbrew
In this step we will set up a development environment for building modern Unix software.
Create a snapshot of the disk:
The latest version of Xcode Tools for Tiger/PPC is 2.5,which is still available via Apple (search for 'xcode 2.5' at https://developer.apple.com/download/more/, requires login),or via macintoshgarden.orgfrom their Xcode page.
Again, I had to burn this to a physical DVD in order to use it with QEMU.
Boot the G4 and install the Xcode Tools:
Tigerbrewis a fork of Homebrewfor PowerPC Macs running Tiger or Leopard.
Open up a terminal on the emulated G4 and use the following commands to install Tigerbrew:
Also, change Terminal.app to spawn a 'login' bash shell:
- Terminal -> Preferences -> Execute this command ->
/bin/bash -l
Don't forget to mark the disk image read-only:
Using these QEMU hard drive images
At this point we've created a series of four chained hard drive images:
We can squash these images into a single, combined, stand-alone hard drive image:
We can then boot using that combined image directly, without the use of any snapshots.This is analogous to having a real Mac with a physical hard drive:
Or, we could treat combined.qcow2 as a 'golden master'and create snapshots based off of it, perhaps to try out some experimental tigerbrew packages:
Perhaps in experiment-1.qcow2 we try out gcc-7, and in experiment-2.qcow2 we try out llvm, etc.
Each of these snapshots can be used with the above command line as the -hda argument:
qemu-system-ppc ... -hda experiment-2.qcow2
We could even create further branches off of e.g. experiment-2.qcow2:
Perhaps we decide that experiment-2B.qcow2 was the keeper and the rest can be gotten rid of?
combined.qcow2 now contains the changes from experiment-2.qcow2 and experiment-2B.qcow2.
Thus far we've been branching off of the 'tip',but we could just as easily branch off several points in the snapshot tree.For example, if we hadn't merged the images into combined.qcow2,we could make a 'daily driver' snapshot for web browsing based off of 3-browser.qcow2,and a 'dev box' for doing development work based off of 4-tigerbrew.qcow2:
Let's say we accidentally hosed our dev box with a careless rm -rf /. Starting over with a new dev box is trivial:
Etc :)
Resources:
These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.
What you need to create a bootable installer
- A USB flash drive or other secondary volume formatted as Mac OS Extended, with at least 14GB of available storage
- A downloaded installer for macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, or El Capitan
Download macOS
- Download: macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, or macOS High Sierra
These download to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS [version name]. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server. - Download: OS X El Capitan
This downloads as a disk image named InstallMacOSX.dmg. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.
Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal
- Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer.
- Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
- Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace
MyVolumein these commands with the name of your volume.
Big Sur:*
Catalina:*
Mojave:*
High Sierra:*
Chained Echoes Mac Os 11
El Capitan:
* If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath argument and installer path, similar to the way this is done in the command for El Capitan.
After typing the command:
- Press Return to enter the command.
- When prompted, type your administrator password and press Return again. Terminal doesn't show any characters as you type your password.
- When prompted, type
Yto confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the volume is erased. - After the volume is erased, you may see an alert that Terminal would like to access files on a removable volume. Click OK to allow the copy to proceed.
- When Terminal says that it's done, the volume will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, such as Install macOS Big Sur. You can now quit Terminal and eject the volume.
Use the bootable installer
Chained Echoes Switch
Determine whether you're using a Mac with Apple silicon, then follow the appropriate steps:
Apple silicon
- Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing.
- Turn on your Mac and continue to hold the power button until you see the startup options window, which shows your bootable volumes.
- Select the volume containing the bootable installer, then click Continue.
- When the macOS installer opens, follow the onscreen instructions.
Intel processor
- Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing.
- Press and hold the Option (Alt) ⌥ key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac.
- Release the Option key when you see a dark screen showing your bootable volumes.
- Select the volume containing the bootable installer. Then click the up arrow or press Return.
If you can't start up from the bootable installer, make sure that the External Boot setting in Startup Security Utility is set to allow booting from external media. - Choose your language, if prompted.
- Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions.
Learn more
A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the internet, but it does require an internet connection to get firmware and other information specific to the Mac model.
For information about the createinstallmedia command and the arguments you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter the appropriate path in Terminal:
