Chameleon

Chameleon 2.1 latest version download links updated! [23]

2012-10-03T17:16:46Z

Download information

Standalone Installer package: Chameleon-2.1-r2069.pkg.zip

Bootable ISO image, installer and binaries: Chameleon-2.1-r2069.iso.zip

Sources: Chameleon-2.1-r2069.src.tar.gz

Credits goes to all developers who are involved!

Chameleon 2.0-RC4 is out! [206]

2009-12-10T23:18:37Z

About the new options

Hide Partition
Using this option you can enumerate all your partitions what you would like to remove from the boot menu, the syntax is similar to the Default Partition option but here you can specify many volumes in your com.apple.Boot.plist:

<key>Hide Partition</key>
<string>hd(0,1) hd(2,5)</string>

In the above example the booter won’t display partition 1 on BIOS drive 0 and partition 5 on disk 2.

PciRoot
This is a similar option what you can find in PC_EFI, but we’re doing this a bit different: The default value is still 0 but you can set to any arbitrary value like:

<key>PciRoot</key>
<string>1</string>

About the patches and fixes applied in RC4-r684

Here is a quick Changelog highlight:

Fixed booting the default partition when using timeout. Added Intel Core i5 detection.
Applied rivig’s patch against all stage 1 loaders. Now linear address mapping uses 12 bit offsets. Added DigitalDJ’s SMBIOS CPU detection patch. Applied IntVar’s system-id patch. Applied hnak’s read_lba register saving patch. Added radekg’s HFS filesystem fix to handle 2GB+ file sizes. Backported ATI device injection EFI64 tables and hibernation fix from netkas’ PC_EFI. Thanks and credits goes for them!

Download information

You can get the binaries here: Chameleon-2.0-RC4-r684-bin.tar.gz

Sources: Chameleon-2.0-RC4-r684-src.tar.gz

Note for Mac users:

Chameleon is developed to boot Darwin/Mac OS X on PCs, it doesn’t work on Macs.
Please don’t install Chameleon to your system drive, we got many failure reports with unbootable Macs after installing Chameleon.

Chameleon 2.0-RC3 with Snow Leopard and Large Disk support [272]

2009-09-06T23:00:47Z

About the new options

SMBIOS
Finally you can specify your smbios.plist location using a device selector prefix like “SMBIOS=rd(0,0)/Extra/smbios.plist”.

VideoROM
You can pass an alternate video ROM image file to the system.

VBIOS
Using this boolean switch, you can control the injection of your video BIOS to device-properties. We got various reports if this switch is really needed to make your graphics device handled correctly by the system.

You can use the same booter partition for both Leopard and the recent Snow Leopard; to do that you can put your OS version specific KEXTs/MKEXT this way:
/Extra/10.(5|6)/Extensions[.mkext]

Download information

You can get the binaries here: Chameleon-2.0-RC3-r658-bin.tar.gz

Sources: Chameleon-2.0-RC3-r658-src.tar.gz

How to install

Manually: Follow the steps in the README file under the doc folder.
Installer: You can use the RC2 installer pkg, and replace /boot with the new one from the binary tarball.

Note for Mac users:

Chameleon 2.0-RC2 is available with new features and less bugs [143]

2009-07-25T20:06:16Z

About the new features (updated)

If you open the BootHelp.txt or type “?” at the boot prompt, you can get a list of the options what can be added to the com.apple.Boot.plist. The new options are disabled by default, so you need some config editing or you can even try them by specifying at the boot prompt.

New options

GraphicsEnabler will detect your NVIDIA graphics card and setup the necessary device-properties at runtime. These values injected to the IODeviceTree are needed to make the NVIDIA drives working properly. You also need to disable your hardwired device-properties key in your boot.plist (generated by EFIStudio for example) and remove other “enabler” kexts for your graphics card (NVEnabler, Natit, NVinject, etc).

EthernetBuiltIn scans the PCI bus for ethernet controllers and enables the “built-in” property for them. The same rules apply here as apply for the GraphicsEnabler regarding hardwired boot.plist device-properties or kexts.

ForceHPET can enable the HPET in your chipset even if your BIOS doesn’t have any control to turn it on.

There are two new options available to make your boot experience even more clean or traditional ;P If you disable Boot Banner, it won’t print the version and build info to the GUI, while enabling the Legacy Logo option will end up drawing the old grey apple logo instead of the one specified in the theme.

Apple software RAID support

With the RC2 version you no longer need to edit your boot.plist to add the RAID volume’s uuid for the kernel. Also we can display the RAID volume label properly.

Hiding non-bootable HFS filesystems from the boot menu

Now the booter inspects all HFS filesystems and will display only those who have SystemVersion.plist or ServerVersion.plist files under System/Library/CoreServices folder.

Fixed bugs

Without mentioning all changes, here is a brief list about the most annoying ones:

Chameleon will no longer reboots before getting to the menu if you use a @Hz frequency parameter in the “Graphics Mode” setting, we just simply ignore the refresh rate for the moment.
Fixed FireWire DMA mode issues by removing IODeviceTree/options node. Fixed loading of DSDT.aml file, now it can be loaded from any path like “rd(0,0)/Extra/DSDT.aml” for example. Removed obsolete “Boot Graphics” option to prevent starting xnu without a framebuffer.

You may do a diff in the sources between r431 and r640 to inspect all changes.

Download information

You can get the binaries here: Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640-bin.tar.gz

Installer package: Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640.pkg.zip

Sources: Chameleon-2.0-RC2-r640-src.tar.gz

Note for real Mac users:

VoodooPS2Controller [43]

2009-04-10T23:30:16Z

Features

- No need for ACPIPS2Nub. Delete it before installing this or you’ll get a kernel panic – Loadable from /Extra/Extensions.mkext – 102-key keyboard support – support for mixed usb/ps2 configurations – Resolution fix for PS2mouse (set ForceDefaultResolution to true in Contents/Plugins/VoodooPS2Mouse.kext/Info.plist to activate) – Support for scrolling on ALPS (untested) – Support for Sentelic touchpad (untested) – Advanced Synaptics touchpad. All kinds of scrolling known to humanity including multi-finger and side scrolling

Download

You can get the installer package here: VoodooPS2Controller-0.98-installer.pkg

Feedback

We’re waiting for your feedback here: http://forum.voodooprojects.org

Installation

Just install as any kext with kexthelper or add it to /Extra/Extensions.mkext

Configuration

Many features may be controlled using Apples Preference Pane
For more configuration you may want to have a look at
Contents/Plugins/VoodooPS2Trackpad.kext/Info.plist
and at IOKitPersonalities/Synaptics Touchpad/Configuration node.
The same settings are also available through dedicated panel (optional)

Credits

Package: kalyway
VoodooPS2Controller (core): turbo
Resolution fix for PS2Mouse: mackerintel
Synaptics driver: mackerintel
Sentelic Driver: nhand42
Alps driver: phb
Keyboard fixes: Chunnan & jape
Synaptics Prefpane design: bumby
Synpatics Prefpane: mackerintel

Great thanks to Dense for helping with activating vanilla trackpad prefpane

New forum is ready & waiting

2009-04-06T21:44:37Z

Why another forum?

Because we would like to keep and share all Chameleon related information in one easy accessible place and we think it deserves an own forum to discuss about Chameleon and also about other VoodooLabs projects.

Where can i find the forum?

Please follow here: forum.voodooprojects.org

See You there!
The Chameleon Group

Chameleon 2.0RC1 is out! [358]

2009-03-30T23:00:00Z

Features implemented in this version

Before downloading, please read these articles to get familiar with features:
features revealed #1 | features revealed #2

Download information

You can get the binaries here: Chameleon-2.0RC1-r431-bin.tar.gz

Update: Installer package is available for Download now

The source release will be shipped with the final version.

Credits

Developers: Crazor, Dense, fassl, iNDi, Kabyl, kaitek, mackerintel, mercurysquad, munky, Turbo, zef
Thanks to: bumby, cosmo1t, dfe, Galaxy, kalyway, netkas, sckevyn, XyZ

Feedback

We would like to know about your experience using this new loader.

Thx,
The Chameleon Group.

More new features added to next Chameleon version, part 2. [153]

2009-02-08T00:53:02Z

Revealing more features, part 2.

First of all i would like to mention our default folder for placing all boot loader related material, this is the Extra folder on your partition. There goes the custom Boot.plist, the additional Extensions (either can be an Extensions folder or an .mkext file) the custom theme images. And more…

Boot retail DVDs with preboot ramdisk image support.

With this feature you can create ‘boot-132’ like bootable iso images without having to use isolinux and that complex method to create such boot CDs. Just simply create a folder, put the cdboot + your Extra stuff + a Preboot.dmg inside with your Extra extensions, then use a single line hdiutil command to create your boot CD.

To able to boot retail DVDs you still have to boot from this prepared CD then swap to the retail one. A built-in ATAPI driver would help in the future, but not for now. The ramdisk image should be an uncompressed single partition image using any partition scheme what the booter has support for (MBR, GUID or APM).

EFI system partition booting support.

This is the method what Munky and Turbo introduced first. You can put your boot loader along with all /Extra stuff to this partition then can safely boot your untouched vanilla install. We have a new experimental FAT32 filesystem support with long file names.

Hibernation/Resume support.

This is also an already implemented feature in other versions, but we can show a preview image while restoring the sleep image. Have you ever experienced your bootloader wanting to resume even if you haven’t hibernated? Not anymore. If the filesystem was modified after sleepimage was created, the booter will not try to resume.

DSDT override support.

An optional DSDT.aml file can be loaded by the booter if your hardware needs this cure. This is a similar implementation what mackerintel provided for the old Chameleon version.

SMBIOS patcher support.

Thanks again to mackerintel to have this ability :)

Is that all?

We have many ideas and plans for future versions, but for the next release we’re going to provide these functions. I hope you won’t be disappointed :)

Introducing new features added to next version of Chameleon, part 1. [135]

2009-02-03T15:58:40Z

How do you mean customizable?

You can replace all the images, the icons, the funny chameleon artwork, the fonts. Also you can set the background color, the transparency levels, the dimensons, positions of certain user interface elements. The image resource files can be either embedded into the booter or can be loaded at runtime by using a special .plist style configuration file.

Doesn’t embedding the images makes the boot loader too large?

With the current set of icons, images, fonts embedded, the booter size is about 300k. Without embedding the resources you will get about a 110k large booter. The maximum size of the booter is 392704 bytes (383.5k).

What image formats are supported?

The booter has built-in support for true color 24 bit PNG images with 8 bit transparency layer. We wanted to offer a high quality lossless image format which can be created, edited with many graphics applications across all platforms.

What if I still prefer the text mode interface?

We can’t switch between text mode and graphical mode at the moment after the booter has been started, but you still have a Boot.plist option to disable the GUI. This way you get the well known text based Darwin boot menu.

Ok, this is all fine. Can I see something?

Sure! Click below on the pictures in the gallery to see these shots in full size.

Can I have it now?

No. Please don’t ask for it as you will get it when it’s released.

What’s next? Do i have to wait for next christmas ;-)?

We’re still fighting with issues and polishing the code but freezed the features. So instead of staying quiet, we’re going to reveal other features in the next post on this week.

Image gallery:

Time to grow up [38]

2008-10-24T02:06:58Z

How is it made happen?

Thanks to David Elliott, the necessary modifications have already been available for a long time. Since his r122 changeset against the boot-132 project contains almost everything what we need to grow over 64k. Here’s a quote from i386/libsaio/bios.s where dfe tells the story:

“With this change, plus the earlier change to respect DS (e.g. use huge pointers), the binary can grow much larger, currently up to exactly 63.5k which is the maximum that the first-stage bootsectors can handle. To get more than that more changes are needed. In that case we would have to play with Mach-O segments to ensure real-mode code and data got stuffed well within the first 63.5k. Furthermore, we’d have to adjust the boot sectors to allow them to span segments. Since this change alone only gains us about 4k more than where we’re at now (which is not anything to scoff at) it won’t be very long before we need to start using Mach-O segments to force the linker to locate certain bits of code and data within the first 63.5k and modify the loaders to be able to load more than 63.5k.”

Ok, so what else do we need?

To complete the puzzle we had to follow the path as dfe suggested above.

These are the init, bios wrapper and real mode-protection mode switching functions what they should go into the first 64k. A big thanks goes to Turbo who found a clean way to enforce these functions to have them in their proper places.

The other parts are the stage 1 loaders, they also need some changes to able to load more than 127 sectors from the hdd or the cd. We’re already done with this, it means cdboot and boot1h can deal with such large stage 2 booters.

Can i get any benefit from all of this?

Yes, since we have a lot of space now we can merge all existing features into a single boot file. We’re already in the process to take the best pieces from all ‘worlds’ and stay tuned for a new Chameleon version release pretty soon!