Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,390
6,565
Kentucky
I wanted to at least try installing Leopard on it(not server, as I don't have it yet). I stuck a clean hard drive it it, but the optical drive seems a bit "touchy" as it kicked out my Leopard disk and refused to boot from it. I keep a burned "working" copy to save wear and tear on my original-it gave me the same result with both the burned disk and the pressed disk.

I thought I'd try to make a Leopard install flash drive. I used my saved Leopard image and a(new) 16gb flash drive. I formatted the flash drive as HFS+, APM and then used the "restore" function in Disk Utility to "burn" the image to the USB drive. I did all this from my MBP running OS X 10.9.5

For all intents and purposes, on a booted system, it appears to be a fully functional 10.5 install disk. When the flash drive plugged into a system, it mounts and brings the auto-start dialog box-just as if I'd put a CD in the drive.

I was able to force the Xserve to boot from USB using OF, but when it attempts to boot off the USB it just gives me a big stop sign(gray circle with a slash through it).

Any thoughts on what could be going on? Could the fact that I "burned" the flash drive from 10.9 be the problem? If so, I can try doing it on a PPC computer from 10.5.
 
I once made a Mountain Lion USB stick and had the same problem.
I would like to know as well.
 
Don't use Disk Utility's Restore function. Partition and format the drive, then use a third party cloning utility to clone the disc's contents onto the USB drive.
 
Don't use Disk Utility's Restore function. Partition and format the drive, then use a third party cloning utility to clone the disc's contents onto the USB drive.

Thanks-I have it formatted as APM, so will try using CCC to clone the disk onto the flash drive.
 
Don't use Disk Utility's Restore function. Partition and format the drive, then use a third party cloning utility to clone the disc's contents onto the USB drive.

Why not? That's how I did it it worked fine.

----------

I wanted to at least try installing Leopard on it(not server, as I don't have it yet). I stuck a clean hard drive it it, but the optical drive seems a bit "touchy" as it kicked out my Leopard disk and refused to boot from it. I keep a burned "working" copy to save wear and tear on my original-it gave me the same result with both the burned disk and the pressed disk.

I thought I'd try to make a Leopard install flash drive. I used my saved Leopard image and a(new) 16gb flash drive. I formatted the flash drive as HFS+, APM and then used the "restore" function in Disk Utility to "burn" the image to the USB drive. I did all this from my MBP running OS X 10.9.5

For all intents and purposes, on a booted system, it appears to be a fully functional 10.5 install disk. When the flash drive plugged into a system, it mounts and brings the auto-start dialog box-just as if I'd put a CD in the drive.

I was able to force the Xserve to boot from USB using OF, but when it attempts to boot off the USB it just gives me a big stop sign(gray circle with a slash through it).

Any thoughts on what could be going on? Could the fact that I "burned" the flash drive from 10.9 be the problem? If so, I can try doing it on a PPC computer from 10.5.
did you try using the Option/Alt key to get to the boot menu?
 
It rarely works correctly and makes more problems than it should. Installs made from Disk Utility restored media often have stability problems.
 
did you try using the Option/Alt key to get to the boot menu?

I'm sure Intell can probably provide specifics, but as far as I know it's only possible to use Boot Manager to boot off USB on computers AGP-based Macs with USB 1.1. When the Sawtooth was released, Apple made a big deal about it being able to boot off USB(although in my experience, booting off Leopard off a USB 1.1 external takes about 10-15 minutes) and then quietly discontinued this ability when they started putting in USB 2.0.

All the USB 2.0 PPC Macs I've used can only be booted off USB from Open Firmware. Easy USB booting came back with Intel processors.

But, to directly answer your question-the USB drive did not appear in Boot Manager.
 
I'm sure Intell can probably provide specifics, but as far as I know it's only possible to use Boot Manager to boot off USB on computers AGP-based Macs with USB 1.1. When the Sawtooth was released, Apple made a big deal about it being able to boot off USB(although in my experience, booting off Leopard off a USB 1.1 external takes about 10-15 minutes) and then quietly discontinued this ability when they started putting in USB 2.0.

All the USB 2.0 PPC Macs I've used can only be booted off USB from Open Firmware. Easy USB booting came back with Intel processors.

But, to directly answer your question-the USB drive did not appear in Boot Manager.

My eMac USB 2.0 can boot off USB no problem as can my MDD via the USB 2 card
 
My eMac USB 2.0 can boot off USB no problem as can my MDD via the USB 2 card

Booting from a non-built in USB port is not possible on PowerPC Macs. OpenFirmware does not properly initialize PCI USB cards until too late in the boot process to allow an OS to be booted from them.

Still no luck using CCC to clone the mounted image.

What are the exact steps you are doing?
 
What are the exact steps you are doing?

1. Insert flash drive in computer, then open disk utility. In disk utility, I selected the flash drive, clicked the "Partition" tab, selected "1 Partition". I selected Mac OS Extended(Journaled), and under "Options" selected APM. I then hit "partition" and let it run.

2. I double-clicked my saved image to mount it

3. I opened Carbon Copy Cloner.

4. From CCC, I selected the mounted image as the source and the freshly-formatted flash drive as the destination. I then hit the clone button and clicked okay through the various warnings about deleting everything on the destination volume and PPP Macs not being bootable off USB.

5. CCC proceeded with the clone(it took about an hour and a half) and reported success at the completion.

All of the above was done from my A1139 Powerbook running 10.5.8. My initial "restore" attempts were done under 10.9.5 on my Macbook Pro.
 
Those steps are all good. Now the steps you do when attempting to boot from it.

1. Boot to Open Firmware

2. Type Dev / ls , and parsed the list until I found this

IMG_1234_1.jpg


(uploaded below also at full resolution)

3. Typed boot usb@1/disk@2, \\:tbxi

At this point, the screen goes black, I get a dark gray screen that flashes text on it too quickly for me to read, and then I get the gray screen with the stop sign.

I'll also add that at one point, I tried looking at the devalias output. I don't recall(and didn't photograph) the output, but found the alias that appeared to corresponded most closely to usb@1/disk@2 . This gave me the exact same result as when using the above procedure.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1234.jpg
    IMG_1234.jpg
    3.1 MB · Views: 128
Does your xserve have just a cd drive?

Mine did, I ended up taking it out and replacing it with a superdrive from an intel white imac.
 
Try holding down Cmd+V after you deliver the OF boot command to see in the boot log what is causing the error.
 
Booting from a non-built in USB port is not possible on PowerPC Macs. OpenFirmware does not properly initialize PCI USB cards until too late in the boot process to allow an OS to be booted from them.

I would Have to disagree with this as I have 2 different USB cards and they both allow me to hold option and boot from a USB drive on both my MDD and sawtooth I suspect whats happening is they are being seen by OF as USB 1.1 Devices and during the first half of booting its USB 1.1 speed then the OS takes over and switches into full speed mode if that makes sense. In the pic attached I have my sawtooth booted from the blue USB stick you see plugged in
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0334.JPG
    IMG_0334.JPG
    1.2 MB · Views: 201
Booting from a non-built in USB port is not possible on PowerPC Macs. OpenFirmware does not properly initialize PCI USB cards until too late in the boot process to allow an OS to be booted from them.

I have installed Leopard on my MDD atleast a half a dozen times by booting off the Leopard USB stick i made with it plugged into my USB 2.0 Card works just fine infact i JUST did it 2 days ago i didn't install Leopard just booted the installer to make sure my ATA100 bus worked after the board swap.

----------

1. Boot to Open Firmware

2. Type Dev / ls , and parsed the list until I found this

Image

(uploaded below also at full resolution)

3. Typed boot usb@1/disk@2, \\:tbxi

At this point, the screen goes black, I get a dark gray screen that flashes text on it too quickly for me to read, and then I get the gray screen with the stop sign.

I'll also add that at one point, I tried looking at the devalias output. I don't recall(and didn't photograph) the output, but found the alias that appeared to corresponded most closely to usb@1/disk@2 . This gave me the exact same result as when using the above procedure.

are Xserves different than Desktops in the regards of booting? All G4 and G5s have a boot menu unless the Xserve is different if the USB is partitioned correctly i will show up in the boot menu
 
I'm no expert on the xserve but can't you use target disk mode and install that way?
 
The circle with a slash usually means the installer cannot see the root device. Verbose mode would confirm this.
 
are Xserves different than Desktops in the regards of booting? All G4 and G5s have a boot menu unless the Xserve is different if the USB is partitioned correctly i will show up in the boot menu

XSERVE OR NO XSERVE G5s CAN NOT boot from USB using boot manager.

In fact, quite a few PPC computers will NOT boot from USB using boot manager-hence the use of Open Firmware.

----------

The circle with a slash usually means the installer cannot see the root device. Verbose mode would confirm this.

I'll try this in a little while and confirm this.

----------

I'm no expert on the xserve but can't you use target disk mode and install that way?

That's certainly a possibility and one I may end up doing. In the bigger picture, though, I'd really like to get a bootable USB stick working.
 
XSERVE OR NO XSERVE G5s CAN NOT boot from USB using boot manager.

In fact, quite a few PPC computers will NOT boot from USB using boot manager-hence the use of Open Firmware.


the boot manager detects the USB stick as a Internal HDD. With my macs i press and hold the ALT key and shows AND BOOTS from any bootable USB stick i have in it thats from both Linux and Leopard. Boots off my USB 2 Card inside of my MDD too. even my USB 2 eMac boots USB installing Leopard via booting the usb stick via boot manager is how i install leopard. I don't even use my Leopard Install DVD anymore
 
the boot manager detects the USB stick as a Internal HDD. With my macs i press and hold the ALT key and shows AND BOOTS from any bootable USB stick i have in it thats from both Linux and Leopard. Boots off my USB 2 Card inside of my MDD too. even my USB 2 eMac boots USB installing Leopard via booting the usb stick via boot manager is how i install leopard. I don't even use my Leopard Install DVD anymore

Believe it or not, I might have a few Apple computers lying around, and more than a few G4 towers. I'm intimately familiar with Boot Manager, and what can be done on it. I have booted MANY G4 towers(as well as Tibook laptops) from USB, including using an external hard drive with a full Leopard install on them, but selecting the USB device from boot manager.

THIS DOES NOT WORK ON G5s!

Bootable USB devices are NOT recognized in boot manager on G5s.

Let me repeat again

THIS DOES NOT WORK ON G5s!

Bootable USB devices are NOT recognized in boot manager on G5s.

G5s can ONLY be booted from USB using Open Firmware.

Believe it or not, I actually have a few G5s lying around too, and I have tried.
 
Believe it or not, I might have a few Apple computers lying around, and more than a few G4 towers. I'm intimately familiar with Boot Manager, and what can be done on it. I have booted MANY G4 towers(as well as Tibook laptops) from USB, including using an external hard drive with a full Leopard install on them, but selecting the USB device from boot manager.

THIS DOES NOT WORK ON G5s!

Bootable USB devices are NOT recognized in boot manager on G5s.

Let me repeat again

THIS DOES NOT WORK ON G5s!

Bootable USB devices are NOT recognized in boot manager on G5s.

G5s can ONLY be booted from USB using Open Firmware.

Believe it or not, I actually have a few G5s lying around too, and I have tried.

thats strange that G4s can boot USB in the boot manager yet G5s cant? that is odd. And even odder, you can boot from USB on G4s but yet cannot INSTALL OS X on a USB drive...
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.