**Post updated with Chameleon RC4 files**
The most infamous and probably the best bootloader, Chameleon, is out with yet another update to the widely popular OSx86 bootloader. This latest version ditches that ugly, white text and black background junk from Chameleon 1 and upgrades to 100% sexy. But not only sexy was added to the latest version. Now, you will see a logo for the OS you select to boot from which only increases the sexy. Plus, non-bootable partitions are no longer displayed and Snow Leopard support has been added. Additionally, you have the option to hide partitions. RC4 mostly boasts behind the scenes updates, with the exception of the new hidden partition option. You can see the official release notes here. To be honest, I’m still waiting for a final release as Chameleon is in its 4th Release Candidate!!!
So now that you know about the update, go ahead and download the file and then follow the instructions below. Pay close attention as these instructions have changed from previous versions of Chameleon.
1. Make sure the untarred folder is on your desktop.
2. Open Terminal and type “diskutil list” w/o the quotes
3. Find the partition with OS X installed on it and remember its identifier ie. rdisk0s1
4. Type cd /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Desktop/Chameleon-2.0-RC4-r684-bin/i386 but replacing YOURUSERNAME with, you guessed it, your username.
5. Copy and paste the following commands into terminal but replacing DISK_IDENTIFIER with the code you were supposed to remember before (Don’t forget the r in the front of the disk identifier)
sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0
sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/DISK_IDENTIFIER
sudo cp boot /
6. Reboot
***For those of you that had any custom settings in com.apple.boot.plist – this file will remain untouched so any boot flags or other stuff you may have added will still be used at boot***
If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Authors Mini-Biography. Any amount truly does help.
January 18th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Try reinstalling Chameleon RC4 following this guide and see if it resolves your issue. Also, trying copying your com.apple.boot.plist to the Extra folder in the root of your HDD.
January 18th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Hello Thomas,
thanks for your response.
It didn’t work.
I’ve checked if the boot file was really copied to / comparing the timestamps:
sudo cp -p boot / (added -p)
The file really went to /…
cat /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
Kernel
mach_kernel
Kernel Flags
Timeout
10
January 15th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Nysos- Try copying the lines from this file to your com.apple.boot.plist (found in the Extra folder in the root of your hard drive). If the file isn’t in your Extra folder, it will be in Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.
January 15th, 2010 at 8:24 am
Hello Thomas,
nice tutorial… :)
I still have one problem: chameleon won’t show up at boot time…
Mac OS is directly booted.
I’m using Mac OS X 10.6 and Ubuntu 9.10.
I followed the steps you specified in this post “Booting Ubuntu With The Chameleon Bootloader!”
I am completely new to Mac and installed the chameleon boot 3 times without changes, any clues?
January 13th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Verify that OS X is the active/boot partition (Using GParted in Linux), and then reinstall Chameleon.If this doesn’t work then it may be beneficial to attempt to install Chameleon RC3. Also, which Linux distro are you using?
January 13th, 2010 at 2:55 am
Dear Thomas,
I tried it and the commands worked fine this time, but when i restarted, i got three options at chemloeon at the boot time.
1) Linux,
2) Leaopord
When i select Linux, it loads grubu correctly, but when i select Leaopord, nothing loads up, only one message says Loading Darwin and thats it, but there is no real loading CPU is halted etc. This is when i tried with RC4.
But when I install chemloan version1, it does not show any boot time options for Linux etc and loads Mac OS straight away and i get to the Login screen as desired.
Can you please point further out about RC4 setup?
January 8th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Don’t forget the r in front of the Disk Identifier. So you should be entering “sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0s4″
January 8th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Dear Thomas,
I setup grub correctly from inside ubuntu on its own partition instead of MBR. Then i booted in OSx and fired the following command, i get the resource busy message and chameoleon RC4 could not be installed.
$ sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/disk0s4
Password:
fdisk: /dev/disk0s4: Resource busy
Any clue to resolve it out as grub is still the default loader in absence of chameoleon
December 15th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Glad it fixed your issue!
December 14th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Works great on my laptop, solved my problems on how to hide partitions
Thanks
—miaxz Says:
2. August 2009 at 6:02 AM
Hi there
I am triple booting (XP, OS X, MediaDirect) in my dell 1525 with chameleon
bootloader RC2, its great but i dont want the dell utility partition to appear
in the bootloader menu, is there any way to hide this partition?
thanks a lot
November 22nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
brilliant..solved my problem….THANKS
November 13th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Will chameleon bootloader have Google Chrome OS Support?
Because it should, Its apparently coming out very soon now and I want to be one of the first to start using it.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Sorry but I can’t provide support for Boot-132 installs as I have never tried one myself so I wouldn’t know where to begin in troubleshooting.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Hi Thomas,
Using a Boot-132 method, I’ve installed Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) onto my PC laptop.
However, despite finding 64bit kexts, I can’t seem to install them with Kext Utility or Kext Helper; the message tells me that everything installed fine and that I would need a reboot, but the devices still don’t work. (I am using the 64bit versions of kexts I used with 10.5.7 eg. AttansicL1eEthernet -> AttansicL1eEthernet_SL).
Any ideas?
Also, if I use my Boot-132 Mars disk (Boot132 with Chameleon bootloader), I can boot into my Snow Leopard installation. However, if I try to install Chameleon 2.0 RC3, I get Chameleon to show up at boot, but like others who commented, I get stuck at the grey screen with the Apple logo, with the wheel spinning continuously until the computer decides to shut itself off.
Any ideas for this too?
Thanks,
Coluwyvurne
September 15th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Although a little more time consuming, you can follow the other guides on this site and then use our Snow Leopard guide afterwards.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Can you please point me to some document describing how to install OS X 10.6 using Chameleon on a PC which currently only runs Vista ? The guide aboth assumes that I already have a hackintosh…
September 13th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
awesome. thanks
September 13th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
To get back in, you can use either a Chameleon Boot CD, Boot-132 disc, or even an iPC/Kalyway/other leopard install disc. For the Leopard Install disc, don’t click anything after selecting to “Boot from DVD” and it will automatically load Leopard. Then, reinstall Chameleon but make sure to type the disk identifier as you see it (ie. rdisk0s1). You probably forgot to include the r which is why it would have returned an error message when running the command in Terminal.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
ok, I screwed up and did what Hawered did, but can’t get back into my OS. How can I fix this and re-install?
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Glad you got your issue resolved.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Thank you. Whenever I did the repair, it would still require that choose Vista and then from the Vista loader choose Win 7. I don’t know if I was doing something wrong. I actually was able to figure it out. Here is what I did:
Flagged my Win 7 partition as active and then did the repair on Win 7. This put BOOTMGR on my Win 7 partition. I then used EasyBCDEDIT to edit the Win 7 bootloader and set Win 7 as the default OS with a timeout of 0. I then changed Vista back to the active partition, reinstalled chameleon and that seemed to boot without having to choose between Vista and Win 7 a second timet. Thanks for the help.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:09 am
To fix the Windows 7 error, boot to the Windows Install Disc and click repair. It should automatically correct the error. You will then need to boot back into OS X and reinstall Chameleon. As for only using Chameleon to boot, I’m not sure if its possible as I’ve never tried (Nor have I had to) but look up how to remove the Windows 7 and Windows Vista bootloaders. This way, your HD1 won’t have any Bootloaders and HD2 will have Chameleon.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Thomas, love your site, you seem to know your stuff. I was intrigued with your response to pcmanfan back on Apr. 19 about how you are mutlibooting OS X, Vista, and Win 7. This is exactly what I am trying to do, but can only boot to Win 7 if I select Vista (it then brings me to the Vista bootloader and gives me the option there. If I select Win 7 directly from Chameleon, it tells me that “BOOTMANAGER is missing”. I would rather have Chameleon boot straight to the partition and bypass any Windows bootloader or second OS selector. Here is my setup:
HD1: Vista, Windows 7
HD2: OSX
Computer boots to HD2 first which has chameleon. Vista and OS X are both marked as active. Do you have any ideas on how to get this to work? Thanks a lot.
July 28th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Thanx so much, I’ll let you kno how I go. The main issue is the blue screen coz I can’t see what I’m doing.
July 28th, 2009 at 12:15 am
You do that straight from Chameleon. As soon as you see the chameleon screen, hit the space bar and then type -x -v -f. Then press enter and it should boot. This boot will take a long time, possibly up to 3 minutes, so be patient and let it do its thing. And in case you are wondering, -x cause it to go to safe mode, -v causes it to verbose so you can see whats going on, and -f forces it to load all kexts.
Now to your questions: Chameleon RC1 looks exactly identical to RC2 with the same interface and everything. The fixing dir permissions issue could have caused the blue screen although I’ll look into that further to be sure.
July 27th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
With those flags, I asume I am booting like that from the single user mode? Something like boot -x -v -f. ? Or just straight from chameleon?
The earlier version of chameleon RC1 does that have an interface? Because it was an automatic boot. And here’s another thought I had. The blue screen I’m having, well before that came for some reason my computer said it was fixing dir permissions. That task didn’t complete. Could the lack of completion there have caused the blue screen?
July 27th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
You definitely had Chameleon before, just an earlier version, most likely RC1. It is most likely coincidental though that this happened when you installed the new Chameleon becuase Chameleon would not and could not cause this. Try booting with the -x -v -f flags and see if you are able to boot properly.
July 27th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Ok, so I come up with the option to boot so I say boot. At the screen where users normally enter their username and password, it is all working except the screen is blue. Completey blue. I can see nothing, but everything is working. Previously before chameleon it would work absolutely fine. So it wasn’t a bad hackintosh job. I’m not sure how it booted before, it just loaded straight into os x.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Without Chameleon there will be no way to load your OS. And I’m not quite sure which screen you are referring to.
July 27th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
A. I don’t have permissions
b. I don’t want chameleon to be the one loading os.
Chameleon is the one giving me the blue screen
surely there is a way to remove chameleons booting?
Thanx for your help Thomas, I just hope we get a soluion soon.
July 27th, 2009 at 9:42 am
In this case, you can change how long it takes before Chameleon automatically boots to the primary OS (OS X). Changing the timeout will cause it to boot almost instantly. To do so, navigate to the Extra folder in the root of your HDD. There should be a com.apple.boot.plist in that folder. If there is, drag/copy the file to your desktop. If there isn’t, navigate to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ and copy the com.apple.boot.plist to your Desktop. Now, open the com.apple.boot.plist that is on your desktop in Text Editor. Some where in the middle of the file you should see the words “Timeout” and then on the next line there will be a number. All you need to do is change that number to 0. Then save the file back to your desktop. Next, Navigate to the /Extra/ folder again and this time copy the com.apple.boot.plist on your Desktop and paste it in this folder (Even if you didn’t previously have a com.apple.boot.plist in this folder you still need to put the new one here). Now reboot and you should see a change.
July 27th, 2009 at 2:02 am
I have no version of windows installed at all. Just mac osx86 10.5.7.
Previously it was just loading up, pretty much the same as a normal mac,
so how do I now go back, undo whatever chameleon has done?
Thanx
July 26th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
There are no actual remove instructions for Chameleon, as is with most boot loaders, although you can overwrite it. The process is different depending on which bootloader you would like to switch to so I am going to tell you how to replace Chameleon with the Vista/Windows 7 bootloader (Assuming that you have one of those installed of course). Its actually very simple to do. Just boot to your Vista/7 install disc and click on “Repair” and it should automatically reinstall the bootloader for you. If it says that it was unable to repair your disk or that no operating systems were found then you need to get a GParted Live CD. Just boot to it, setup your Windows partition with the “boot” flag, and then do the Windows install disc process again. Let me know if you have any more problems.
July 26th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
How do I remove chameleon? I installed it and want to go back, it’s not for me. I have a msi wind u100 plus running 10.5.7 please help. I cannot boot anymore because it stays on blue screen. Help to *email removed*
July 20th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Alrighty then… Let me know if you have any other problems.
July 20th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Ignore me, I have been a tool…..found it by playing around a bit.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:29 am
This may seem really stupid, but worked out that I have been having problems updating as I have not been doing the following commands -v and -f …..but the issue is I am not sure when to put these in. Before I installed Chameleon I would get the darwin bootloader and press f8 (i think) and then insert the correct flag……but not sure how to do this with the new chameleon boot loader….might sound rather stupid but thought I would ask.
Cheers.
Neal
June 15th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
That doesn’t sound so much of a Chameleon as it does an issue with OS X. it may just be a coincidence that it happened right after you install Chameleon. Try booting with -f -v and see if you get any further.