HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 » Guides, Mac OS X
Remember when it was first revealed the Windows XP could be installed and booted off of a USB flash drive? Well, great for Windows users. What about Mac users? We were left out in the cold. If one were to search hard enough in the vast Web index that is Google, one could find just the snippets of how to boot a system from a USB drive, how to set a drive as bootable, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing guiding the way to creating a bootable installation of Mac OS X on a flash drive. I’m here to help.
Before I begin, let me say that I have been a Mac user for only two years. I made the switch, and I’ve learned enough about OS X in that time to let me do this. So, without any more small-talk, let’s get into it!
Before You Begin
You will need a 1GB or larger flash drive. It is impossible to install OS X on anything smaller. After testing this procedure multiple times, the largest free space I had after booting up was 11.6MB.
You will also need the original Mac OS X Install Disc(s) that came with your computer.
Preparing the Flash Drive
Start out by completely formatting your flash drive. Open up Disk Utility, select your device from the source list (mine’s a SanDisk Cruzer), and click on the Erase tab. Be sure the filesystem is Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and uncheck the option to install Mac OS 9 drivers. Space is crucial, and there will be no point in having OS 9 recognize our device if we’re trying to get it to boot into OS X. Enter a name for your drive, and click on Erase.
If you click on the new drive name, you will see that Owners are not enabled.
We have to get that changed. Open up Terminal.app, and enter the following command:
sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/iTote
Be sure to change the name of the volume (iTote) to correspond to the name you gave your flash drive when you formatted it.
Owners should now be enabled.
Installing the Base System
In order to extract the critical system files and install them on the flash drive, we have to use Pacifist. Insert your Mac OS X Install Disc, and open Pacifist. When Pacifist recognizes the disc, click on Open Apple Install Packages.
Select your install media and click OK.
If you are prompted to insert another disc, click Skip. The files we are looking for are on the first disc.
After the package list loads, expand EssentialSystemSoftware, then EssentialSystemSoftwareGroup. The two packages that are needed in order for OS X to boot are BaseSystem and Essentials. Select them, then click on the File menu.
Select Install Files to Other Disk…
And choose your flash drive. Click Install to begin extracting and installing. This will take a while.
Remove Unnecessary Files
If you are using a drive smaller than 2GB, you will have to remove a few files before you can continue. Open up your flash drive, and navigate to /System/Library/Fonts. Scroll to the bottom, and you will find a group of Japanese and/or Chinese fonts. Removing these will free up over 100MB. DELETED! Be sure to empty your Trash.
Copy Missing Files
Because we extracted the system with Pacifist, there are a few files that are missing off our flash drive. Open up your main hard drive which has your running copy of OS X installed. Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices. Copy SetupAssistant over to /System/Library/CoreServices on your flash drive. It might be easier to have two separate finder windows, as you will have to authenticate yourself when you copy the file.
Now we need to copy the package receipts for BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg onto our flash drive. Open your main hard drive again, and go to /Library/Receipts. Copy both BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg over to /Library/Receipts on your flash drive.
Make the Flash Drive Bootable
Now that all the required files are present, it’s time to make the system recognize the device as bootable. Open up Terminal.app once more, and enter the following command:
sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/iTote/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo
This command “blesses” the CoreServices folder, which makes the system recognize it as an installed operating system. Again, be sure to substitute the name of your flash drive for the volume name in the above command.
Fixing File Permissions
When the files were copied from the installer CD, they didn’t have the correct permissions to allow the system to read and write to them. Open up Disk Utility, and select your flash drive. Click on Repair Disk Permissions, and go get yourself a coffee while it runs.
Booting From the Flash Drive
If you have an Intel Mac, you should be able to set the flash drive as the Startup Disk in System Preferences. For PowerPC Mac’s, things are a bit more complicated. I’m not going to re-invent the wheel, so I’ll forward you on to this article.
In Closing
Before you start complaining that this technique does not work with Intel Mac’s, be aware that I have not tested this on an Intel Mac because, well, I don’t have one. If anyone has an Intel Mac, please let me know if you can get this working, and what differences there are in the procedure.
Discuss This Post
105 Responses to “HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive”
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I found it works great on usb 1.0 (very slowly) or usb 2.0 (PCI card-about the same speed as my old G3 450mhz imac). I’m having fun finding and testing tiny apps. I want to see how complete & usable I can make this drive.
I noticed that my flash drive only shows up as a boot option if I shutdown then start up, it doesn’t show up if I simply do a restart. Later I’ll be testing if I can boot this drive on some friends PPC macs too. . . if they’ll let me.
P.S. I read somewhere else that it should work with any version of OS X , so using the same directions, I made a mini-install of Panther. It boots fine from internal HD & external FW drives, but hangs at boot using usb 1 or 2.
A mini-install of Jaguar crashes.
Cheers!
Memorex TravelDrive usb 2.0-2GB
Mirrored Drive Door G4
Dual 867 mhz
1.25 gb ram
OS 10.4.8
Having one installation for both Intel & PPC will only work if you use a retail install DVD/CD. The system-specific discs that come with the computer only have the version for that computer.
-Gary
Great idea! whats the use?
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive [...]
Its even easier to use the freeware utility “DasBoot” by SubRosaSoft if what’s needed is a bootable utility flash drive. It works beautifully.
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=200&products_id=193
This is nice but at the same time it is not simple. It would be nice to have this wrapped into an installer that would do the job for us…
———-
http://www.mostofmymac.com
[...] drive. Requirements: 30-45 minutes, Pacifist, a 1GB flash drive or larger, and an OS X Install disc.read more | digg [...]
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive at Brads Blog Could be incredibly useful for tech support. (tags: Flash MacOSX) [...]
Remember that USB flash drives do have a limited number of times that they can be written to.
I’d be a bit concerned about the swap being on the flash drive. It’d be a much better option to have the SWAP be on a RAM disk.
[...] OS X off a flash drive HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive at Brad’s Blog __________________ "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments [...]
[...] Blog has instructions for creating a LiveUSB OS X install. [...]
” … This is nice but at the same time it is not simple. It would be nice to have this wrapped into an installer that would do the job for us ”
I’m not so sure we can make it simple enough for you, then. Put it on the list of things that go way over your head, if there’s still room.
” … Remember that USB flash drives do have a limited number of times that they can be written to.
Id be a bit concerned about the swap being on the flash drive. Itd be a much better option to have the SWAP be on a RAM disk. …”
An excellent point (applies to Windows Flash Boot and Linux Live boots as well). The critical factor would be free space, since all modern flash drives use a system where the data moves to new areas of the disk (the memory address stays the same, so the system doesn’t know the physical location has changed) so that all new data is written to the entire free space before it is rewritten to a previously used space. If he has less than 10 MB free on a 1GB drive that implies that 2GB is much preferred for long life of the flash drive.
Still, may as well wear out the 1GB unit; a 2GB unit (or whatever) will be much less $ by the time that rolls around. Let the market bring the prices down while you wear out the tools you already own.
[...] Aunque ya hubo alguien que se tomó el tiempo para buscarle el modo y además, lo publicó para todos: Install and boot OS X on a Flash Drive [...]
i can’t make the drive bootable after i followed your intructions to the “t”? Why?
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive at Brad’s Blog [...]
MacOS X auf USB-Stick installieren
“sudo bless verbose folder /Volumes/iTote/System/Library/CoreServices bootinfo”
I just realized this as well. To make an intel installation you have to start with an intel native install disc. I used the disc from my CoreDuo iMac. Then you have to not only create a bootinfo file, but also an EFI file.
So your bless line looks like:
sudo bless -verbose -folder /Volumes/iTote/System/Library/CoreServices -bootinfo –bootefi
It works great!
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive (tags: apple hacks howto how-to mac macosx osx storage tutorial useful usb flash boot) [...]
[Its even easier to use the freeware utility DasBoot by SubRosaSoft if whats needed is a bootable utility flash drive. It works beautifully.]
That’s not for USB devices on PPC Macs according to their notes. Only FireWire devices.
[...] Installing OS X on a flash drive [...]
Is there a way to do this without erasing the volume I have a palm lifedrive would it work the same if I made a partion on the drive for it?
I figured out to get the partion and everything going but when I tried to make it bootable through the terminal code I got this error (I’m Intel Based)
EFI found at IODeviceTree:/efi
Mount point for /Volumes/iTote/BaseSystem Folder/System/Library/CoreServices is /Volumes/iTote
Common mount point of ‘/Volumes/iTote/BaseSystem Folder/System/Library/CoreServices’ and ” is /Volumes/iTote
Can’t load /Volumes/iTote//usr/standalone/ppc/bootx.bootinfo
Could not load BootX data from /Volumes/iTote//usr/standalone/ppc/bootx.bootinfo
Could not create BootX, no X folder specified
Can’t load /Volumes/iTote//usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi
Could not load boot.efi data from /Volumes/iTote//usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi
Could not create boot.efi, no X folder specified
Got directory ID of 26944 for /Volumes/iTote/BaseSystem Folder/System/Library/CoreServices
Error while getting file ID of /Volumes/iTote/BaseSystem Folder/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi. Ignoring…
finderinfo[0] = 26944
finderinfo[1] = 0
finderinfo[2] = 0
finderinfo[3] = 0
finderinfo[5] = 26944
what is an x file?
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive [...]
[...] Brad Bergeron, figured out the process and provides step by step instructions in his article, HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive . [...]
[...] Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive Filed under: Uncategorized — recar @ 8:44 pm HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive This is a resubmission of a story I posted back in November that didn’t get much notice. [...]
[...] Brad Bergeron has put together an amazingly detailed tutorial covering how to make Mac OS X install … Remember when it was first revealed the Windows XP could be installed and booted off of a USB flash drive? Well, great for Windows users. What about Mac users? We were left out in the cold. If one were to search hard enough in the vast Web index that is Google, one could find just the snippets of how to boot a system from a USB drive, how to set a drive as bootable, yadda yadda yadda. [...]
[...] von cybo Nochmal… http://www.bradbergeron.com/20061129…a-flash-drive/ den wolltest du posten __________________ juhu ich lebe [...]
[...] a whole bunch of OSs that you can boot from an external flash drive. Ive read a guide on booting OS X from a flash drive, a guide on booting Windows XP on a flash drive and even Knoppix. Have [...]
I did it just like the instructions said and it worked fine on my macbook c2d .
using a sandisck cruzer 2gb you have separately installed safari, and other apps
boot speed sucks though but kewl project to have fun with anyways.com
[...] nano is 80% smaller than a 80GB iPod), lighter and have less moving parts. Plus, we can already boot OS X from a usb flash drive, so why [...]
[...] the article: Before You [...]
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive [...]
My Essentials package is nearly 800 mb is this because I am installing from 10.4.6? Is there away to get everything on a 1gb drive still?
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive [...]
I just used a this technique successfully to boot and repair a 12″ Mac G4 Powerbook OS 10.3.9.
Added Disk Warrior 4.0 to flash drive before booting and repaired my problematic HD
I used a 2G flash drive simply because I had one.
THANKS!!!
I followed the instructions till these lines: “Booting From the Flash Drive (…) For PowerPC Macâs, things are a bit more complicated. Iâm not going to re-invent the wheel, so Iâll forward you on to this article. (…) Then, just to see what would happen, I decided to try the flash drive - without doing any additional difficult things: it works! Great!! Thank you very much Brad Bergeron!!! (I have a PowerBook G4, OS 10.4.9). On the Flash Drive (4 Gig, USB 2.0) now: OS 10.4.9 (stripped as instructed above), TechTool Pro 4.5.2 and DiskWarrior 4.0. Does anyone out there have a suggestion for other rescuing software?
[...] Brad Bergeron » Blog Archive » HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive (tags: osx mac howto usb flash install apple) [...]
I have successfully installed the Mac OS X onto my Creative Zen Vision M Mp3 player. You can set up to 16 GB as a removable disk, so you can use it as a Flash Drive. Following these instructions, I am at the point right now for repairing the disk. Will keep you updated, if it actually lets me boot off it or not. But I was unable to get the owners to work. It says sudo is not a recognized command. However I got the same issue again, for the booting part near the bottom, however this time, I left out the sudo, and it was able to find it, and say it is bootable.
So if this works, then I should be able to boot off my Mp3 player
Thanks so much Brad!
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash DriveYou will need a 1GB or larger flash drive. It is impossible to install OS X on anything smaller. After testing this procedure multiple times, the largest free space I had after booting up was 11.6MB. [...]
[...] Anleitung zur Installation von Mac OS X auf einem Flash Drive gibt es hier. Alternativ kann auch “DasBoot” verwendet werden. Beide Male werden Wege zum Erstellen [...]
Run Monolingual then to get back some precious free space.
[...] Another cool thing I did was install Mac OS X on a partition of my flash drive and install Disk Warrior on it. So now, if my primary drive(s) [...]
I used this process to install OS X Tiger onto a Powerbook G3 Lombard, along with an external USB to 2.5″ EIDE drive enclosure. Thanks, Brad! Folks can read about it at my blog.
I’ve also added a step vital to this process if you plan to make SSL connections with your new install of OS X!
=========
The first thing you should do with your new system, after going through the setup assistant, is run “Keychain First Aid” from the “Keychain Access” program. For some reason I’ve yet to diagnose, two files critical to creating SSL network connections were not copied over/created. These are:
System/Library/Keychains/X509Anchors
System/Library/Keychains/X509Certificates
If Keychain First Aid complains about either of those files being corrupt or missing, you’ll have to copy them over from another Macintosh running any version of OS X from Jaguar on up.
======
Dont get it, Goes trough everything except:
when I do this part:
sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/Rescue/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo
The bless part were it gives the following error:
No mount point for /Volumes/Rescue/System/Library/CoreServices
Can’t determine mount point of ‘/Volumes/Rescue/System/Library/CoreServices’ and ”
Bit lost after that.
thanks
@Hajo - Be sure you are using two hashes before each flag. It’s hard to tell from the code above, but it’s clear in the accompanying picture.
sudo bless –-verbose –-folder “/Volumes/Rescue/System/Library/CoreServices” –-bootinfo
Hajo -
Try “cd /” (no quotes) to take the prompt to the root of the system before attempting the sudo bless command.
Also, try this:
sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/itote/system/library/coreservices” –bootinfo –bootefi “/usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi”
Cheers,
Thiago
I have the following error:
gginocchio:~ administrator$ sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo –bootefi
OpenFirmware found at IODeviceTree:/openprom
OpenFirmware model is ” OpenFirmware 3″
Mount point for /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices is /Volumes/BootG4
Common mount point of ‘/Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices’ and ” is /Volumes/BootG4
Removing UF_IMMUTABLE from /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
Deleting old /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
Opened dest at /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX for writing
0×0002B000 bytes preallocated for /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
Type/creator set to tbxi/chrp for /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
Setting UF_IMMUTABLE on /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
BootX created successfully at /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
Can’t load /Volumes/BootG4//usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi
Could not load boot.efi data from /Volumes/BootG4//usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi
Could not create boot.efi, no X folder specified
Got directory ID of 22571 for /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices
Error while getting file ID of /Volumes/BootG4/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi. Ignoring…
finderinfo[0] = 22571
finderinfo[1] = 0
finderinfo[2] = 0
finderinfo[3] = 0
finderinfo[5] = 22571
gginocchio:~ administrator$
[...] Install and Boot MAC OS X On a USB or Firewire Flash Drive Link [...]
It’d be nice to update this for Leopard, Brad. Jauncho- I believe this will only work on Intel Macs. You seem to have a G4 PPC mac which uses OpenFirmware for booting, not EFI for i386 (both are basically versions of BIOS Flash ROMs on Macs) Plus, many PPC macs are not USB bootable- You can only boot from Firewire- There is a bootable Mac utility firewire Flash disk from Micromat called Protege. $220+ I believe it was made specifically for this reason.
Fantastic i now have OS X on a flash drive, but i had to use a -bootefi at the end.
this looks awesome - but i have no idea if this means i’d be able to stick this into a PC and have it work - i assume the answer is a resounding “no” though…just curious…
I tried using my old 400 Mhz iMac as an iTunes jukebox earlier, but the whining from the original HD drove me crazy. Now it’s completely silent, thanks to your excellent guide!
About the swap space: apart from saving read/write cycles on the flash drive, isn’t is a bit silly to put the swap space on a RAM-drive? Wouldn’t that give you less free RAM and increase the need for swap space, giving you a slower system?
[...] geek accessories since the Steve Jobs lego set, plus they’re actually useful to boot! (if not boot from) If you are looking for that one gift that will likely always be a hit with the geek in your life, [...]
Just wanted to add my experience with an Intel Core 2 duo Macbook. This tutorial works wonderfully, a couple of observations: 1) I was asked a few times (may be 5) about missing files when installing with Pacifist, I just clicked skip and clearly had no effect on the installation; 2) I was also asked in Pacifist about replacing files and I replaced them all (but did not used the update option); 3) I used the –bootefi option as indicated by Cory Elsmore for the bless line and last 4) I used a 2GB Micro Center USB drive (about $15). My installation is an OS X 10.4.8.
This is worth a try and it doesn’t take such a long time. And it works very well. It doesn’t come with Safari, but Firefox came to the rescue (Opera would not work). Wireless WPA2 with an Airport Extreme does indeed work.
Good luck!
Alejandro
I forgot to add that speed is very acceptable! Now I have my very own recue USB drive with Carbon Copy Cloner on it, which works well as well.
I obtained about 230MB free space in the 2GB stick after the whole process is concluded. Not enough for executing the Apple updates, but I wasn’t intending to do them anyways. Airdisk does not seem to work though, not a biggie.
[...] out you can do this on a PPC mac too, but not intel as far as I [...]
[...] I have a bootable copy of OS X on a large USB flash drive. I did a spies-like-us erase and reformat of the hard disk [...]
thanks for the guide. i tried it with 10.9 and my 4gb nano, but it wont fully boot. i booted it into verbose mode and its saying that Setup Assistant is crashing.
any ideas?
sorry, 10.4.9 and i have the crash log generated, but i dont really know what i should be looking for…
thanks
I found none of this was necessary at all.
Using an 8GB Sandisk ExtremeIV CF card in a Lexar firewire reader just startup from the Leopard install disk, format the CF card (you have to choose GUID partitioning or you’ll get a message telling you so)
Then you can do a straightforward install of Leopard (skipping print drivers etc.)
After deleting a few unneeded apps there’s about 1.4GB of usable disk space on the bootable CF card.
No Terminal commands or anything else needed.
@ds Again, I wrote this article over a year ago. Since then, the capacities of flash drives have gone up while the prices have dropped. Being able to install directly to a flash drive might be new with Leopard, as I have yet to try this method with Leopard.
i have one question. one of the steps is to make the USB device bootable by typing in sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/iTote/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo
then near the bottom you posted a link about booting from the USB device. why if i make the USB device bootable do i have to do those steps listed in the link? couldn’t i just shut down, start up and hold down the alt option key then select my device?
oh, im running a g3 ibook 800mhz
I am just wondering if you can run it on a PC. i know that they are evil and from the devil, but it is all I can get my hands on(my brother has a macbook, my sister and mother have ibooks). Anyway, I have used linux from my flash drive and it works great! I would like to be able to do the same with Mac OS X, running it on Vista Home Basic
@JRobb - No, this method will not work for running OS X on a PC, at least not to my knowledge.
I’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to create a bootable Transcend 8GB USB Flash Drive with my MBP C2D and Leopard. Everything seems to go as planned with the exception of the final sequence, where by the “repair permissions” takes almost no time at all. Disk Utility reports that the drive is bootable, but it doesn’t show up in Startup Items. I’ve followed these brilliant instructions religiously; if anyone knows whether it’s the hardware or the OS version, please let me know. I am dying to get a bootable flash drive. Thanks.
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash DriveYou will need a 1GB or larger flash drive. [...]
Hi-
Sorry for my ignorance. I’ve never used the Terminal before. When I type in
sudo
/usr/sbin/vsdbutil
-a /Volumes/iTote
substituting “iTote“ with the name of my drive, I get ‘no such file or directory”
Any tips on doing this in the Terminal app?
Thanks,
Richard
I am having trouble with the last Terminal command in the process: sudo bless.
I am using the “hash” marks (a double hyphen). I receive the the following error:
OpenFirmware found at IODeviceTree:/openprom
OpenFirmware model is ” OpenFirmware 3″
No mount point for /Volumes/BootFlash/System/Library/CoreServices
Can’t determine mount point of ‘/Volumes/BootFlash/System/Library/CoreServices’ and ”
Here is the command I typed in Terminal:
sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/BootFlash/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo
I have a 667MHz PPC TiBook running Mac OS X 10.4.11.
I can’t remove the fonts from the Mac OS Install disc!
Will this work for an external USB hard drive?
@Richard Kane - Make sure you type that command entirely on one line. Also, if your drive name has a space in it, you must escape the space with a backslash in the command line. For instance, if my drive was named ‘Rescue Drive,’ the command would look like this: ’sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/Rescue\ Drive’
@Justin - You can’t remove fonts from the Install Disc because it’s read-only. You’re supposed to remove fonts from the flash drive you’re creating.
@BRav - I believe you should have no problem making an external USB drive to work with these instructions.
[...] HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive [...]
Rockin’
I just used this technique to install 10.4 on a third partition of a Wallstreet 266Mhz/192Mb/40Gb booted from an os9 helper disk with XpostFacto. Previously the installer for tiger blocked me because I have less than 256Mb, kinda pokey right now but actually boots and runs faster than the10.3.9 thats on the second partition (I ran Pacifist from 10.3).
Update to 10.4.11 and all other updates went perfectly. When all apps and files are transfered from the 10.3 drive I will just CCClone the 10.4.11 to the second partition.
The wallstreet was actually cheaper than a 4 gig USB drive and comes with its own screen.
This was not the original intention of this howto I’m sure, now if some one will just make an app so that i can with one click install leopard on my Commodore 64…..I’m waiting….
Thanks for the clear cut instructions.
Dear Brad,
Thank you very much for this post.
I attempted to make a bootable 8GB USB flash drive for my MacBook pro and followed your instructions. However, I could not find BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg in my hard drive after installing each on the flash drive.
Any suggestions?
Thank you for your time and attention to the above.
Sincerely,
William Franklin McCoy, M.D.
Doesn’t work for me (Macbook bought in may 2008) with 10.5.3.
For this step:
“Now we need to copy the package receipts for BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg onto our flash drive. Open your main hard drive again, and go to /Library/Receipts. Copy both BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg over to /Library/Receipts on your flash drive.”
I don’t have any BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg on /Library/Receipts (?!?!)
What I can do?
Same here, I can’t seem to find the BaseSystem.pkg and Essentials.pkg in /Library/Receipts
Maybe its not in Leopard OS X altogether?
Man, its too bad!
Thanks for the very helpful guide, though!
[...] Same here, I can’t seem to find… [...]
hey Brad
On the blessing stage this is what I get:
sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/Tiger/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo
No volume specified
what am I doing wrong?
[...] you would like to install a bare bone OS X installation on a device smaller than 8gb see this guide designed for OS X 10.4 but works essentially the same for [...]
Brad
Excellent guide! Can’t wait but will for the Leopard solution. Have a great summer.
regards
@al Make sure in the bless command you use double dashes “sudo bless - -verbose - - folder” etc..
Hi, i’ve done this on my macbook with leopard. I installed everything on a 4Gb A-data flash drive. besides the two packages, i also installed the additional essential package. Blessing must be done with an additional parameter “-bootefi” to get the flash drive be recognized as bootable.
However, when booting up, everything hangs, the macbook is showing the nice running wheel for ever. Has anyone experienced the same problem?
Besides , an alternative to blessing is to install everything on the flashdrive and to use cc-cloner to backup the flashdrive to a sparseimage, and put this image back on the flashdrive, with the option that the drive must be bootable after copying. Is it possible to install everything directly to a sparseimage, after which you can trim it and put it on the flash drive by cc-cloner, or do directly a selective copy by cc-cloner from the hard disk?
This doesn’t work for me at all on OSX 10.5.4 (my original disc came with my Macbook 2008). The problem is the Essential and base packages are much larger than in the screen shot they’re 1.7GB and 1.2Gb not a couple hundred megabytes, so I can’t get past that step because Pacifist says insufficient free space.
PS: I think if you were to get a drive big enough for OS X 10.5 leopard, you would have to make sure to partition that drive with the GUID partition table option under the partition area of Disk Utility, otherwise it won’t boot on an intel machine.
I keep getting “checksum for the file ____ is incorrect. The file may not have been extracted properly or may be damaged. Please take caution in using the file.” errors while Pacifist is verifying the installed Essenstials files from the Tiger 10.4 DVD on a 2 gig flash drive.
Karl, indeed. I bought a 8 Gb flash drive to do the job with leopard. But, until yet it does not work. and the nice wheel keeps running into infinity.
I was able to get my 12″G4 powerbook to boot from an USB flash drive, and hope to share some info. This was with 10.4.11.
1. Stay away from Cruzer U3 drives, the only way to come even close with these is to use the Windows un-installer to reformat the drive, AND use an old USB hub which switches the Cruzer drive into USB 1 mode. This was the only way I could boot from this drive.
2. A Sony flash drive was easy to set up with the regular instructions, and booted up in USB 2 mode.
3. If you don’t want to use Pacifist, set up a 4 gb partition on one of your drives, and do a normal OS install. After installing, delete all the apps and library items you don’t need.
Then in terminal, copy the above partition volume to the USB drive using :
sudo asr -source /Volumes/your4gbpartition - target /Volumes/yourUSBdrive -erase -noprompt
Bless the USB drive - but remember the above asr operation will rename the USB as “your4gbpartition 1″
sudo bless -folder /Volumes/your4gbpartition\ 1/System/Library/CoreServices
Finally for big drives, use the System Disk to boot up, and don’t use “sudo” in the above terminal commands. This is faster.
In leaopard the essentials.pkg and basesystem.pkg are located in “/Library/Receipts/bom/”.
Also i found i whenever i try to bless my 4GB USB Flash drive i get this error:
olis-macbook:Recovery Boot oli$ sudo bless –verbose –folder “/Volumes/Recovery\ Boot/System/Library/CoreServices/” –bootinfo –bootefi
EFI found at IODeviceTree:/efi
No mount point for /Volumes/Recovery\ Boot/System/Library/CoreServices/
Can’t determine mount point of ‘/Volumes/Recovery\ Boot/System/Library/CoreServices/’ and ”
If anyone can help me it would be much appreiciated. Thx
and i hope my tip helps some of you!!!
Sorry for the double post but i have found the solution to my problem. It goes something like this:
This solution is for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on an intel mac
I followed all the steps upto the point where you make the flash drive bootable. At this point i edited the command shown so that it worked:
sudo bless –folder /Volumes/Recovery\ Boot/System/Library/CoreServices/ –bootinfo –bootefi
**Notice i rearranged the command and removed the quotes around the directory**
Also remember as i said in my previous post that the Essentials.pkg & BaseSystem.pkg are located in “/Library/Receipts/bom/”
Thanks again and if you have any questions feel free to drop me a mail at oli.help@me.com and i will be happy to help. (As much as is in my power!)
WOW!!! Thanks this works great! I didnt use a Flash Drive but I did use my old iPod Video 30 GB! Now I have a bootable driver just in case. I use this bootable drive to defag my hd. I know macs arent supposed to get fragmented but i download a lot of large files and erase them so it does happen. I used to just partion my disk and run idefrag from the partion but, i recently install windows vista and cant re-partition the disk, this is a life saver thx!
How much work would it take to get that disk to boot on a standard laptop?
I have a IBM R51 and I have tried everything to get it to use osx but no joy, dont get me wrong I am a keen Mac user and buy all software legit.I have a 20″ white Imac with Leopard on ( rockz with 2gb ram!)and a G4 Powerbook.
I only rob microsoft!
@Adam I have no experience with getting a USB installation of OS X working on a PC. That would require much more work than it’s worth. However, I did do a quick Google search and discovered that you should be able to easily install a hacked version of OS X on your ThinkPad R51.
Thanks, Oli! For a PPC and 10.5 you’re also right: the specified
sudo bless –verbose -–folder /Volumes/DiskName/Library/CoreServices -–bootinfo
will use the wrong path; one must route first to the disk’s System folder to find CoreServices…
sudo bless -verbose -–folder Volumes/DiskName/System/Library/CoreServices -–bootinfo
[...] BradBergeron.com » HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive Sounds like a cool tip, although I haven't had a chance to try it yet. (tags: apple blog howto tutorial mac osx tutorials flash hacks usb macosx boot bootable mactips) Posted in Links [...]
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—->”Having one installation for both Intel & PPC will only work if you use a retail install DVD/CD. The system-specific discs that come with the computer only have the version for that computer.
-Gary”
No, sorry it is not currently possible to create a single or even multiple volumes on a single physical storage device that is capable of booting OS X on both PPC and x86 Macs. The reason being the difference in boot methods and bootable partition map types between the two types of ROM…
PPC Macs use the OpenFirmware ROM, (once patched they can boot from USB devices)… Standard Apple OpenFirmware requires volumes to use the APT (Apple Partition Table) in order to enable the partitions residing on a volume to be bootable.
x86 Macs use the EFI ROM (Extensible Firmware Interface by intel)… EFI requires volumes to use the GPT (Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table) in order to enable the partitions residing on the a volume to be bootable.
The same goes for BIOS based x86 PCs… they use the BIOS ROM… BIOS requires storage devices to use the MBR (Master Boot Record) Partition Table in order for partitions residing on a volume to be bootable… this is why it is necessary to use an EFI emulator and MBR to run OS X on standard BIOS based PC hardware (aka hackintosh).
One device can only use one partition map type… it applies for all of the partitions residing on the device (it is separate from the file-system which resides within the partition itself).
this is why it is not possible to make a single device bootable on computers with different ROMs that use different partition maps for booting… unless someone figures out how to create a hybrid partition map for APT/GPT (if that is even possible).
Can someone tell me if its possible to use this technique to boot from an SDHC card inserted in a card-reader in the Mini-PCI-X slot in a Macbook Pro?
I would very much like to install Linux - or another copy of OSX - on the card reader in my PCI-X slot, but no matter what I try I cannot get my MacBook Pro to recognize the disk on startup as a ‘bootable’ volume. Any help with this is greatly appreciated ..
Just a thought. With the cheap price of USB drives and thumb drives would be interesting to use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable image of a running MAC on a large USB drive - strip this image down to the bare essentials, boot from it then again carbon copy clone this reduced image to a suitably sized USB stick. Would not achieve what the author did (cudos given) but 8 or 16GB memory sticks are real cheap these days.
[...] BradBergeron.com » HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X On a Flash Drive [...]
Thank you so much Brad Bergeron! From this I found out what made my iBook G3 recognize my USB flash stick as bootable - it was the “sudo bless” command! I (with lot’s of time and frustration) managed to slim and clone my iBook’s tiger OS onto my 4GB flash stick and am testing it as I type this now. Of course I can’t expect speed from USB 1.1. What’s funny is that my PowerBook G4 does not see the flash drive in the Option-Boot menu (some call it the BIOS) but the iBook does. Can the PowerBook boot off of a USB 2.0 cardbus expansion card? I tried the whole firmware-hacking style but it didn’t work (or maybe I did something wrong). Just wondering…
Turns out that this works great! Very slow on USB 1 but you probably couldn’t live without it for recovery purposes. Thanks again for this tutorial.
[...] a generic bootable USB OSX Leopard installer on a 16GB Thumb Drive - (instructions & instructions) Upgrades and refreshes are now a breeze. It’s also got all of my [...]