Review: Mac OS X x86 10.4.1 & 10.4.3

By: L33tdawg

Disclaimer: This article is for INFORMATIONAL / EDUCATIONAL purposes only. HITB does not condone software piracy.

Introduction

Back in June 2005 when Apple first announced its plans to scrap its partnership with IBM and switch its computers to Intel's microprocessors, I think everyone was a little too shocked for words. There was once a time when Apple had sworn that PowerPC was a more superior platform and that Intel basically sucked.

Indeed the shift for Apple is important but the question I was asking my self was "Would this then mean that OS X would work on a normal PC machine?" The answer from Apple was a resounding NO as they went on to explain how OS X would be 'locked down' to run only on designated Apple hardware. To do this, Apple planned to make use of a security chip on Intel motherboards called the Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

A hacker by the name of Maxxuss however had other plans and not only managed to fool OS X into not using the TPM authentication but to also enable the OS to run on older machines, typically those sporting SSE2 instruction sets. The end result is that a fair number of people have now had a chance to test out this absolutely brilliant operating system :)For our article we used a Compaq Evo n610c as the test platform. The specs are as follows:

Compaq Evo n610C

Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz
64MB ATI Radeon Mobility 7500
512MB RAM
30GB HDD
DVD-ROM

A note of caution

Before you run off and start partitioning your hard drives, it is IMPERATIVE that you do a THROUGH CHECK of all your hardware to ensure compatibility. There will be nothing more fscked than installing the operating system only to find the system unusable simply because you can't get the graphics or network drivers to load for your machine.

The Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) on www.osx86project.org would be a VITAL STARTING point. DO NOT PROCEED BEFORE READING ALL THE AVAILABLE DOCUMENTATION. Most importantly, do keep in mind that this is BETA SOFTWARE and is not supported by ANYONE so if you fsck your box, please do not e-mail us (or anyone else) about it.

In order to install OS X (either 10.4.1 or 10.4.3 [8f1099 or 8f1111]) You will need a processor that supports AT LEAST SSE2 or 3, preferably with support for NX/XD and PAE. Below is an explanation from Maxxuss’s site on what these little acronyms all mean.

"NX" refers to the NX bit ("No Execute"). NX is the brand of AMD; Intel names it "XD" ("Execute Disable"), Microsoft titles its supporting technology DEP ("Data Execution Prevention") - it's all the same: a feature of your CPU which would prevent code execution in memory pages, which are marked with the NX bit (usually data or stack pages).

"SSE3" and "SSE2" are extended CPU instructions. SSE3 extends SSE2 with some new floating point vector instructions.

"PAE" stands for "Physical Address Extension" and allows your CPU to address more than 4 GB of pyhsical memory. It is enabled by Mac OS X's kernel; sorry no work-around for this. PAE is actually a quite old technology (first found in the Pentium Pro), so current Intel and AMD CPUs should have this feature.

You can find out about your CPU features using one of these methods:

• Under Windows with free tools like Everest or CPUZ. In Everest, navigate to "Motherboard -> CPUID". Also, Windows XP SP2 usually enables the NX and PAE features if present; open the system info panel and look for "Physical Address Extension".

• Under Linux with "cat /proc/cpuinfo"

• Under Mac OS X wth "sysctl -a machdep.cpu" and "sysctl -a hw"

Installation

Being the brave and fool hardy soul that I am, I decided to-hell with the VMWARE type installations; I would just go ahead with a native install. Seeing that I didn't want to sacrifice any of my production machines, the Compaq EVO made a good candidate for some 'testing'. The main 10.4.1 installation DVD (cracked and patched by deadmoo) was pretty much all I needed to get this installation going. Pop the DVD into the drive, boot from the DVD and if your hardware is supported, you should be greeted by the blue background installation screen. The first thing that you'll notice is that you'll be asked to pick a hard drive / partition to install to (in the Destination selection screen) however you'll see no hard drives in the list! Do not panic, you simply need to format your hard drive into the HFS format. Just click on the Utilities tab at the top and select Disk Utility. In our case we just chose to format the entire disk as a journaled file system. Once you're done, exit the Disk Utility and you will find that you now have a valid hard drive icon to select. The entire installation process took approximately 2 hours and went off without a hitch.

First Boot

The first thing we noticed upon booting up was that the system loaded extremely quickly. Much quicker than the Windows XP that was previously installed on the EVO. Below is a screenshot showing the EVO running Safari and another showing the System Profile.

Due to the fact that there are no valid drivers for ATI or NVIDIA based cards in 10.4.1 we were stuck at a screen resolution of 1024x768 without Quartz Extreme and Core Image. While this wasn't really a problem for us since we were on a laptop, prolonged exposure to 1024x768 @60Hz refresh rate can really hurt your eyes! Despite the lack of QE and CI though, the system was very usable and performance was quite impressive. The Evo scored a 24.12 on the XBENCH benchmarking tool for OS X.

Apart from the lack of QE and CI the only issue we had was that sound and our PCMCIA DLINK wifi card was not working. One of the really nice things about OS X is that drivers and software installation is a real breeze. All drivers are distributed in .kext files or (kernel extension files). You merely drag and drop any extensions you want to install into the /System/Library/Extensions folder and change the file permissions from the command line. As such the fix for the audio problem was a simple as installing the AC97 audio kext, and performing the following commands from the command line:

sudo
chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions
chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions
kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AC97.kext
reboot

Several people have recommended an additional step before the reboot, which is to “Fix Permissions” using the Disk Utility to ensure that all file permissions are set correctly. To un-install an extension simply drag and drop the file into the trash. It's that easy. No hassles with "Add Remove Programs" :)

We didn’t have as much luck with the DLINK wifi card though. OS X would detect the card when we plugged it in, alas there were no valid kexts that would load the card. However, as USB support in 10.4.1 is really quite impressive, a simple way to get wifi working would be to get a USB wifi dongle ala the DLINK DWL-122G. This little wireless 802.11b/g wifi adaptor works with OS X although surprisingly you can't use the default DLINK drivers that come with the device. You will instead need to get the RALINK drivers from here: http://www.ralinktech.com/supp-1.htm

As a further testament to the 'power of OS X' we tried plugging in a Nokia 6110 3G cellular phone over USB and surprise surprise the device was recognized INSTANTLY and a 'new connection' was configurable from the network preference pane. We didn't require any special software or drivers apart from what was already included with the OS and we were connected to the Internet over 3G in about 10 minutes. Getting the 6110 working on Windows XP is another story all together and needless to say an exercise in patience.

Enter 10.4.3

While 10.4.1 was already cracked and patched months ago, a crack/patch for 10.4.3 made its debut only as recently as November 20th. As such installing 10.4.3 or upgrading from 10.4.1 involves a little more work to get going. If you're expecting to pop the DVD in and have it work straight away for you, STOP READING NOW. To get 10.4.3 working for you, you will need to be familiar with:

i.) Burning your own DVDs and creating your own ISOs
ii.) Know how to apply .ppf and java patches
iii.) Have a pretty good understanding of your hardware specifically what kind of features your processor has.

Before you begin with a 10.4.3 installation remember this -- A LOT OF THINGS ARE STILL BROKEN. For one, the USB support in 8F1111 and 8F1099 are both somewhat flawed and are unable to support USB 2.0 based devices very well. A quick fix would be to downgrade your USB to 1.1 (in BIOS).
The main reason a lot of people have been eager to get 10.4.3 installed is for the Quartz Extreme and Core Image support that has been added for a bunch of ATI based cards (predominantly those based on the Radeon 9800 chipset), do note that not ALL cards are supported though so do check the HCL and forum documentation CLOSELY to ensure your upgrade isn't in vain.

The main changes one would notice between 10.4.1 and 10.4.3 is the improved responsiveness of the GUI and overall speed improvements within the operating system. However at the same time some of the problems discovered include:

i.) Issues with USB 2.0 based devices

In our testing, the DWL-122G and the Nokia 6110 would not install on the Dell Inspiron 6000 (USB 2.0) however worked flawlessly on the Compaq Evo (USB 1.1).

ii.) The Network panel in the System Preferences pane crashes when trying to assign an IP or make other networking changes.

Since OS X is based on BSD, you can still use the UNIX command ipconfig to setup your networking and assign IP addresses to your interfaces so the crashing Network panel is not really a big deal.

iii.) In correct VRAM reported

Users have reported that the System Profile lists their graphics cards as having 128MB of video RAM regardless of the actual amount.

iv.) Choppy sound

The AC97 audio kext for 8F1111 and 8F1099 are slightly buggy in the sense that sound is now choppy.

v.) Random application crashes / system lock ups.

It’s beta software - nuff said :)

Should you install OS X x86?

Honestly if your hardware supports it, I strongly urge you to give it a try. No doubt, it’s far from a finished product, but is certainly stable enough to give you a sneak peek into what computing should be like. I for one am convinced enough to seriously consider getting myself the new Intel based Powerbooks once they come out – A dual booting Windows XP and Apple OS X Powerbook sounds pretty sweet to me.

1.) Web Application Footprinting & Assessment with MSN Search - Shreeraj Shah
2.) Biometrics and You - Don Parker
3.) Review: Mac OS X x86 10.4.1 & 10.4.3 - L33tdawg
4.) eXploiting Local Stack on Windows - Nish Bhalla
5.) Reverse engineering a shareware tool and writing a proper keygen for it - azerton
6.) Story of a dumb patch - Cesar Cerrudo