Installing Mac OS X 10.4.7 on VmWare

Apple Mac OS has always fascinated me BUT I could never have it. It has never been affordable for me to buy an Apple desktop/laptop.

Since Apple switched to Intel, my quest for Apple Mac aroused once again. Later on I came to know about few guys who have been releasing patches to allow Mac enthusiast like me to install Mac OS X 10.4.x on Intel based PC/laptops.

Here I am going to talk about few necessary steps that would help you to get going with Mac OS 10.4.7 on your windows machine.

DISCLAIMER:
I am not endorsing the breaking of copyright laws and I write this solely for the purpose of education. I also do not take responsibility to what may happen to your computer.

Sometimes to fullfil our dreams, we need to get a bit dirty. Do we not? ;-)

Step1:

Get a prepatched Mac OS X 10.4.x install image. I used Mac-OS-X-10.4.7-AMD.Intel-(JaS)-ISO-Repack. Dig through some torrent sites and you will surely find it.

Step2:

Purchase/Download VmWare & Install it. I have used VMWare Workstation 5.5.

Step3:

Mount the ISO downloaded in step1. Make the image available for use to virtual machine. We can use VmWare to mount the image as VmWare has the ability to mount CD/DVD images. You can use Alcohol 120% or Daemon tools to mount the ISO as well.

Step4:

Create new virtual machine.

• Start Vmware workstation.

• Click on the "File->New->Virtual machine"

• Select "Custom" on 'Select the Appropriate Configuration' page & click 'next'.

• Select 'Appropriate Virtual Machine Format'.

• Select "Other->FreeBSD" on 'Select a Guest Operating System' page.

• If you have Core Duo or Core 2 Duo processor select "Microsoft Window->Windows NT", otherwise you will not be able to boot from the ISO.

• Click 'Next' & on 'Name the Virtual Machine' page set the machine name to whatever you like.

• On 'Processor Configuration' page select Number of Processors to One. If you select Number of Processors to Two, your Mac OS installation may hang on the first boot screen. Once the installation is complete, you can change the number of processors to Two. It worked for me. Click 'Next'
  

• Specify the amount of memory allocated to your virtual machine on the 'Memory for the Virtual Machine' page. Click 'Next'

• Select "Use host-only networking" on 'Network Type' page. This should prevent Mac OS from registering itself when it starts first time.

• Select appropriate adapter type on 'Select I/O Adapter Types' page & click 'Next'.

• Select "Create a new virtual disk" on 'Select a Disk' page & click 'Next'.

• Select Virtual Disk Type as IDE on 'Select a Disk Type' page & click 'Next'. If you don't select IDE, you will not be able to boot into Mac OS X. Installation will hang as well.
  

• Specify atleast 6 GB of disk space. And select Allocate all disk space now on 'Specify Disk Capacity' page.

Step5:

Edit your vmware config. Open your virtual machine configuration file (.vmx extension) in any editor and add the following line at the end of the file.

paevm="true"

Step6:

Install Mac OSX

• Start your virtual machine.

• On boot prompt hit F8 to add boot options.

• Type "-v" and hit enter. This will start installer in verbose mode.

• Be patient, it may take a long before you see a installation GUI.

• When you reach to a place where you need to select hard disk but nothing is listed, open "Tools->Disk Utility" from menu available on top of your screen. Select your Mac Os partition and click "partitions" from options available on right pane of the dialog. Create a journal partition to utilize the entire disk space. When you are done with this partitioning close the disk utility. Now, you should see your drive in the setup page. Select the partition and press "Next".
  

Step7:

Next, select custom installation and select all available patches. If you want to save disk space, remove unnecessary printer drivers from the installation list. Also remove unnecessary language options. Important: De-select wireless driver from custom patch list. Else your Mac will hang on the next boot with an error "no airport driver found".

Step8:

Have a nap. When you wake up, you will see you are done with installation. Voila! you have your Mac OS X ready to play with. Enjoy.

I am also trying to install Mac OS X 10.4.7 on physical partition under native mode. Will post my experience on it very soon here. Meanwhile, stay tuned.

Let me know if I can be of any help. Catch me on nightr0ver at yahoo dot com

In the Line of Fire...

...And we say we work almost 24x7. We don't even have our personal life. BUT sitting in AC offices, chatting most of the time useless stuff with friends, we say we do deserve high pay packs.

--------------------------------------------------------

Vivek Pradhan was not a happy man. Even the plush comfort of the air-conditioned compartment of the Shatabdi Express could not cool his frayed nerves. He was the Project Manager and still not entitled to air travel. It was not the prestige he sought; he had tried to reason with the admin person, it was the savings in time. As PM, he had so many things to do. He opened his case and took out the laptop, determined to put the time to some good use.

"Are you from the software industry sir," the man beside him was staring appreciatively at the laptop.

Vivek glanced briefly and mumbled in affirmation, handling the laptop now with exaggerated care and importance as if it were an expensive car.

"You people have brought so much advancement to the country sir. Today everything is getting computerized."

"Thanks," smiled Vivek, turning around to give the man a look.

He always found it difficult to resist appreciation. The man was young and stocky like a sportsman. He looked simple and strangely out of place in that little lap of luxury like a small town boy in a prep school. He probably was a railway sportsman making the most of his free traveling
pass.

"You people always amaze me," the man continued. "You sit in an office and write something on a computer and it does so many big things outside."

Vivek smiled deprecatingly. Naivety demanded reasoning not anger. "It is not as simple as that my friend. It is not just a question of writing a few lines. There is a lot of process that goes behind it." For a moment, he was tempted to explain the entire Software Development Lifecycle but restrained himself to a single statement. "It is complex, very complex."

"It has to be. No wonder you people are so highly paid," came the reply.

This was not turning out as Vivek had thought. A hint of belligerence came into his so far affable, persuasive tone.

"Everyone just sees the money. No one sees the amount of hard work we have to put in. Indians have such a narrow concept of hard work. Just because we sit in an air-conditioned office does not mean our brows do not sweat. You exercise the muscle; we exercise the mind and believe me that is no-less taxing." He had the man where he wanted him and it was time to drive home the point.

"Let me give you an example. Take this train. The entire railway reservation system is computerized. You can book a train ticket between any two stations from any of the hundreds of computerized booking centres across the country. Thousands of transactions accessing a single database, at a time concurrency; data integrity, locking, data security. Do you understand the complexity in designing and coding such a system?"

The man was stuck with amazement, like a child at a planetarium. This was something big and beyond his imagination. "You design and code such things."

"I used to," Vivek paused for effect, "But now I am the Project Manager,"

"Oh!" sighed the man, as if the storm had passed over, "so your life is easy now."

It was like being told the fire was better than the frying pan. The man had to be given a feel of the heat.

"Oh come on, does life ever get easy as you go up the ladder. Responsibility only brings more work. Design and coding! That is the easier part. Now I do not do it, but I am responsible for it and believe me, that is far more stressful. My job is to get the work done in time and with the highest quality. To tell you about the pressures, there is the customer at one end always changing his requirements, the user wanting something else and your boss always expecting you to have finished it yesterday."

Vivek paused in his diatribe, his belligerence fading with self-realization. What he had said, was not merely the outburst of a wronged man, it was the truth. And one need not get angry while defending the truth. "My friend," he concluded triumphantly, "you don't know what it is to be in the line of fire."

The man sat back in his chair, his eyes closed as if in realization. When he spoke after sometime, it was with a calm certainty that surprised Vivek.

"I know sir, I know what it is to be in the line of fire," He was staring blankly as if no passenger, no train existed, just a vast expanse of time.

"There were 30 of us when we were ordered to capture Point 4875 in the cover of the night. The enemy was firing from the top. There was no knowing where the next bullet was going to come from and for whom. In the morning when we finally hoisted the Tricolour at the top, only 4 of us were alive."


"You are a..."

"I am Subedar Sushant from the 13 J&K Rifles on duty at Peak 4875 in Kargil. They tell me I have completed my term and can opt for a land assignment. But tell me sir, can one give up duty just because it makes life easier. On the dawn of that capture, one of my colleagues lay injured in the snow, open to enemy fire while we were hiding behind a bunker. It was my job to go and fetch that soldier to safety. But my captain refused me permission and went ahead himself. He said that the first pledge he had taken as a Gentleman Cadet was to put the safety and welfare of the nation foremost followed by the safety and welfare of the men he commanded. His own personal safety came last, always and every time. He was killed as he shielded that soldier into the bunker. Every morning now, as I stand guard I can see him taking all those bullets, which were actually meant for me. I know sir; I know what it is to be in the line of fire."

Vivek looked at him in disbelief not sure of his reply. Abruptly he switched off the laptop. It seemed trivial, even insulting to edit a word document in the presence of a man for whom valour and duty was a daily part of life; a valour and sense of duty which he had so far attributed only to epical heroes.

The train slowed down as it pulled into the station and Subedar Sushant picked up his bags to alight.

"It was nice meeting you sir."

Vivek fumbled with the handshake. This hand had climbed mountains, pressed the trigger, and hoisted the Tricolour. Suddenly as if by impulse, he stood at attention and his right hand went up in an impromptu salute. It was the least he felt he could do for the country.

PS: The incident he narrates during the capture of Peak 4875 is a true-life incident during the Kargil war. Capt. Batra sacrificed his life while trying to save one of the men he commanded, as victory was within sight. For this and his various other acts of bravery he was awarded the Param Vir Chakra the nation's highest military award.

LIVE HUMBLY, THERE ARE GREAT PEOPLE AROUND US, LET US LEARN!

Winners are
too busy to be sad,
too positive to be doubtful,
too optimistic to be fearful
and
too determined to be defeated!

Books I read and do recommend to all security enthusiast:

• Internetworking with TCP/IP (vol. 1-3) by Douglas Comer
• Modern Operating System by Tanenbaum
• Hacking Exposed by Joel Scambray, Stuart McClure, and George Kurtz
• Hacking Exposed Web Application by Joel Scambray, Mike Shema, and Caleb Sima
• Linux Hacking Exposed by Brian Hatch, James B. Lee, and George Kurtz
• Hacking: The art of exploitation by Jon Erickson
• Web Hacking: Attacks & Defense by Stuart McClure, Saumil Shah, and Shreeraj Shah
• Hacknotes(tm) Linux and Unix security portable reference by Nitesh Dhanjani
• The Shellcoder's Handbook: Discovering and Exploiting Security Holes by Jack Koziol, David Litchfield, Dave Aitel, Neel Mehta
• Exploiting software: How to break code by Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw
• Reversing: secrets of reverse engineering by Eldad Eilam
• Hacker Disassembling Uncovered by Kris Kaspersky
  

Note:
A very good friend of mine and a mentor of my early career told me once, "Learn and understand how networking is done, if you really want to get into hackers footstep".