29 April 2010

Graphical Boot (Non Verbose Mode)

The HP Mini 311 Darwin Releases, HF5 included, configure your system for verbose mode by default. That decision is driven by the fact that, for some reason that still remains unbeknownst (only to me perhaps), verbose boot makes for a more stable HP Mini MacBook311 than graphical boot. By stable, I refer particularly to resume after sleep.

With the current HF5, based on my own experience, if I boot graphically and attempt to resume from sleep, I get a blank screen...

But then, what I do is create a rather cheeky kextcache, combination of both /Extra/Extensions and /System/Library/Extensions. It does help in my resume after sleep issue but it's not taking me there yet, not quite. Sometimes I don't get a blank screen - perfect scenario. But sometimes, I get a kernel panic minutes after resuming from sleep.

But that's beside the point. Apparently there will always be people who would still wanna ditch verbose mode in favor of the graphical boot because, well, who doesn't wanna see that gorgeous grey Apple complete with spinning wheel just like in real Macs on their little Mini MacBook?

So here's what you do to get that: edit your com.apple.Boot.plist and, for the "Kernel flag" key, delete the "-v" string. Should be blank.

Now where do you get that com.apple.Boot.plist or more relevantly; how do you get to that plist anyway?

Well, normally that would require some Terminal sudo-ing and such. But, thanks to Kappy who lifted the veil off of that enigmatic UpdateEFI app (which is a fantastic little app by the way), we have our own HP Mini 311 version, aptly called "Alter EFI".

I've been privileged to be the first privy to the code behind that and allowed to modify a bit and so we have: Alter EFI v1.2
Here's what it looks like:
Use "Edit Others" to access /EFI/Extra/ folder, inside of which you have that com.apple.Boot.plist you're aiming for.

Oh and one more thing: anyone here who's kind enough to donate/make/suggest an icon for this little applet? Thanks very much in advance!

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