Level 1

32 points

HowTo revert new MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or iMac to Snow Leopard

Hi all,

the following instructions were provided to me by our Apple Enterprise tech, and I've successfully performed these steps on a newly purchased MacBook Pro.

Please note the following - as of 15 Aug 2011:

- this technique will work on new MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or iMac computers UNTIL Apple modifies the hardware in these computers

- this technique will NEVER work on currently shipping MacBook Air or Mac Mini computers

- this configuration of Snow Leopard installed on a computer that shipped with Lion is not supported by Apple Support. It is entirely possible that after a trip for an AppleCare support incident, or the Apple Genius Bar, that the computer will return with Lion installed.

with these caveats, here are the step-by-step instructions:

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HowTo - NetRestore - Install Mac OS X 10.6.8 on new Mac delivered with Mac OS X 10.7.0

note: this only applies to Macbook Pro, Mac Pro, and iMac computers that originally shipped with Mac OS X 10.6.x.

Current Macbook Air and Mac Mini computers cannot be downgraded.

Required resources:

- another computer, running Mac OS X 10.6.8

- spare external disk

- Snow Leopard installation disc (Mac OS X 10.6.0 or 10.6.3 Box Set)

- Snow Leopard 10.6.8 Combo image file (download from Apple Support Downloads page)

- System Image Utility 10.6.8 (download Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.dmg from Apple Support Downloads page)

Procedure:

A. Create the NetImage:

1) mount the base source image (Mac OS X 10.6.3.dmg - created from Box Set Installer)

2) launch System Image Utility (from Server Admin Tools)

3) when source (from mounted image) appears in SIU screen, click Custom button

4) drag "Customize Package Selection" from Automator Library window to location

between existing "Define Image Source" and "Create Image"

5) drag "Add Packages and Post-Install Scripts" from Automator Library to location

between "Customize Package Selection" and "Create Image"

6) in the "Customize Package Selection" section:

a) expand the "Mac OS X" triangle

b) select options desired

c) collapse the "Mac OS X" triangle

7) mount the appropriate update image (Mac OS X 10.6.8 v1.1 Combo.dmg)

8) copy the MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.8.pkg package to a new local directory (Desktop/parts/)

9) drag the MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.8.pkg icon from local directory to the

"Add Packages and Post-Install Scripts" section of the SIU window

10) in the "Create Image" section:

a) select the type "NetRestore"

b) set the "Installed Volume:" field to "Macintosh HD" (no quotes, can be any name)

c) select the "Save To:" location

(will be faster to a second local internal disk)

(not faster to another partition on the same disk)

d) set the "Image Name:" field to "Snow Leopard 10.6.8 NetRestore"

e) the fields "Network Disk:", "Description:", and "Image Index:" don't

matter unless one is going to use results on a NetBoot Server

11) click the Run button

12) when the dialogs appear, ignore the text and click OK for proper completion

Dialog text: "Image creation in progress.

Cancel the image creation to proceed"

B. Post-process to create Restore Image:

1) find the directory created in the above process, named as in A.10d above

(Snow Leopard 10.6.8 NetRestore.nbi)

2) in this directory are three files:

- i386

- NBImageInfo.plist

- NetInstall.dmg

3) mount the NetInstall image (double-click the NetInstall.dmg file)

4) navigate into the Contents of the package, to: System/Installation/Packages/

5) copy the System.dmg file out to desktop or other work location

6) rename System.dmg to meaningful name, such as "Snow Leopard 10.6.8 System.dmg"

7) copy this .dmg file to external, bootable, Snow Leopard 10.6.8 system disk (install in /Users/Shared/)

C. Install Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on new MacBook Pro or Mac Pro

via command line:

1) boot MacBook Pro or Mac Pro from external source prepared in B.7

2) open Terminal

3) find the restore target device specification

a) run the command "diskutil list"

b) look for a 650 MB partition, labelled "Recovery HD" (likely disk0s3)

c) the target partition should be immediately prior to the "Recovery HD" partition

d) for a new computer with a 500 GB drive, this partition should be

labelled "Macintosh HD", with a size of 499.2 GB

e) make note of it's Device Identifier, likely disk0s2

4) issue the following asr (Apple Software Restore) command

sudo asr restore --source "/path/to/restore.dmg" --target /dev/disk0s2 --erase

(replace "/path/to/restore.dmg" with the path to the location and name used in step b.7)

5) this process proceeds and completes quickly, about 3-5 minutes. This is due to

the "--erase" parameter; it indicates a block-copy operation

If the process seems slow, likely the "--erase" option was omitted and

the copy is being done as a file-copy operation. Quit (ctl-c) and

examine the command used...

via DiskUtility GUI:

1) boot MacBook Pro or Mac Pro from external source prepared in B.7

2) launch /Applications/Utilities/DiskUtility.app

3) select the computer hard drive (typically "Macintosh HD")

4) click on the "Restore" tab

5) click on the "Image..." button to specify the "Source"

6) navigate to /Users/Shared/ and select the "Snow Leopard 10.6.8 System.dmg" file

7) drag the computer hard drive volume (Macintosh HD) to the "Destination" field

(note: grab the volume, not the disk!!)

8) enable the "Erase destination" checkbox

9) click the "Restore" button

10) in the ensuing "Are you sure?" dialog, click the "Erase" button

11) authenticate with the local admin credentials

Apple Tech recommends leaving the Restore partition alone, and installing in the "Macintosh HD" partition only

commands to know:

- asr

- diskutil (diskutil -list to see partitions)

- hdiutil

Posted on Aug 15, 2011 9:00 AM

Top-ranking reply

zirkenz

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Sep 9, 2011 6:28 PM

okay i got to step:

b7) copy this .dmg file to external, bootable, Snow Leopard 10.6.8 system disk (install in /Users/Shared/).

Don't understand what this means. Right now i copied to my imac desktop and renamed the system.dmg file (from the netinstall mount, system/installation/packages) as you said to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 System.dmg. This file is ow sitting on my imac desktop. What do i do next? I dont understand part b7. Where is the external bootable snow leopard system disk and where is install in /Users/Shared/ ?

by the way the renamed system.dmg file to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 System.dmg is 4.82gb (actually they both are) is this right?

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364 replies

Roy Miller Author

Level 1

32 points

Apr 19, 2012 6:34 PM in response to tmcbride67

Hi tmcbride67,

like you, I work in an enterprise environment, and we have the same issue with laptops that are bound to our Active Directory server. The bulk of our Macs are running 10.6.8. When they are connected to our LAN, and the location is set to the one where the computer is specified as a known IP on our LAN, login is quick and (mostly) painless.

However, when the laptops are taken out of our enterprise environment, and one logs in, there is a range of possibilities in the length of time needed for authentication. I have spent a lot of time, and tried several different "solutions" to the slow login issue. Most solutions had no effect for our configurations.

Before proceeding with some other details, let me say that this is *not* a Mac OS X problem - this is an Active Directory problem. I have this information from our IT security officer, and have found verification of this in my reading of threads out on the web. This affects laptops running Windows as well.

So, my understanding is that when a computer that is bound to Active Directory detects that there is an "active" network port available, the computer scans that "network" for possible AD servers. I have "active" and "network" in quotes, because this is central to this issue. To make matters worse, when the AD client is scanning the "network" for AD servers, it must loop through a variety of possible networks to see if a server will respond. Only after all attempts to connect to an AD server on the "network" have timed out does the AD client decided to use locally cached credentials. Your statement about the naming of your AD domain (.local) indicates to me that you have probably researched this, and seen many of the same threads I have in searching for a solution.

Unfortunately, on both Windows and Mac OS X laptops, when the wireless/airport card/chip is enabled (read: turned on, or active), the laptop thinks it has an "active" "network" available, and does its polling of the "network", waiting for each attempt to connect to an AD server to time out. With cascading loops over possible servers, this can take up to 5 minutes to complete.

Dell laptops have a nice feature - the wireless card/chip can be toggled on or off by an external physical switch. So Dell laptops running Windows can toggle that off without being logged in, and bypass the wait. Unfortunately, Apple laptops don't have this physical switch.

What does work, 100% of the time in my personal experience, is to turn off Airport prior to logging out, or when I'm finished working on the network. This of course, when I'm not connected to my enterprise LAN. If no "active" "network" is detected, the AD client immediately uses the cached AD credentials.

You may know all this already, and this solution unfortunately requires user training and changes in user behavior. In my experience, solutions requiring such modification to behavior often fail.

anyway, this does not answer your question, and probably does not provide you with any new information. However, on the chance that it does, I'll submit this.

if you ever find a better solution to the slow login for AD clients with wireless enabled but not on the enterprise LAN, I'd love to hear about it!

cheers!

Apr 20, 2012 1:03 PM in response to Roy Miller

Hello, I am following your procedure on a new macbook pro 13, i5 , 2.4ghz. Step A was fine, but this one (B 7 ) it seems not to work.

What I tried: Making a restore from the image created 10.6.8 on an external Usb stick. didnt work when I attached it and tried to boot from it from the macbook pro, It was not recognized.

7) copy this .dmg file to external, bootable, Snow Leopard 10.6.8 system disk (install in /Users/Shared/)

Do you mean, just copy, normal copying to for example a USB stick? thank you

Apr 23, 2012 10:46 AM in response to Roy Miller

@Roy Miller,

Thanks for the input. Our biggest problem stems from our use of an AD domain that ends in ".local". Since the Mac uses ".local" for its multicast DNS, that seems to cause additional problems that don't exist if your AD domain ends in anything other than ".local". Before Lion was released, I spent a few months going back and forth with a couple Apple engineers on this issue. Initially, they were telling me that it was a know issue with 10.6 and that the issue would be solved when Lion came out. Then Lion was released and the problems were actually made worse. Finally, Apple flat out said that I would either need to change the name of our domain to fix the problem, or implement IPv6 as a workaround. As you can imagine, those ideas didn't go over to well with our network admin.

Just as an FYI, we did set up a new test domain that ended in ".internal". When we bound a few test Macs to that network and logged in with new test accounts in that domain, we didn't experiance any of the problems we had with the ".local" domain. We then set up a trust between the ".local" and ".internal" domains. The idea was that we would bind the Macs to the ".internal" domain, but have the users log in with their accounts in the ".local" domain. Unfortunately, it appears that the Macs would only allow logins from accounts in the domain they are bound to. They don't allow logins from any other domains, even if there is a trust between the two domains.

So that has brought me back to square one. My next step is going to be trying out the AD solution offered by Centrify. It isn't cheap, but it may be our only option.

Apr 23, 2012 10:50 AM in response to Roy Miller

@Tech Harmony,

Thanks for your post. So far, I have only had time to try swapping out the AppleMultitouchDriver.kext using your procedure. The good news is that it didn't blow up the test Mac. The bad news is that it didn't fix the problem. I will eventually try swapping out the other files you listed and let you know how it goes.

Roy Miller Author

Level 1

32 points

Apr 23, 2012 2:03 PM in response to tmcbride67

@tmcbride67

So that has brought me back to square one. My next step is going to be trying out the AD solution offered by Centrify. It isn't cheap, but it may be our only option.

our sysadmin/network security guy looked at both Centrify and AdmitMac. He chose AdmitMac, and is playing around with that. It also is not cheap. There were some aspects of AdmitMac that he found more satisfying than Centrify - I don't know what they are/were!

We have an added complication that by the end of the calendar year, our primary authentication to computer resources is mandated to be by use of CAC cards. These are our site ID cards, and I believe they have come out of the Dept. of Defense route of secure authentication. These cards are embedded with solid state chips, and we have little usb card readers that work for computers without built-in card readers.

anyway, I received a client copy of AdmitMac to replace the AD plugin delivered with the Mac OS. It exposed more of the client configuration details to the Directory Services application, which did allow me to fix a couple of other configuration issues we had.

I really haven't played with it enough - lack of time to investigate everything I'd like to! I just wanted to mention it as another possibility, in case you weren't aware of it.

cheers!

Apr 25, 2012 10:42 AM in response to Roy Miller

@Tech Harmony,

Well, it is not looking good for getting the 10.6.8 trackpad drivers to work under 10.6.7. I copied over both the "AppleMultitouchDriver.kext" and the "AppleUSBMultitouch.kext" files. That fixed one part of the problem, but created another. After copying those files using your procedure, the trackpad is now showing up in the System Prefferences. I was even able to get the multitouch features to work properly. There is now one new problem, however. I now can't "click" on anything using the trackpad! I can move the cursor around, but if I try clicking on anything, nothing happens. If I plug a mouse in, I am able to click with that. I'm going to try copying a few more files over to see if it fixes anything, but I am not hopeful at this point.

Apr 25, 2012 12:32 PM in response to tmcbride67

@tmcbride67 That's pretty amazing! The fact that it worked at all is pretty huge and actually makes me think it's doable.... but at some point it stops being practical to try 😉

When you say you can get multitouch to work, you're saying that the trackpad recognizes your touches, swipes and gestures? So it recognizes tap/touch inputs? Only with multiple fingers? Does it recognize single tap/touch clicks? It sounds like the actual mechanical click doesn't work but if multitouch works, do tap/touch-clicks work when enabled?

Apr 25, 2012 1:34 PM in response to Roy Miller

@Tech Harmony,

Yes, your description is correct. Single finger tap/touch and drag works. Also two finger scrolling and four finger swipes up and down work. However, any time you mechanically click down on the trackpad, it doesn't regester that anything has happened. Very unusual.

Apr 25, 2012 2:49 PM in response to tmcbride67

@tmcbride67 Sweet. I Googled a little bit more, approaching this as a regular mechanical/software clicking problem (ironically, lots of Mac folk have had clicking problems without even attempting to do what we are ...but some of that is just an old puffed-up battery preventing clicking).

Here are some potentially relevant fixes:

a) One person suggested deleting some trackpad preferences files from your *Username*/Library/Preferences folder. Specifically "com.apple.driver.AppleBluetootheMultitouch.trackpad.plist" They say they found 3 mouse-related drivers in there but I'm not sure I see them. So quit System Preferences, delete that one file, reboot and fire up Sys Preferences again. However, what's so interesting to me is that the BluetoothMutlitouch trackpad driver is the only preference...perhaps we need that kext installed as well, in addition to the ones you tried (or in lieu of...)

b) Someone had to increase their doubleclick speed in the System Preference because clicks were registering too slowly (or quickly)? This one is a weird one and doesn't seem like it could fix it but you never know.

c) Someone used these PRAM and power reset instructions http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100206215749AAAJzh4to fix their mouse problem.

May 12, 2012 4:20 PM in response to T_Sem

Has anyone noticed a new "Recovery HD" volume on their Mac with a "com.apple.recovery.boot" folder inside?

I had previously taken my Mac back from Lion to Snow Leopard (last year), however this new volume has only just shown up in the last day (or two).

Shootist007

Level 6

16,709 points

May 12, 2012 4:27 PM in response to iPotential

Unless you completely erase the hard drive, Booted to a SL install disk and partitioned the drive as one partition, the Lion recovery HD partition got left behind. It can not and will not be created by anything other then installing Lion on Mac.

May 13, 2012 2:04 PM in response to Shootist007

Shootist007 wrote:

Unless you completely erase the hard drive, Booted to a SL install disk and partitioned the drive as one partition, the Lion recovery HD partition got left behind. It can not and will not be created by anything other then installing Lion on Mac.

I didn't erase the hard disk, I think I just reinstalled SL and ran Time Machine's reinstall process. It was so easy at the time and has been great to have Snow Leopard back.

Thanks for the explanation. The disk space is a small sacrifice to have SL instead of Lion. And (maybe after a restart last night) the Recovery HD partition disappeared again from the standard finder view.

May 14, 2012 4:21 AM in response to Shootist007

Shootist007 wrote:

So your Mac had SL on it to begin with.

If you open terminal and type diskutil list I bet you see the Recovery HD partition. The Recovery HD should not show up in Finder as it is a Hidden partition.

Yes it was originally a SL machine - holding off any further Mac purchases until Exposé returns.

Your right it does show the Recovery HD and it only uses 650mb - thanks.

Shootist007

Level 6

16,709 points

May 14, 2012 4:29 AM in response to iPotential

Well Good Luck on the Return of Expose.

Yes the Recovery HD is only 650MB. It is NOT Lion nor does it contain the Lion install files. It is a system to re-install Lion by downloading it for the internet and or run certain other features like Disk Utility and terminal.

PC_CP

Level 1

4 points

Jun 24, 2012 1:28 PM in response to Ozblade

Instead of using kexthelper I suggest using this:

http://3rr0rists.net/driver/kext-wizard.html

kextwizzard makes the job that easy.

See the pics in documentation. Deadeasy.

No more fiddling with permission.

It does rebuild the kext-cache too.

On a Mac leave the "extra-folder". It is for Hackintosh's.

Oh,you know Intel-Macs are PC's too, and vice versa?

At least a lot of them, on the cheap converted by owners. FYI, Google for it.

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HowTo revert new MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or iMac to Snow Leopard