Roy Miller

Q: 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:


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

 

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

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

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  • by Cattus Thraex,

    Cattus Thraex Cattus Thraex Nov 24, 2011 11:17 AM in response to Ziatron
    Level 4 (1,714 points)
    Notebooks
    Nov 24, 2011 11:17 AM in response to Ziatron

    SL is indeed a solid Mac OS, but Tiger remains the best Mac OS X ever, perhaps the best Mac OS in the absolute: clean, well done, stable, easy to use, logical, beautiful... a masterpiece of design and software.

  • by Great Big Radio,

    Great Big Radio Great Big Radio Nov 24, 2011 1:33 PM in response to Tech Harmony
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 24, 2011 1:33 PM in response to Tech Harmony

    Tech Harmony wrote:

     

    If you get a chance, I'd be curious what your Geekbench scores are! No worries, just curious how the Genius Bar restore stacks up to known benchmarks for your model. Peace!

    Ugh. 4343. Wow. How did the process make that happen? And how do I get it back up?

  • by tilmannr,

    tilmannr tilmannr Nov 27, 2011 7:56 AM in response to Roy Miller
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 27, 2011 7:56 AM in response to Roy Miller

    Hey,

    I just installed SL on a brand new MacBook Pro 15-inch shipped only last week.

    Everything worked just fine, without any problems. I already used the machine and it seems to work perfectly.

    The only thing I did diferent was, that I couldn't start up from the external, bootable SL system disk, the MBP stopped when the Apple symbol showed up and ferezed there.
    So I booted from the Lion recovery partition and restored my SL dmg with the DiskUtility there.

     

    So obviously it also can be done this way and it's working on the newest MacBook Pros…

     

    Have a nice evening, and greetings from cold Germany!

     

       Tilmann

  • by Tech Harmony,

    Tech Harmony Tech Harmony Nov 27, 2011 9:30 AM in response to Great Big Radio
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 27, 2011 9:30 AM in response to Great Big Radio

    @tilmannr... I like this method that utiliizes the Lion Recovery partition's Disk Utility to restore the system image... it also would mean people could do interesting things like dual boot or recover Lion/SnowLeo in the future. There are some steps in the regular Procedures that completely erase and partition the entire drive... maybe it's time to remove those steps so that we are only erasing the main Lion volume but not destroying the entire partition information. I think from a fixer's point of view, repartitioning is a sort of cleaning/good-housekeeping habit before putting on an OS but for our purposes, we probably should preserve the Lion Recovery partition. It's too bad we can't modify the original instructions but I will try to make a note to modify/enhance the web site instructions if anyone happens to use it.

     

    @Great Big Radio.... don't worry about that benchmark as that sounds about right for the iMac... I mean, try rebooting and running the test with nothing else open if you'd like, but for some reason the iMacs don't use their full performance power when downgraded this route. I was just curious if the Genius Bar had a way they did it that magically ensured you got the highest speed. In fact, if they had cloned another iMac Snow Leopard to your computer and not a generic (I'm assuming here), then I would think it would have the specific iMac-enabling features. It's been a mystery this thread has not solved other than by using the factory restore discs for your particular model iMac. So there's no way to "fix" it beyond that and because that benchmark is still so fast, no need to think about it until a year or three from now when you upgrade to Lion.

  • by Cattus Thraex,

    Cattus Thraex Cattus Thraex Nov 27, 2011 11:40 AM in response to tilmannr
    Level 4 (1,714 points)
    Notebooks
    Nov 27, 2011 11:40 AM in response to tilmannr

    So you had to use a small trick. I did something similar when I installed Tiger on the 1st generation Air, shipped with Leopard. It worked!

  • by iapg,

    iapg iapg Nov 28, 2011 2:01 PM in response to Roy Miller
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 28, 2011 2:01 PM in response to Roy Miller

    Hi Roy,

     

    so, I don't know if the new MBP will run well under Snow Leopard 10.6.8.  This is something that some brave soul will have to test.

     

     

    Finally, I had the chance to try it by myself in a local Apple dealer and it works.

     

    I cloned my mid 2009 MacBook Pro 17" HD running 10.6.8 with Carbon Copy Cloner app to an external 2.5" firewire HD.

     

    I plugged this FW HD to a late 2011 MacBook Pro 17" and selected it as startup drive.

     

    It works… 10.6.8 started up and run flawlessly in this new MacBook.

     

    I tried some ppc apps (that need rosetta) with some complex archives and worked perfect.

     

    This means that if I wanted, I could use back Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the external drive to the internal. Or just unscrew the back cover and swap the drives.

     

     

    Thanks

  • by Roy Miller,

    Roy Miller Roy Miller Nov 28, 2011 3:10 PM in response to iapg
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Nov 28, 2011 3:10 PM in response to iapg

    Hi iapg,

    so, I don't know if the new MBP will run well under Snow Leopard 10.6.8.  This is something that some brave soul will have to test.

     

    Finally, I had the chance to try it by myself in a local Apple dealer and it works.

       <snip>

    It works… 10.6.8 started up and run flawlessly in this new MacBook.

     

    Great!!!

     

    at the risk of repeating myself, I would expect an older version of MacOSX to do a good job at running hardware that existed back when that older version of MacOSX was new.  It is the newer hardware that may not be supported, fully or at all....  Ha - no risk, I am repeating myself.

     

    My caution to go along with "It works...  and run flawlessly" is that if at some later date, one notices that something doesn't seem to work properly, it may trace back to new hardware not supported by the older version of Mac OS X.  

     

    if the new computer continues to function well for all that one uses it - fantastic!!!!

     

    cheers!

  • by Harald Köhler,

    Harald Köhler Harald Köhler Nov 28, 2011 4:28 PM in response to Roy Miller
    Level 1 (20 points)
    Nov 28, 2011 4:28 PM in response to Roy Miller

    I bought a MacPro 6-Core early this year.

    If i now will buy another one - will it boot from the 10.6.4 DVD which was shipped with this machine early this year?

  • by JasonFear,

    JasonFear JasonFear Nov 28, 2011 5:24 PM in response to Roy Miller
    Level 5 (4,940 points)
    Nov 28, 2011 5:24 PM in response to Roy Miller

    Roy,

     

    I really appreciate all of your hard work and dilligence on this. As someone who supports thousands of Macs at a major UC school system it's been very helpful to know that for some users (who require Rosetta) still have a little longer for that lease on life.

     

    I'm going to give SL Server a go as well over the weekend on a new machine as several of use it for testing/trial purposes and I feel like it too should work (if the client works).

     

    Thanks!

  • by Ian Cheong,

    Ian Cheong Ian Cheong Nov 30, 2011 3:07 AM in response to JasonFear
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Nov 30, 2011 3:07 AM in response to JasonFear

    I have SL Server running on MBP 8,3 17" i7 Early 2011. No problems. Managed to use CarbonCopyCLoner to copy all my other stuff over to the new SLS install. Some permissions need to be fixed, but otherwise all looks OK so far - running Appleworks 6, Eudora 6.2 so far.

     

    Played with Snow Leopard CLient in VirtualBox4.1.6 and it runs fine, but has issue with file sharing access (no guest additions support on mac) and virtual machien chewing CPU (known issue). Was going to try virtual SL on Lion as a solution, but happier to run SL for now.

     

    According to iFixit readers, the target disk method works in 2011 Mac Mini. http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/58958/Snow+Leopard+on+Mac+Mini+2011

     

    I used an external SL hard drive from MBP 1,1 to boot the MBP 8,3 and usd the Roy method on the fast new machine - took 40 mins to build.

  • by JasonFear,

    JasonFear JasonFear Nov 30, 2011 2:09 PM in response to Ian Cheong
    Level 5 (4,940 points)
    Nov 30, 2011 2:09 PM in response to Ian Cheong

    Ian Cheong wrote:

     

    I have SL Server running on MBP 8,3 17" i7 Early 2011. No problems.

     

    I don't understand... the 17" MBP 8.3 (Early 2011) shipped with 10.6.6 when it was released in February of 2011. So what did you revert from? I was mainly curious to see if Snow Leopard Server would run on a machine that came with Lion preinstalled, not originally shipped with Snow Leopard. Did your machine ship with Lion?

  • by Tech Harmony,

    Tech Harmony Tech Harmony Nov 30, 2011 2:41 PM in response to JasonFear
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 30, 2011 2:41 PM in response to JasonFear

    @Harald Kohler ... Mac Pro should work. Just heed Roy's reminder/warning in the post above yours. Doesn't hurt to try it and if for some reason it doesn't work, you can come back to this thread for how to get your Mac Pro working. If you buy it from the Apple Store directly, you might be able to have the geniuses install Snow Leo for you!

     

    @Ian Cheong ... I thought Targe Disk Method and The Procedure here (and derivations thereof) would work on the Mac Minis... I thought the main problem with the Minis (and iMacs) are that their Geekbench/Xbench scores are not the highest they can be. It would appear there is a driver/kext or something else missing from these "universal" builds we are doing that diminishes processor scores. However, because the results are still so fast, most people don't care. I believe it would take someone from the "alt mac" community to solve this problem but otherwise, I think these various methods will work for the Mini. At least that was my impression from feedback in this thread.

     

    @JasonFear .... my early 2011 13" Macbook Pro shipped with Lion so it's entirely possible that Ian's Macbook Pro shipped with Lion. Since he refers to it as a "new SLS [Snow Leo Server] install," even if he were going from Snow Leo to Snow Leo Server, he probably had to use one of these methods to get it installed because it would not install from retail disc (unless he has the factory/restore discs for your model). He makes no mention of using the install discs to install his machine -- which, again, would not be possible unless they were the factory discs for your specific models. At any rate, there was no hardware change made to early 2011 machines that shipped with Lion vs. Snow Leo, the only difference between them is which OS they shipped with (with the SLeo machines shipping with restore discs, I assume, whereas the Lion machines did not).

     

    With any newer hardware changes, heed Roy's reminder several posts above this one. Then YMMV.

  • by Ian Cheong,

    Ian Cheong Ian Cheong Nov 30, 2011 4:06 PM in response to JasonFear
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Nov 30, 2011 4:06 PM in response to JasonFear

    (I got a refurb which shipped with Lion and no discs.) I have SL family pack discs and SLS discs which I got new.

  • by sheaboye,

    sheaboye sheaboye Dec 2, 2011 4:28 PM in response to Roy Miller
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 2, 2011 4:28 PM in response to Roy Miller

    Hi Roy,

     

    I purchased a Macbook Pro 15" 2.0 2011 (October)  which came with Lion 10.7. I tried to live with it but it was just like a circus performing tricks when I didn't need it. I stumbled across your post and followed your method to the T. I seemed to keep failing when trying to locate the system file in the image. Anyway I tried it a diiferent way, I installed my 10.6.3 onto VMFusion 4.1 updated to 10.6.8 (only build to allow Snow Leopard Client by accident:?) running inside lion. I then plugged in an external drive and connected it to VM, entered Disk Utility and restored snow leopard dirive to external. Once done, booted into Lion recovery and went to disk util like above and restored the new Lion drive to Snow Leopard. It all works great as I do audio production. The battery only lasts 3.5-4 hrs max on a brand new machibe very strange,

     

    I will endeavour with your method of creating images though.

     

    One last point, the exact words I was quoted by an apple tech at applecare. "Sorry sir I can confirm your machine will not run Snow Leopard 100%" You are wasting your time! - Why do you want to downgrade from am amazing OS likw Lion?? - This made me even more determined. I sit here smiling:))

  • by Cattus Thraex,

    Cattus Thraex Cattus Thraex Dec 3, 2011 1:11 AM in response to Harald Köhler
    Level 4 (1,714 points)
    Notebooks
    Dec 3, 2011 1:11 AM in response to Harald Köhler

    Probably not, but you must test for yourself. If the generations are not close to each other, the probability is lower and lower. On the other hand, there are various methods to identify a trick. I could install Tiger on the first gen. MBA, which shipped with 10.5.1 already, by cloning a Tiger system unto that MBA. It worked just fine, but only because it was a generation close to the previous one, this could not be possible now, of course.

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