*Update 10/30/07: The final retail version of Leopard is now available. I recommend that you go out and buy it. It’s a deal for $129, and you can get it even cheaper if you’re a student. However, if you still need to make a single-layer disc version for *ahem* “backup” purposes, this guide should still be applicable for the final build. I’m in the process of verifying this now. If you have tried this procedure with the final build, please leave a comment or send me an email verifying whether it still works. Enjoy Leopard!
Want to try out the latest Leopard beta, but don’t have a dual-layer DVD burner? or maybe you’re just too cheap to buy dual-layer DVDs? This guide will help you install Leopard using only a single-layer DVD. You will need a standard blank DVD and roughly 15 gigs of free space on the drive that you will be performing the image manipulation on. All references to time are based on a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook and your times may vary depending on processor and drive speed.
Disclaimer: This process is long and somewhat annoying and as with any beta software, has the potential to go wrong. Anything that may or may not happen to your lovely Macintosh is not my responsibility.
Step 1: Backup, backup, backup. As with any OS installation, you should be sure to backup any important data. This guide is for a *clean* installation of Leopard where your entire disk will be formatted and erased. Please be sure that you have copies of all your applications and whatnot stored externally, otherwise you’ll be SOL (a fancy acronym for “fucked”).
Step 2: If you haven’t already, obtain (through whatever means available ;-]) the OS X 10.5 Leopard beta build 9A559. A Pirate Bay search for “leopard 9A527″ should resolve this issue. It’s a 6.76 GB .DMG or .ISO file. Once you’ve downloaded it, mount it and run the installer, then click on “About OS X Installer” and verify that it’s version 10.5.
[Note: all references to the restoring of image files refer to the list of images inside of the Disk Utility app in the left-hand column, *NOT* the images listed in the left column of the Finder. Unmounted images are aligned left and have the "paper+hard drive" icon. Mounted images are listed below their unmounted counterparts, and indented slightly to the right. They have the white "external-looking drive" icon. It is also important that you choose "sparse disk image" from the Image Format menu when creating the new images, otherwise the size reduction and write capabilities won't work out the way they need to.]
Step 3: Open Disk Utility in the Applications/Utility folder on your existing OS X installation. Create a new sparse image (8.0 GB) and name it “leopard” (without quotes). This will create a file called leopard.sparseimage. Mount leopard.sparseimage, then click on the Restore tab inside Disk Utility. Drag the *original* downloaded image to the “source” field and drag the *mounted* “leopard” image (NOT leopard.sparseimage) into the “destination” field and click Restore. This will take about 10 minutes.
Step 4: Mount leopard.sparseimage. Open the mounted image in the Finder. You must delete a few files in order to have enough space to fit on a regular DVD. If you feel that you will need these files later, back them up on an external drive or disc. We will be deleting the XCode Tools directory which is at the root of the image, all sets of printer drivers (why there is an entire gigabyte of printer drivers on this god damn disc, I will never understand) and all unnecessary language packs. The driver packages have a .dpkg extension and are found in the System/Installer/Packages directory. [Note: in the current build, the System folder is "hidden", so you'll have to use the following trick. Open a terminal, and type "open /Volumes/leopard/System" without quotes. This will open a Finder window with the System folder visible.] Delete all printer driver packages and backup any that you may need onto another disc or external drive. Do the same for all language packs that aren’t English or your native language. *IMPORTANT NOTE*: Do NOT delete AsianLanguageSupport, this is not the same as the language packs. It will cause the installation to wig out. Don’t forget to empty the trash. Unmount the leopard image.
Step 5: In Disk Utility, create a new sparse image (4.7 GB) called “boot” (without quotes). The file created will be called boot.sparseimage. Mount this. Use the Restore tab once again. Use leopard.sparseimage for the source and the mounted “boot” image (NOT boot.sparseimage). Click Restore, wait about 10 minutes for it to finish. Unmount “boot”.
Step 6: Now we will actually burn the DVD. Grab your fabulously economical blank single-layer DVD and insert it into your burner. Using Disk Utility once more, click on boot.sparseimage and click the Duke Nukem-esque Burn button at the top. Wait about 10 minutes, leave the DVD in the drive.
Step 7: Reboot. Hold the “c” key as the computer starts up to boot from the DVD. Booting will appear to take a VERY long time. This is due to the disc being arranged inefficiently because of the files we moved. It took me about 20 minutes to reach the “Choose your language” screen of the installer, so if it appears that things are taking too long, this is probably just normal. Patience, my son. After that, the only additional step besides the normal guided install is to hit the “Customize” button on the “Install Summary” screen. Then, uncheck the Printer Drivers and language packs, hit OK and continue the installation as usual.
Step 8: Enjoy Leopard!
-Swabby
If you have any questions, please post them in the comments and I will try to answer them as best as I can.
Update:
Hello, everyone. I see that a lot of you are getting stuck on the blue or grey screen after the first boot. Like I mentioned, I did all of this on a current generation Core 2 Duo MacBook (not Pro) and I can’t guarantee that everyone will be successful. I have added some clarification about the mounted vs. unmounted images. See the note after Step 2. I have also fixed various typos, and made other minor clarifications.
This guide is primarily to produce a bootable single-layer DVD from the dual-layer image that has become available on many P2P sites. If you’ve made it to the blue or grey screen, then you’ve probably followed the directions correctly and it may simply be a bug. The installer is supposedly Universal, aka will run on both Intel and PPC-based machines, but I have only verified it on Intel hardware. As we’re only about a month away from the final release, if you’re having difficulty, you might as well just wait it out for the stable retail version.
For those still having trouble, I would suggest if possible to only use DVDs as the installation media (as opposed to external hard drives, iPods, etc.) and to install to the primary internal hard drive. I know that this may not be ideal for many people, but disk imaging is rather picky and changing the formula can produce unwanted results. This process is also quite time intensive, so I’m sorry for any of you that were not successful after devoting a great deal of time. There are only a few forum posts with incoherent details on how to perform this process and this was my attempt to create a more specific, end-to-end guide that anyone with reasonable experience with OS installations can follow.
