NetBooting Mac OS 9 with BootMania - What To Do.

[DoctorMac]

Hi.

I'd like to boot Mac OS 9 with NetBoot. I used this old piece of software called BootMania, which is supposedly freeware. I know it works (I've successfully booted into the Mac OS 9 image with an iMac G4), but no matter what I do, the dang thing always wants a license, even when I've already put it in using the code provided on the site.
What troubleshooting steps can I try? I've tried it on Mac OS X Server 10.4 PPC (I could never get the native NetBoot server to work), macOS 10.13 (which doesn't even work), and my current attempt on 10.6.8. Is there an better, alternative way to host them? I can't run Mac OS X Server 10.2, but I think I can run 10.3 Server (I have 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 Server discs).
Thanks in advance.

[DoctorMac]

Update!

I got Mac OS 9 to boot with the native NetBoot server. All I had to do was reinstall Mac OS X Server 10.4.

[ELN]

Excellent! How did you manage to license the server? And can you show me where to download a copy? I haven't been able to find it myself.

[DoctorMac]

I have a physical copy of Mac OS X Server 10.4.7. I know Macintosh Garden has a copy as well; they have a license there that you need to set the date back for. If you have a problem with theirs, I can consider uploading my license.

[Apache Thunder]

Sorry for the necro post here, But need to add some info regarding the original issue the OP had before switching over to using MacOS X server.

I got BootMania to accept the license file! Had same issue you had. The solution is to rename the outputted file to BootMania.bzl. The license file maker by default adds some extra stuff to the end of the file and for what ever reason this is why it wouldn't stick when I tried that.

When I had this issue I tried googling this, but didn't get much aside from this thread which didn't actually resolve the original issue. Well after taking a closer look the website I noticed the command for renaming the file. (I didn't use Terminal to do that however. I just renamed it in Finder which seems to work too. ).

The website should have been a bit more clear on that. Renaming the license file to BootMania.bzl is actually a required step.

Also as for Mac OS X 10.4 server...The serial that site provides works on install (with the mentioned clock roll back). However Server Admin will later disconnect with invalid serial message and I can't actually use it. Kinda useless. Does unlimited liscense key not exist for this version?

I have a 10.6ish Server running on my PC via VMWare Workstation 10 (with Unlocker patch. ) and do not have that issue with that one.

I've tried running BootMania on a 10.5 Hackintosh image and it fails to work. I think BootMania just won't work on anything newer then Tiger.

I can't find the old Hackintosh versions of Tiger. The torrents for it have long since died.

Unfortunate. I'd like to net boot my iMac G3. But for now I have to boot up my eMac and connect it to the network and run BootMania on it to do that. That I can do just fine. iMac will happlly net boot off that.


Also I've not gotten BootMania to actually create any new netboot/netinstall images. Always just spits out a failed to make image error at the end. It won't even recognize any of the MacOS 9 images I've tried with it either. (even the netboot9 image provided by Apple). So I guess that feature was unfinished/bugged?

Well installing the netboot9 image from the package installer from Apple made a MacOS9 Image show up and I now have something to boot my iMac off of incase the optical drive decides to die. It has a hard time reading some of the CD-Rs I have. Don't think the drive is failing though. IT reads normal CDs just fine and there are a few CD-Rs I ahve that it does read fine no longer how long the iMac has been powered up. I guess due to the drive being pretty old, CD-R support just wasn't as good as modern drives.

Funnily enough, the optical drive in my eMac G4 (it's a 1.42Ghz model) actually did die. Didn't notice this until today. I owned the thing for about 6 months. Bought it off Facebook marketplace from someone for about $30 (same story with the imac G3. That one is a 333mhz Tray loading model).

The drive no longer reads any CDs at all. I think it still reads DVDs though. I had a spare DVD rom drive I put in it. Lacks ability to burn disks but at least it's something I can use for a boot device if I have any issues booting MacOS off the hard-drive.

Anyways I thought's I'd post about that license file fix so that anyone else that might end up with this problem knows the solution.

[ELN]

Thanks for fixing my problem! It was very frustrating at the time. Maybe I'll have another crack, at net booting the mini this time…

[Apache Thunder]

Oh also it seems Mac OS Tiger Server 10.4 ( I finally found a serial that works. ) doesn't really support netbooting MacOS9 images via DHCP (only allows AFP) so my iMac G3 333mhz tray loader wouldn't boot from it. Fortunately though, unlike Mac OS Server 10.5, BootMania works with it!

So you can definitely netboot macs off PCs via patched VMware Workstation with Mac OS Server Tiger installed.

Kinda crazy how fast my iMac runs off ethernet. Seems to boot/run faster then off the hard-drive.

[ELN]

Apache, this is awesome! Are you willing to provide some ready-to-do VM images to do this? It would really increase the usefulness of a lot of my hardware.

[Apache Thunder]

I would love to. Sadly though, my DSL internet is crap. Upload speeds means it would be impractical to attempt uploading large things like this. However I am willing help you through setting it up on your end if you have your own VMWare image of Tiger? I use VMWare mostly because it's what I happen to already have installed. I don't know what other things can do this. I suppose anything that is able to expose network access to the guest OS like VMWare can would do.

The serial key I found that worked came from the Macintosh repository version of MacOS X Tiger 10.4.7 (server edition). Found here:

https://www.macintoshrepository.org/13602-mac-os-x-server-10-4-7-tiger-

That version is a universal binary so it can run on PPC and Intel machines. (Really the only version of Tiger still easily accessible today that can run on Intel machines) Somehow didn't notice the serial key tucked just above the download link and tried to use the keys provided over at the Macintosh Garden copy which were time limited codes which wouldn't work after install.

As for virtualizing this on PCs, VMWare doesn't normally allow you to run MacOS X stuff on PCs though. But you can use something "Mac OS X Unlocker" found on InsanelyMac website. (Sufficient googling should get you to that one. I have the older 1.x version though which took me quite awhile to find. I can provide that if you want to use VMWare 10.0 or older).


As for the MacOS 9 image. I haven't found out how to make my own NBIs, but the one Apple provides works:

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1192?locale=es_EN

Download that, then mount the DMG file. Open the PKG installer in the langage folder of your choice. It will install the NetBoot image to the proper location where it will show up in both Server Admin's NetBoot configuration and in BootMania. I had to use BootMania still though because for some reason Tiger's Admin tool won't let me use DHCP which is required for my older G3 iMac tray loader. But if you have newer machines that support NetBoot over AFP then that would work as is.

Oh and the NBI file that NetBoot9 image from Apple installs turns out to be a folder in disguise. I accidentally managed to expose it as a normal folder again by attempting to set default open with to Disc Utility then tried to use Finder to open with instead. It then become a folder. Though perhaps there's other proper ways to do this, but for me that worked. The img files inside can be mounted with Disk Utility and you can modify the contents (I'd recommend getting rid of the Multi-User Support extension first. That gets rid of the login requirement and net booted clients will go straight to MacOS 9 finder)

There's a PLIST file that seems to actually define what IMG files the NBI contains and the Mac OS ROM to send to the clients. Seems rather straight forward to create new ones. The file seems simple enough.

Anyways you can PM me more about this. Having to enter captchas and question challenges on every post is pretty annoying. (I suppose that goes away after you hit a certain post threshold or something. )

EDIT:

Oh and be sure to disable AFP/NetBoot service in Server Admin if you intend to use BootMania, else BootMania will complain about these services already being active and will refuse to start)

EDIT2:

Oh another thing. If you don't have media to burn the DMG file to. Booting the Tiger installer on VMWare can be a bit of a chore. I recall trying to simply mount it as a CD drive as an ISO, but VMWare wouldn't mount it right..wouldn't boot it.

I found a pre made 10.6 server VMWare disk. From where I created a new ISO image with PowerISO, tucked the DMG file of Tiger into it. Then booted up that 10.6 install with it mounted after mounting a second blank "hard-drive" image. Then opened the DMG file and mounted it. Then used Disk Utility to "copy" it over the new hard-drive image I mounted with VMWare. (via the Restore tab in Disk Utility).

This was one ***backwards way of doing what I wanted, but lol that worked. I could then boot this Tiger installer harddisk image I made and install new instances of Tiger onto fresh hard-disk images.

EDIT3:

Ok I exported the VMWare machine toa a OVF file. (Open VirtualMachine Format). This resulted in 3 files. A mf file, a OVF file, and a compressed copy of the VMDF disk image.

The ovf file can be imported back into VMWare via the Open dialog when going to open a existing Virtual machine. Though perhaps other VM software could possibly import this assuming you can run Mac OS X Tiger in things other then VMWare (on a PC anyways). With everything zipped up, the resulting file is about 4.7GB. So not as large as expected. I could possibly have this uploaded. But it will take probably 12 hours to upload. So would have to do it overnight.

So I redid the virtual machine with a version of Tiger where I used more "generic" login details (as the first go around, I used my name and a personal password to setup the user account) so that it would be suitable for sharing. I can upload this somewhere and PM it to you tomorrow. This would probably help get you setup a bit faster as you'd only have to worry about setting up VMWare/Other virtual machine software on your end.