Make USB Stick bootable with iATKOS or OS X

I would like to thank SbM for the excellent guide for installing OS X on the AAO. If you have trouble getting your USB stick to boot iATKOS like I did, you can try this guide:

You will need:

1. A computer that boots into Leopard (of course)
2. iATKOS dvd or disk image (you're on your own)
3. Carbon Copy Cloner (google it)
4. USB Stick drive (8gb is plenty)
5. pc_efi_v80 (you're on your own)

Part A: Format Drive

1. Boot into working Leopard
2. Format USBDRIVE as GUID/MacOS Extended Journaled
3. Open Terminal.app, sudo –s, password
4. diskutil list, make note of your USBDRIVE, which is /dev/diskXsY where X=device, Y=Partition, Y is usually 2.

5. fdisk -e /dev/rdiskXsY , mbr invalid, initialize? y
6. update
7. f 2
8. write
9. y
10. exit

Part B: Install EFI (make sure you use diskutility to UNMOUNT the USBDRIVE)
(still in terminal)
1. cd /Volumes/VOLUMEWITHPCEFI/pc_efi_v80 Path to pc efi
2. ./startupfiletool /dev/rdiskXsY ./boot_v8
3. dd if=./guid/boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXsY bs=512 count=1
4. dd if=./guid/boot0 of=/dev/diskX bs=400 count=1

Helpful hint: At this point you could stop, and reboot and select the USBDRIVE in the BIOS boot selector. You should end up getting a message saying com.Apple.boot prefs not found, or something like that. IF you do, you know the USBDRIVE will boot, if you don't, start all over again.

Part C:

1. Mount iATKOS to desktop, either by installing dvd into drive or mounting a .dmg of it.
2. Open Carbon Copy Cloner. Hit the unlock, type in administrative password.
3. Source is iATKOS, target is USBDRIVE, Options: Backup everything, erase target DESELECTED.
4. Wait patiently.
5. Just to make sure, check your work with diskutility. repair disk, repair permissions, NB When I did this, there were no problems reported.
6. Reboot into your working iATKOS installer USBDRIVE.

This worked for me when nothing else did. I hope it works for you. Cheers!

EDIT: If you use a working OS X image instead of an Install image, you may need to enable owners:

5. enable owners: sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/VOLUME_NAME
6. repair permissions: diskutil repairPermissions /Volumes/VOLUME_NAME

 

It's way easier to download the chameleon installer and use that as a bootloader instead (just select your USB drive as the installation target). No messing around with fdisk or anything like that; just restore the OS X volume to the flash drive and install the bootloader.