Are There any Linux Users on This Site?

I am creating a document with the steps I followed to install the hackintosh and organizing a shared folder on my google drive where I will place the files necessary for the opencore setup. I will need a little time to do it, but I will post those ASAP.

Thank you.
Please avoid Google drive as it's typically seen as a place to phish information. Use temporary file sharing services with ads (which is better) or try to attach it here if the forum settings allow.

For example: Upload Files | Free File Upload and Transfer Up To 10 GB (easyupload.io)

ok

Welcome to the club!

thanks

That's a new one on me.

I guess I a linux wannabe? All geek/nerd brethren help greatly appreciated in advance!

Is this my first step?:

1. https://github.com/ventoy/PXE/releases

second step - download?:

• iventoy-1.0.20-win64-free.zip
  9.84 MBApr 2
• sha256.txt
  297 BytesApr 2

3rd?:
If I'm good so far, then I got lost, as I cannot find an 'iso' file in the 'iso' folder,
which is 'empty'?

Help? Now what??

I asked AI if it was "aware" of a certain fact, and the response was "I have no
conscious awareness", but when I asked the 'expert' level a different question, the response was:

"From what I know"... - After a couple of more questions, then that
↑ phrase ↑ disappeared from the now 'non-contradictory' (?) unconscious AI.
♫ 😇 ↑

Ventoy, when unpacked, should be an executable program.

When you run it, it will look around for a flash drive. When you designate a flash drive it will make that flash drive a ventoy system drive.

It will present itself to the computer as an ordinary flash drive and you drop ISO files in there. They are automatically made bootable. Next time you reboot and boot from the ventoy flash drive it will give you a list of all the available ISOs.

Way above my head. All I know is how to use the GUI tools to partition adrive and install Linux mint automatically.

So yeah, no, I'm not really a Linux nerd. Only command lines I know are what I Google up when I have a problem and search for the error code with quotes.

This iventoy looks like a free software to run a server to boot an operating system from a remote computer through the internet. I believe the iso folder is empty , because you can simply copy to it all the images of the operating systems you want to be available to boot remotely. I am trying to setup the server on one of linux computer and put a lubuntu 22.04 iso file in the folder that I had downloaded from the lubuntu official repository.Then I will try to connect from another computer to the server and see if the client can boot the lubuntu 22.04 through the network.So far I did not have a lot of time to work on it, but In case I can make it work I will let you know.

No network needed. Just install to flash drive.

INVENTOY PXE BOOT TEST WITHIN SAME LAN FOR CLIENT WITH WIRED INTERNET

I was finally able to run the iventoy pxe server on my linux computer with both client and server in the same LAN (my home wifi):

SERVER SETUP:
I have a computer with linux connected to my home wifi router through wifi (the server).
#I downloaded the iventoy setup zip file in my web browser (I use thorium, an optimized version of google chrome) which put the iventoy-1.0.20-linux-free.tar.gz archive in my Downloads folder;
#I opened a bash terminal and cd into my apps folder where I put all my applications
cd /home/$USER/apps
#extract the iventoy tar archive
tar -xvf ~/Downloads/iventoy-1.0.20-linux-free.tar.gz

#I copied the lubuntu iso file from my backup drive to the iventoy iso folder and flushed all the i/o buffers with sync to make sure it finishes copying the large iso file completely.
cp ~/bak/isofiles/lubuntu-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso /home/$USER/apps/iventoy-1.0.20/iso && sync

#if you do not have the iso file available on a backup drive you can just download it through your web browser from https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/jammy/release/ (the latest iso is lubuntu-22.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso and is a little newer than the one I had but the older version of the iso file is still ok just to run the pxe boot test)
in that case you could just move the file instead of copying it which is much faster if on same partition:

mv ~/Downloads/lubuntu-22.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso /home/$USER/apps/iventoy-1.0.20/iso && sync

#I started the iventoy service that allows to configure it using your web browser (per instructions on the inventoy website https://www.iventoy.com/en/doc_start.html)
cd /home/$USER/apps/iventoy-1.0.20
sudo bash iventoy.sh -R start
#I went to my thorium web browser ,opened a new tab and put the address of the iventoy web server: 127.0.0.1:26000
#this will open the configuration screen for the inventoy pxe server.
#I clicked on the "image management" on the left side and click the refresh button to update the contents of the iso with the file I just copied,so the name of the iso file should appear immediately.

# I did not change any settings for the server, I just ran it clicking boot information on the left and then on the play button,then it will show you a red square with "running".

CLIENT CONNECTION
#I went to another computer (the client) connected with an ethernet cable to my home wifi router.
I turned on the computer and immediately pressed the key to bring up the boot menu at power up (my pc is an hp and the key is F9, but it can change depending on your computer model)
I selected the boot option called "UEFI N/W IPV4 network"
After a few seconds it was able to find the server address and show the iventoy pxe boot menu
at this point I just selected the lubuntu iso (there was only one in my example) press enter and it started the lubuntu live desktop.

NOTES ABOUT MORE A MORE GENERIC CONNECTION
if the client is connected to the internet through wifi or the client and server are on different LANS the setup is different and more complex,I have not tried those cases.

NOTE ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF NETWORK INSTALLATION:
As Lynx said,if you already have available a computer with internet access and a removable installation media with a capacity larger than the size of the iso file (like a usb drive or flash memory stick) ,you really do not need to do a network installation,you can just download the iso file from your browser and write the iso file to the usb drive.
There are some programs that can do that for you,in linux I use this simple command from a bash terminal:
(for example if /dev/sdb is the name of my usb drive device,usually you can find the name of your usb device using the lsblk command in bash )

dd bs=4M if=/home/$USER/Downloads/lubuntu-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb && sync

Also there are many programs with graphical gui to write a iso to a drive, for example I just saw this free program that works on different platforms (mac,windows,linux),although I have not tried it, from their screenshot it looks fairly easy to use:
sourceforge.net/projects/blackisoburn

Once you wrote the iso to your removable (Typically usb) drive,
Then just plug the usb drive in your other computer you want to install on and boot from the usb drive by pressing the key to bring the bios boot menu at power up; this key will change depending on your computer model (for example in some old HP is F9,in some old dells F12)

HOW TO RUN COMMANDS AS ROOT IN LINUX

#note that some commands in linux require root access : normally when you install linux, you create your own user name and a password to login (the same way as when you install MS windows or macos);
However linux always has another user defined by default called "root" or at times "superuser" to be able to change parts of the operating system , control system processes,or access files or folders owned by root depending on their permissions; the concept is somewhat the equivalent of the "administrator" privileges in windows or macos.

#in the above example the "dd" command to write a iso file to a block device typically requires root privileges, so to write your usb device in the example you need to run it as root;
following are the instructions on how to create a root password and run commands as root.

When you open a linux terminal there are several type of enviroments you can install called "shells" that allow you to run commands in a text prompt,the type of shell depends on the configuration of the terminal:the commands available for you to run change depending on the shell.
(for example bash or zsh)
In the example I will refer to a bash shell.

CREATING LINUX ROOT PASSWORD

#open a terminal, you can create your root password by typing:

sudo passwd

#enter your linux user password,then create your new root password



# HOW TO ENTER A LINUX ROOT SHELL

#In a linux shell you can enter a root shell any time by typing:

su

#and enter your root password

#then execute the dd command in the above example :

dd bs=4M if=/home/$USER/Downloads/lubuntu-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb && sync

#when finished make sure to exit the root shell by typing :

exit


# HOW TO RUN A COMMAND AS ROOT WITH SUDO
#Alternatively you can run a command as root in linux directly on a line with the sudo command while you are in your user shell.

sudo dd bs=4M if=/home/$USER/Downloads/lubuntu-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb && sync


SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS FOR ROOT ACCESS
Usually when having to run many commands in a row as root it is practical to enter a root shell.
However for safety , it is best to avoid keeping the root shell open when you do not need it to avoid running commands as root by mistake that can create issues, since as root you can modify pretty much any part of the operating system which can cause corruption and crashes if used improperly.
Usually always run your linux shell commands as user, only keep the root shell while you need it and check carefully any command you run as root.

Very nice. You're showing PXE Boots here?
I do this in enterprise environments but for Windows of course.

Are you going to tell me how to install MacOS on non-Mac hardware?

I have been working for a few days on a small guide based on the dortania opencore guide on how to install a hackintosh and also working on a setup to create a iso file image that runs a automated script to transfer the macos installer to a primary drive (typically your internal SSD).This is what I have so far, but it's not finalized and I have to test the setup on a real system yet, which can take quite a bit of time.
Those are starting points and the configuration that the setup installs to your primary drive will also include some editing tools, like propertree to edit the config.plist and gensmbios to generate another smbios to put in the config plist if needed to tweak the configuration.
The idea is that the iso installer will boot a very basic linux shell with a console that runs the script to detect and partition your primary drive to transfer the opencore bootloader and macos installer setup to it.
Currently I am considering the choice among different distributions of linux to use in the iso file to reduce as much as possible the image size and have still good driver support so it can boot on machines with as wide a variety of harware as possible (maybe a ubuntu server or debian minimal , but I still have not decided and tried one yet)

The guide is hackintosh_installation_notes.txt

The files I attached are the config.plist files for each machine I was able to install on:
hackintosh_configs.zip
Note that the configs were created in different versions of opencore : some on 0.9.5,some on 0.9.9

I also attached some important scripts (even if they are bash syntax, as usual I had to append the txt extension,otherwise the chat website will block them):

genmacversiso copies to a folder all the relevant setup files for a specific version of macos

xfermacefi copies to a folder all the relevant setup files for a single hackintosh configuration

setupmac will be run by the linux from the iso image to detect and partition your primary drive,prompt for the configuration you want to use and and copy all the files for the opencore bootloader and macos installer on it so you can boot from it and start the macos installer from your primary drive

(I could not upload a archive of the whole setup folder because it's too large even after compressing it;most of the space is from the macos dmg installers and secondly from the opencore files).However I included a list of all the files in the setup folder tree (folder_tree.txt) to give you an idea of its structure.
I am planning to create a icedrive account and upload the guide,the general setup folder, the iso installers for each macos version and all the corresponding configurations for machines I have been able to install to for that particular macos version.

There is still a lot of work to do , so all this is work in progress, I am doing it as fast as I can.

Wow.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
I will test this when i get home or possibly Monday when i'm back to "work" since i have more resources in the office than at home.

Thank you and God bless.

you are welcome and I pray it can help.
In the meantime I will keep working on my side to develop the installers.

Just in case these are the original config plist that actually ran on the machines I installed;they were a little messy so I cleaned them up for publishing by also removing the disabled kernel and acpi modules that I had included while I was trying to make the installation work. The ones for publishing which are in the hackintosh_configs.zip are syntax tested with propertree, but have not run them yet on the final tests.

*Lynx nods and smiles and pretends to know what is going on.