Mac Still Waiting For Root Device

Posted : admin | On 16-04-2021




This annoying statement ususally comes up befor DVD can boot or after installation before the OSX boots for the first time.

Waiting

Jul 05, 2013 I had similar problem 'Still waiting for root device' with VB=5.0.14 r105127 Host=El Capitain, 10.11.3 Hardware= iMac Late2013, 8GRAM, Nvidia gfx Guest=10.6.3 (Snow Leopard) Install media: a.img file that I extracted from the 10.6.3 install DVD I then tried installing from the DVDread/disk itself, and things are proceeding smothly. Still waiting for root device Still waiting for root device Still waiting for root device.forever and ever amen! That was NOT fun to type! Can anyone translate and decipher from that what might be wrong? Ibook G4 Mac OS X (10.4) airport card.

if you haven't used a Leo4All or did not use -v option then the screen will not look like the first image in this post but it will look like this (no entry sign/ stop sign/ no smoking sign without the cigaret):

What does this error mean?
well it means that the OS is set to boot from a drive and partition that does not exist.
for instance the Darwin boot loader is talled to boot from Disk1 (Disk 1= second hard drive (starting from 0)) and there is no such disk.
What can you do?
if you know the number of your Hard Drive then at the Darwin prompt (after boot press F8) write: rd=DiskX where X is the number of your OSX hard drive.
for instance if your hard drive is 0 (zero is the first hard drive) then write:
rd=disk0
if you do not know your hard drive then there is a try and error method of trying all the disk possibilities on your computer starting with: rd=disk0 then rd=disk1 then rd=disk2 then rd=disk3 etc.
another good option is to disconnect other HD and leave the OSX HD as first and write disk0.

Jan 12, 2013 Before 'Still waiting for root device', it have 'No interval found for. Using 8000000' on both Dell XPS and the Lenovo laptop. A copy of a macOS/Mac OS X. Topic says it.can't install due to 'still waiting for root device'. I've taken a Mac OS X 10.6 Server DVD, created a cdr image of it in OS X (due to the fact that the DVD is dual layer, and the Windows machine here has only a single layer DVD), and attached it to IDE Primary.

How to set the RD for every boot?
once you succeed and don't want to write the rd parameter every boot, then write it in your boot plist file.
this is a file that configure the system boot parameters. the file can be found at: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
the file name is: com.apple.Boot.plist and you edit it as root and change the Kernel Flags value and add to it the rd parameter like this:
  1. open terminal
  2. write: sudo -s and press enter
  3. enter your password when asked and press enter
  4. write: vi /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist and press enter
  5. in the vi editor use the arrow keys on the keyboard and navigate the cursor to the tag: after the <key>Kernel Flags< /key > line.
  6. the string tag might be empty or not, if it is not empty then add space and then write: rd=diskX where X is your hard drive number.
  7. press keyboard button Esc (in order to exit insert mode)
  8. write: :wq and press enter (notice the : sign)
  9. then reboot and thats it
here is a Bofore image of my file (it will help clear things up):
and here is the after image (note the space between the -v and rd parameter):

most common mistakes are to write full path to the drive like this: rd=/dev/rdisk0or rd=disk0s2 instead of: rd=disk0. (only when you are trying to load the install DVD, not after the install has finished successfully).
the rule is that before the install (if the DVD will not load) then use the rdiskX format.
if you are after the install then use the rdiskXsY format.

after the install has finished successfully and you get 'Still waiting...' then you can use the partition value as well in this form:
where X stands for the number of the leopard disk and Y stands for the partition number of the leopard disk. examples:
disk0s2 (first disk second partition)
BIOS options
there is another option that your bios is not set as required.
if you have a SATA hard disk, then they can support several work modes,
IDE legacy, or IDE native, or native AHCI, also there is a S.M.A.R.T mode that can be enabled or disabled, and the actual strings as always depends on your BIOS.
i also had an option of 'Hard Disk Pre Delay' that gives the hard drive delay time in order to let the hard drive time to react after reboot and when disk is mounted or plugged in, i set it to 5 instead of default 0.
so you should play with these options until you cover all options one of them will fix your 'Still waiting...' situation.
you should set it up as follow:
Device
Configure SATA as: AHCI

and a closer look:

this option not always work, it didn't fix the problem forever, but i have successfully finished the install process.
follow these next steps:
  1. boot from the install DVD into single-user mode
  2. flag any partition other then the leopard partition as bootable
  3. then you reboot, again from the install DVD into single-user mode
  4. next flag back the leopard partition

Mac Still Waiting For Root Device Ra1nusb

thats it it should help, if you have any problem please post here,
Enjoy.
Mac Still Waiting For Root Device
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A major problem preventing lots of users from using OSX86 on their pc.

  • 1nForce SATA

[edit] nForce SATA

[edit] No detection of SATA at boot in nForce3 once MacOS 10.4.6 is installed

Mac Still Waiting For Root Device Windows 10

After installing OS X 10.4.6 native with VMware with any of the method listed in the installation guides, the first boot was OK, configure the OSX with keyboard, personal info, etc...But when you turn it off and on again, it freezes in the holy 'Still waiting for root device'.My solution was, start OSX with the -v -x flags, for my surprise it recognize the SATA disk and start in safe mode. Then i went to Terminal, entered as root and typed the following...(extracted from 'AppleVIAATA.kext' Method)

Then rebooted and everything worked fine...

Seems like reloading the extensions cause OSX load the SATA driver correctly at boot. If someone know why, you are welcome :) .reply for why does this happen-----when i was installing osx with windows installed,i by mistakely deleted the windows partition which became in red coloured text.....i thin something important file was deleted .....

[edit] You can use chroot to run this from the installer disc

Mac

Note that you can operate on an already-installed copy of Mac OS X from the install disc by accessing the Terminal utility. kextcache will crash, however, as it doesnt have write access to /tmp (as its mounted to a location on the read-only optical disc). You can work around this by running another instance of bash inside of chroot... type chroot /Volumes/MyOSXInstall bash and the new bash shell will have a root path set to the root path of your installed volume. kextcache will work correctly. . .

For

Mac Os X Still Waiting For Root Device

[edit] Other Problems

Likely problems:
SATA
Hard drive not set as Primary Master
Incompatible hardware
CMOS Checksum Bad Error

Solutions:
'AppleVIAATA.kext' Method
Make Hard drive Primary Master hd 1
If you are using a SATA disk, make sure it is set for IDE legacy mode in the PC BIOS and not 'enhanced'
Get a IDE Hard Disk(you can attach the IDE hard disk, but still install the OS on the SATA drive. It just helps to get past the 'still waiting for root device error'.)
If accompanied by a CMOS checksum bad error at boot, reload BIOS optimised defaults, change to AHCI and HPET to 64-bit mode.(Post them if it is not listed)
Unplug all drives from the motherboard (CD/DVD) except the install drive and install via a USB DVD drive. It seems that OSX86 tries to install to a DVD drive on occasion. This worked for me on 7 different machines with this issue. You may reconnect after the install.

BootLoader
Sometimes the version of the BootLoader is too old or too buggy that it can't detect the Hard-diskso Try to update the boot loader version manually voodooprojects.org
or using any Automatic Tool Like 'Chameleon Wizard' or 'Champlist'

Disscussions:
OSX86 Forum
OSX86 Wiki
7 single lines

p.s. if you have the problem don't cry, there are a lot of things that cause this problem. Many of us out there are also experiencing this problem. . . .

Still Waiting For Root Device

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