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The fakeEFI iMessage workaround
I received an e-mail from someone a few weeks ago, who asked for my help with iMessage login/registration errors. I thought that my iMessage was working. And it did. Until I logged out. Now I had to take a look. Hey. Sometimes I use a hack for fun, but I still want my messages to come through in a timely fashion.
Also. They told him, very recently, that this problem cannot be solved in a non-Clover world. To me that is a misunderstanding. To say the least. Soon you'll find patched boot loaders that are non-EFI based. So whatever they tell you, that Clover is great and all that, it can be done with a fakeEFI. Maybe not as nice as in the Clover world, but it works. Which is all I care about.
Note: We are secretively working on a groundbreaking and totally awesome RevoUEFI in the same style as our current work. Ultra small, simple and lightning fast. What else is new ;)
You may have missed it, but Sam blogged about why iCloud/iMessage is broken with a self compiled mach_kernel and when you add a boot uuid to com.apple.Boot.plist. This long before anyone knew about it. Not only that. She also figured out how to add a workaround to solve the iCloud/iMessage login/registration problems. Like she did when she introduced people over at insanelymac.com to chosen/boot-uuid. Which is also required for iMessage. Remember? But this time around she had a reason to be quiet about it as not much later... Sam died. A terrible tragic. Not just for us as a family, but for the whole community.
Now. I was made aware of the fact that other people in the community. Like minded people. Worked on this as well. Sure. No problem. That happens more often than you may think. I also like to acknowledge their hard work. And To be honest. I have to because I would not have found Sam's work if it wasn't for these strings:
4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:ROM 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:MLB
That got me started after all. Anyway. They did their thing and Sam. Well. Sam did her part. Be it months earlier. The only thing that counts for me is that I did not break the rules. I did not reverse the Apple code and made it public. Luckily. That was someone else.
Ok. So now we have this sorted. Lets talk about the underlaying problem. Which is that Apple's mach_kernel includes undocumented code, that Apple isn't sharing with us. This may change over time, but this is the current state of affairs. I won't go into the why or what here. I'll leave that up to your own imagination.
Sam's idea was to patch the mach_kernel with iMessagePatch (a script) which locates "4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14" and replaces it with "NVRAM". Then it locates a certain string ("/options") and replaces it with "RevoEFI". But be aware. There are two of these strings. Just in case you want to patch it manually.
Today (January 10, 2013) I committed changes to RevoBoot/i386/libsaio/efi.c (among others) to inject two properties. And because we patched the mach_kernel, it will no longer search/use:
4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:ROM 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:MLB
but instead use NVRAM:ROM and NVRAM:MLB A simple but clever trick.
The good news is that Chameleon/Chimera et all can do this kernel patching on-the-fly. There's no need to use any script, nor to mod the mach_kernel in any way. Unfortunately. There is no such thing in the world of RevoBoot, but we have plans to add it in the near future. Totally differently of course.
The next step is to let a modified copy of Sam's nvramStorage add:
4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:ROM 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:MLB
You can also do this manually. Or from a script. Here's what you need:
sudo nvram 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:ROM=%01%02%03%04%05%06%07%08%09%0A%0B%NN%NN%NN%NN%NN%NN
Note: The last %NN bytes represent your MAC address.
sudo nvram 4D1EDE05-38C7-4A6A-9CC6-4BCCA8B38C14:ROM=%01%02%03%04%05%06%07%08%09%0A%0B%0C%0D%0E%0F%10%11
These are examples only, of course, but you get the picture. Right?
Here's Sam's iMessagePatch. I have changed it a little (commented out the actual patching) and a next update will add a function to undo the patch. Maybe later this week. Anyway. Have fun with it!
targetVolume="/Volumes/Mountain Lion Server"
TARGET_PATH="${targetVolume}/"
FILENAME="mach_kernel"
TARGET_FILE="${TARGET_PATH}${FILENAME}"
function _fileExists() { if [ -e "$1" ]; then echo 1 # "File exists" else echo 0 # "File does not exist" fi }
function _notAlreadyPatched() { local retValue=0
if [[
/usr/bin/grep -pi '\x34\x44\x31\x45\x44\x45\x30\x35\x2D\x33\x38\x43\x37\x2D\x34\x41\x36\x41\x2D\x39\x43\x43\x36\x2D\x34\x42\x43\x43\x41\x38\x42\x33\x38\x43\x31\x34' "$TARGET_FILE"=~$TARGET_FILE ]]; then local retValue=$ ((retValue+1)) fi
if [[
/usr/bin/grep -pi '\x2F\x6F\x70\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x73\x00\x25\x73\x3A\x25\x73' "$TARGET_FILE"=~$TARGET_FILE ]]; then local retValue=$ ((retValue+2)) fi
echo $retValue }
function _patchTargetFile() { if $(_fileExists "${TARGET_FILE}_backup") -eq 0; then echo "Backing up
${TARGET_FILE}..." /usr/bin/sudo /bin/cp "$ {TARGET_FILE}" "${TARGET_PATH}${FILENAME}_backup" fi
echo "Patching phase 1 of: ${TARGET_FILE}..."
/usr/bin/perl -pi -e 's|\x34\x44\x31\x45\x44\x45\x30\x35\x2D\x33\x38\x43\x37\x2D\x34\x41\x36\x41\x2D\x39\x43\x43\x36\x2D\x34\x42\x43\x43\x41\x38\x42\x33\x38\x43\x31\x34|\x4E\x56\x52\x41\x4D\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00|g' $TARGET_FILE
echo "Done!" echo "Patching phase 2 of: ${TARGET_FILE}..."
echo "Done!" }
function main() { if $(_notAlreadyPatched) -eq 0; then echo "Already patched." else _patchTargetFile fi }
function _isRoot() { if [ $(id -u) != 0 ]; then echo "This script must be run as root" 1>&2 exit 1 fi
echo 1 }
if [ $(_isRoot) ]; then main fi
exit 0