Extract DSDT using Ubuntu Live CD

The process of setting up an optimised hackintosh requires the extraction, de-compilation, editing and re-compilation of the computer’s DSDT table. The extraction process itself is extremely easy, using Ubuntu’s Live CD and just typing one command in Terminal. However, it seems that since Ubuntu v11.x the syntax of this command had drastically changed.

After installing Ubuntu on a USB flash disk for this purpose, using the excellent Universal USB Installer tool, open up a terminal session and type the following command (assuming you will later copy the generated/extracted file from the Desktop to another FAT-32 formatted USB flash disk):

cd ~/Desktop
sudo cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > DSDT.aml

For those of you still using Ubuntu Live CD v9.x and v10.x, just type:

cd ~/Desktop
sudo cat /proc/acpi/dsdt > DSDT.aml

This extracted file can later be de-compiled using iasl and edited according to various guides (such as those found over at InsanelyMac). But if you definitely need to obtain such a text-version of this file, you can install iasl and de-compile it as easily:

sudo apt-get install iasl

…wait while it loads from the Internet and installs (obviously your network card must be properly detected and working) and then type:

iasl -d DSDT.aml

The resulting file will be called DSDT.dsl and will also be placed in ~/Desktop/ which can be edited with a simple (but good enough) visual text editor.

Thanks to user AsereBLN for his original article back in October 2009, when I started exploring Mac OS X outside my iMac.

Happy patching!