PREBUILT MACOS IMAGE QUICK START GUIDE

1) DOWNLOADING FILES
Open a web browser and navigate to the website grpcchar.ddns.net

NOTES ABOUT BROWSER SECURITY WARNINGS
1a) self signed ssl certificate: if you are using https the web browser will give a warning like : "Your connection is not private" or "Potential Security Risk Ahead", then you must click advanced, accept the risk  and continue.
1b) unknown publisher download files: if a popup appears with "insecure file blocked" Always select "keep" to confirm download.


Typically the <work_folder> is your Downloads folder which we will use in this manual.
In your web browser download the "prebuilt macos downloader".
I will use "macmid_sonoma_14_5" as the name of the downloader example for this manual.
You must have enough disk space in the Downloads folder for both the compressed image file and the fully uncompressed image file. (currently for the prebuilt macos image both files require about 50GB in total)

2) COPYING THE IMAGE TO A DISK

NOTES ABOUT TARGET DRIVE HOTPLUG
If the downloader does not detect the first time the drive you want to copy the image to,you may have to remove and replug it right before restarting the downloader.

RUNNING THE DOWNLOADER SCRIPT IN LINUX
open a bash terminal and run these commands :
cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x macmid_sonoma_14_5.bin;./macmid_sonoma_14_5.bin
RUNNING THE DOWNLOADER SCRIPT IN MSWINDOWS
in file manager click to execute the macmid_sonoma_14_5.exe file and when the insecure file popup appears, click on more info and run anyway.
When the installer asks to make changes to this computer click on yes.


NOTE: BOOTLOADER TIMEOUT
Every time you reboot the PC and grub or opencore bootloader starts, if you do not change the highlighted selection by moving the keyboard up/down arrows within a few seconds,it will load the highlighted selection by default,which may not be the one you want, so be ready to press the up or down arrow on the keyboard at least once to stop the automated timed boot.


3) CONFIGURING THE IMAGE
Reboot into the target drive and at the boot menu select the second entry "debian linux",by using the keyboard up/down arrow keys to move the selection, then press enter to boot the linux desktop.
In linux desktop click on "SELCFGMAC" icon to select the correct hardware configuration.
in linux desktop click on "DSKEXTEND" icon and wait until script completes.
Reboot into target drive by clicking on the red button on the right lower hand corner of the linux desktop.

Note that the macos prebuilt image comes with limited disk free space,so you may want to do the next step anyway for a system you use everyday.

4) OPTIONAL: EXTENDING THE MACOS APFS PARTITION TO USE ALL DISK SPACE

At the boot menu first entry MACOS press enter (or just wait a few seconds),then when the opencore bootloader menu appears, select EFIHACKMID (dmg) entry,by using the keyboard up/down arrow keys to move the selection, then press enter.


Once macos recovery has started,click on disk utility and click to select MLTUSBMAC on the left side where the volumes are shown: click on the partition button above,click to select the free space below MLTUSBMAC partition inside the round pie chart and then on the "-" button below, then confirm to change the partition.

5) STARTING MACOS
Reboot into target drive and at the boot menu first entry MACOS press enter (or just wait a few seconds) until is loaded,then when the opencore bootloader menu appears, select the MLTUSBMAC entry,by using the keyboard up/down arrow keys to move the selection, then press enter (see note above about opencore bootloader timeout).

NOTE FOR ADVANCED USERS
For further details on how to use the non-prebuilt hackintosh installers to do your own installation of macos and any other issues, you can refer to the hackintosh_installer_readme.txt and ultimately to the official dortania guide online (on which this project is completely based).