Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Clone of Snow Leopard causing kernel panic!

As I often use my wife's MacMini running os x 10.5.? (latest one) downstairs, I thought it might be useful/convenient to put a clone of my MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard onto a partition of her external drive. I thought this would be the simplest and quickest way, rather than instal Snow Leopard from scratch and then have to add to it accordingly.
All seemed to have gone well as the Snow leopard partition showed up in the Startup Disk System Preferences, BUT, when I tried to start up the MacMini from it, I got a kernel panic:
Mac OS Version - Not yet set
Kernel Version - Darwin Kernel Version 10.7.4
Process 1 exec of /sbin/launchd failed error8/n"@SourceCache/xnu_1504.14.12/bsd/kern_exec.c:3145

When I managed to get back to starting up in the MacMini's system, I also verified the permissions and disk, both of which "completed" almost immediately.
Another strange side effect was that after each kernel panic the keyboard was unresponsive.
When I disconnected the external drive containing the Snow Leopard partition,all seemed back to normal, but obviously no access to snow Leopard.
Out of curiosity I decided to instal Snow Leopard from the instal disk, but on two occasions the installation stopped (after about 3 GB in on both occasions) and attempted to restart the computer.
Out of further curiosity and trying to rule out HD or superdrive problems, I proceeded to instal the MacMini Leopard "system" and this completed without a hitch apart from - slightly off topic - the monitor appearing to go to sleep every 20 minutes or so even though the "sleep settings" are set to "never" (this seems to be a recurring problem whenever I undertake longish upgrades.)
Back on topic, I would be grateful if anyone can offer any suggestions or advice regarding this seemingly impossibility to put Snow Leopard on the external drive by any method.
Just out of interest, I seem to recall that I did at one time in the past actually manage to successfully instal off the Snow Leopard upgrade disk to this very same external hard drive, but please don't ask, as I have no idea "where or when it "disappeared".
Thanks in advance for any help.
Regards. Mike

Having just pressed the submit button, I have just realised that I was obviously trying to instal the Snow Leopard from the DVD onto a "bare" partition. Assuming this is not possible I am surprised that it allowed me to get as far (about 3GB) without some sort of "notification".
However, I would still appreciate any responses regarding the kernel panic after trying to start up from the clone.

Please excuse me for asking an obvious question, but is the Mini an Intel Mac that is capable of running Intel Mac only Snow Leopard, or is it a PPC Mac that is incapable of running it?

Also, please tell us whether the Mini is formatted GUID or otherwise. (This can be determined by selecting your HD, the top line, in /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and looking to the lower right for "Partition Map Scheme.")

By any chance are you attempting to use the Snow Leopard install disc that came with your MacBook Pro?

Thanks for your response.
The Mini is an Intel Mac and is formatted GUID. I should have mentioned that.
Regards. Mike

The Snow Leopard disc is not the one I got with the MacBook Pro but the upgrade I purchased from Apple.
As I mentioned in my edit, I realised, immediately after submitting the post, that I was trying to instal the upgrade onto an empty partition - it had been a trying, tiring afternoon.
I would still, however, appreciate your thoughts on the kernel panic after "installing" the external clone of my MacBook Pro.
Regards. Mike

Aren't these problems more fundamental in nature?

E.g., we can't clone an OS over from MBP hardware and expect it to boot a non-MBP machine.

E.g., an OS from 10.5 cannot be used to repair permissions on a volume with 10.6 installed.

etc.

I would actually expect that a copy of Mac OS X installed for a MacBook Pro would kernel panic on any other machine.

When you install, the installer places the driver files and platform-specific files for that particular computer on the disk. It may not install the correct drivers for other systems.

In fact, even similar-looking systems can sometimes have radically different hardware under the hood, with different memory controller chips, different USB and/or FireWire controllers, different hard drive interface chips, different graphics cards, and so on.

It's not reasonable to install every single driver for every single piece of hardware that Apple has ever made when you install OS X; the operating system would be huge and cluttered. So the installer makes choices, installing only those drivers and kernel extensions likely to be useful on that system.

I would not reasonably expect one computer's boot disk to work on a different computer. If it does, coincidence has entered the picture.

A couple of months ago I would have agreed with E.g.1 and would not even have attempted it. At that time I understood that you could not instal a newer system anywhere near an older one and for this reason I purchased a new (refurb from Apple) MacBook Pro far sooner than I had hoped too (read far sooner than I could justify) so I could have it with Snow Leopard installed, not wishing to be introduced to Lion (yet).
It would appear now, judging by a few posts made here recently, that it would be possible to instal SL & Lion on the same set up (don't ask me how as I lost a lot "in translation",or, in other words did not understand fully. SO, I thought I would have a go at cloning the MacBook Pro onto an external drive attached to the MacMini. I think I now see the error of my ways, but I did initially think that I had succeeded inasmuch as everything seemd to have been cloned - bug..r that kernel panic.
With regards to E.g. 2, yes, another oversight on my part.
Thanks for your reply, I guess I will just have to work up the energy to do a "proper" job sometime soon.
Regards. Mike

As I have just mentioned in my reply to Hal, I now think/know the error of my ways, but would re-iterate my misplaced thoughts after recent posts, albeit they were probably not talking about mixed platforms. Also, I thought, very briefly, that my exploits had succeeded as all seemed to be in order i.e. the "new" option appeared in the Startup Disk System Preferences on the MacMini system, and everything "appeared" to have been transferred to the external drive.
Thanks for your input and explanations.
Regards. Mike

Tacit I usually bow to your expertise, but in this case my experience leads me to an entirely different conclusion.

Your conclusion may be true with a cloned drive, but I have an external drive that I use extensively for testing and volume repairs on a variety of other Macs and it has yet to fail to boot another machine. It was originally created by installing Leopard from a retail copy using an iMac computer and has since been upgraded to Snow Leopard and now Lion all on an iMac. That copy has successfully booted, and been used to run tests and/or volume repairs on the original iMac with a quad core i7 processor, an early MacBook Air, two different MacMinis, another iMac (but a different model), at least two MacBooks, and several MacBook Pros.

So while booting from a cloned copy of OS X may present some driver issues, booting from an installed copy — even if it were installed on a different machine — does not appear to create any problems.

if you boot into verbose mode you most often will find "no driver for supported platform xxxx" error immediately preceding the panic, which means it has a piece of hardware that it requires and can't find the driver for.