Note: This is a bit of a tricky setup and I wouldn't recommend it if you're not starting with a fresh hard drive. It also helps a lot to already have an osx install on another computer or on another drive that you can switch over so that you can connect your target drive as an external.

1. Partition your hard disk in disk utility
You can have more than 4 partitions, but your windows 7 partition must be in the first three. It would also be wise to have your osx partition in the first three as well. All partitions for ubuntu and windows should be formatted as FAT.

Disk utility creates a hybrid MBR/GPT disk this way, but MBR only allows four primary partitions. The system EFI partition counts as one, so you have 3 beyond that to work with. Fdisk and diskpart can only mark those first four active, hence the reason to have osx in there as well.

2. Install Windows 7
Windows 7 seems to be the trickiest install, so install this first. When you get to the point in the installer where you choose a partition, go to advanced options, find the partition for windows and click format. This will format as NTFS. If you've followed this correctly and your hybrid disk's MBR portion isn't messed up, you should then be able to install on that partition.

When you're finished installing Windows 7, you can install EasyBCD 2.0 beta, though I think this isn't needed if you plan to use Chameleon 2.

3. Install Ubuntu
Boot the ubuntu disk, and format your ubuntu partitions (eg ext3 for root filesystem, swap) in the installer's partition manager. Gparted will work with this as a GPT disk, not a hybrid, and destroys the MBR in the process. Not to worry, we'll get this back.

Also, when you get to the last step of the installer where it presents a summary of the installation it is about to undertake, click on Advanced. By default ubuntu installs the grub boot loader to the MBR instead of its partition. This can be fixed by replacing hd(0) with hd(0,x) as the place to install grub. Replace x with your drive's number counting from zero.

4. Install Chameleon to the EFI Partition
Follow this guide to install Chameleon to the EFI partition.
This is based on this thread, but really what you need is your boot132 extensions, munky's update.sh (which is handy for updating the mkext you'll use in /Extra and can be edited to use Extra instead of /System/Booter).

Run this before you start the chameleon guide too:
(this formats your EFI partition as HFS+)

Now you need to set your osx partition as active (or maybe just anything but the windows partition). Mount your drive as an external, then unmount all disks in disk utility.

4. Use gptsync to fix your MBR
Gptsync is a little script to sync up the MBR partition table from the GPT partition table in a hybrid disk. It's really invaluable if you're trying to install ubuntu and windows on a GPT disk.

Mount your disk as an external in your osx install. Unmount all partitions of the disk in disk utility. Using the attached gptsync file run:

where X ix your disk's number (use diskutil list)
It should show the updated MBR, click Y, and it should write it out. It should also show a star beside your windows partition, denoting it is marking it active.


5. Fix Windows 7 Bootloader
The windows 7 bootloader will have been screwed up by losing the MBR table in step 3. Now you need to repair it. The windows partition must be marked active for this. Boot your windows 7 disk (or vista, win7 repair didn't work on my disk), and after selecting language etc, click on repair. It should find your windows install in the box (if it doesn't the partition isn't active), and should immediately repair it and ask to reboot. Reboot, and if you end up with a vista boot graphic, use this command in an administrator command prompt:



6. Set osx partition active
To get Chameleon instead of the Windows boot loader, you need to set the osx partition active. (or maybe any partition but windows). You can do this in windows or osx:

1. Windows
Open up a command prompt from windows 7 (or from repair in windows disk) and type diskpart. Then type:

After this, it should say partition x marked active.

2. OSX
type fdisk -e /dev/rdiskX where X is your disk's number


Note: both of these work on the MBR partition table and so they only see the first 4 partitions and will not work if the disk hasn't been gptsynced.

7. Test bootloader
At this point its probably wise to test the setup and see if chameleon can boot ubuntu and windows 7 correctly. It's even worth testing before you install chameleon, you'll just need to do step 5 twice--before and after.

Boot the drive, and make sure all oses (except osx of course) boot.

8. Install OSX from retail disk
Install osx by whatever method you like. I prefer to open Osinstall.mpkg from the installation DVD and install to the drive mounted as an external while inside my existing osx install.

If all goes well, things should be running. If you have problems, it's probably one of the ones that steps 4, 5, and 6 address, so play around with them.


This will probably also work with vista, though I'm unsure of how winxp is handled.