Achievement Unlocked - Triple Boot Dell Inspiron 1545

[acerimmer]

Greetings All:

 

In October 2009, I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop with dual core 4300 processors and the Intel GMA4500 chipset. This is the low-end 1545, not the upgrade which was offered later. I installed Ubuntu under wubi which turned out badly. The Grub 2.0 upgrade trashed the wubi configuration. While researching solutions to that problem, I first saw mention of a “hackintosh”. Over the next few weeks, I researched OSX86 options. I learned of the the SL132boot.iso and I was intrigued enough by OSX reviews to take a trip to my local Apple store. I purchased the $29 OSX “upgrade” DVD on 01/06/10.

 

According to the OSX86 Hardware Compatibility List, my Dell wasn't OSX compatible. Imagine my shock at seeing the Apple icon appear.

 

My laptop came with Windows 7 pre-installed and triple booting was my ultimate goal at the outset of the project. As of 03/01/10, I have established a stable, minimally hacked configuration of Windows 7, Ubuntu Studio and OSX.

 

I won't bore you with the details of repeated OS installations only to see /boot failures and scrambled MBR errors. My sincere thanks to all those who answered my noobish questions and posted solutions online. There are other ways to pull this off, but this is what worked for me.

 

I partitioned my HDD before installing any software. I booted the SL132boot.iso CD, and started OSX. I ERASED THE ENTIRE DISK with Utilities > Disk Utilities. Otherwise, the partitioning menu was not offered. I then created 3 equally sized primary partitions:

 

Partition 1, formatted as Mac OSX Extended, named Cider, reserved for OSX.

Partition 2, formated as FAT, named Redmond, reserved for Windows.

Partition 3, formatted as FAT, named Tux, reserved for Ubuntu.

Under partition options, I verified that the partition scheme was GUID.

 

Continuing the OSX installation. I selected Cider as my installation location and customized by selecting only the minimal required system components. (After I got the triple boot established, I came back and installed the remaining components.)

 

After OSX installed, I rebooted with the SL132boot.iso CD and verified that the chameleon menu offered OSX on the HDD. Then I installed chameleon to the HDD. I suggest you use the most recent chameleon customization from Deviato because he's done an excellent job of customizing chameleon to Dell 1545 requirements. I removed the SL132boot.iso CD and rebooted to confirm that chameleon was properly installed and booting OSX. (I suppose I should mention that everything seemed to work except DVD player, ichat and qe/ci. Kext's may fix this.)

 

Next I installed Windows 7. I booted from the Win 7 media and chose “Custom” so I could select the install location from my partition list. I saw that OSX had installed a 200 mb EFI partition. I selected the Redmond partition, formatted it as NTFS and installed Windows 7. Upon rebooting, Windows started normally. The chameleon menu did not appear.

 

Then I installed Ubuntu. I booted the Ubuntu Live CD. I selected “TRY UBUNTU WITHOUT MAKING ANY CHANGES TO YOUR DISK”. After the Live CD demo started, I selected “Install Ubuntu”. This method ensured that Ubuntu would offer me a choice of boot-loader location. I selected manual partition option and chose the “Tux” partition. I added a 60 gigabyte primary mount “/”, a 6 gigabyte /swap and a 100 gigabyte /home.

 

I verified the primary ubuntu mount point “/” with System > Administration > Disk Utilities. I selected advanced options and chose the primary ubuntu partition “/”, i.e. /dev/sda4 as the boot-loader location. I then completed the Ubuntu installation. I rebooted and – got the Black Screen of Death.

 

I inserted the SL132boot.iso CD and rebooted. The chameleon menu displayed all 3 OS's. I had previously downloaded the “gptsync” package from the Ubuntu packages repository, http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/i386/gptsync-udeb/download and saved it to USB. (You can also download gptsync for OSX from http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=177505.) I started Ubuntu and installed the gptsync.deb package. I verified my HDD device address as “dev/sda” with System > Administration > Disk Utility. Then I created a hybrid gpt/mbr partition table scheme with gptsync. If you want details on why this actually worked, see http://refit.sourceforge.net/.

 

“sudo gptsync /dev/sda”

I got a message stating that gptsync would re-write the mbr.

 

I rebooted the Win 7 DVD to fix the Windows boot. I started the command line by starting Windows “repair”. The command line can also be invoked with Shift-Fn-F10.

 

“Diskpart.exe”

“select disk 0”, i.e. the HDD.

“Select partition 3”, i.e. the “Redmond” partition set aside for Windows 7.

“active”

“quit”

 

I closed the command line window and continued “Repair” the Windows installation. I rebooted and Windows started normally.

 

I rebooted the Win 7 DVD media again to fix the chameleon boot. I invoked the command line by starting Windows “Repair”. The command line can also be started with Shift-Fn-F10.

 

“Diskpart.exe”

“select disk 0”, i.e. the HDD.

“select partition 2”, i.e. the “Cider” partition set aside for OSX.

“active”

“quit”

 

I removed the Win 7 DVD and rebooted. The chameleon menu re-appeared and offered Windows 7, Ubuntu and OSX. I verified that each OS booted normally from chameleon. Booting Ubuntu started Grub. Grub also offered all 3 OS's, but Windows and OSX both failed to boot from this menu. At some point, I'll figure out how to comment out everything except the Linux options on the Grub menu.

 

END OF REPORT.

 

10/24/10 Edit

 

Last week, I booted a live Ubuntu CD and modified my ubuntu partition. NO WAY did the Ubuntu system require the 60 gigabytes I assigned. In fact, the entire Ubuntu Studio system comes in around 7 - 8 gigabytes if I'm not mistaken.

 

I resized the system partition, /, down to 10 gigabytes, deleted the /swap, resized /home to about 145 gigs, created a new /swap of 8 gigs and closed up shop confident that all was right with the world. Eh - not so much. Upon testing the 3 OS's, I got a boot error with Windows which was strange because I never TOUCHED that partition.

 

I could still see my entire Windows system and data files via Ubuntu and OSX, so I was sure that the system itself had not been compromised. Chameleon and other OS's booted with no problems. I assumed that I was looking at a Windows "repair" so I booted Ubuntu and copied over my Windows data files.

 

I rebooted the Windows DVD and invoked the command line > Shift-Fn-F10.

“Diskpart.exe”

“select disk 0”, i.e. the HDD.

“select partition 2”, i.e. the “Cider” partition set aside for OSX.

“active”

 

At this point, Windows returned an error stating that the partition table was not MBR. I deduced that my delicate gpt/mbr hybrid had been scrambled. I proceeded as above to re-establish that scheme and followed the remaining steps for a complete fix.

 

So, how did I break the gpt/mbr partition table? I believe it stemmed from my deleting and creating the /swap partitions. The partition ID numbers no longer matched the original gpt/mbr ID's. Moreover, GPartd rewrites the MBR, so, again, the gpt/mbr table would no longer match up. Thus, invoking gptsync wrote a new gpt/mbr scheme. Anyone reading this is welcome to confirm/refute my theory.

 

UBUNTU/Open Source Software/Linux for the win!

[D-an-W]

I currently dual boot but that was almost too straight forward so will be following your guide this weekend, thanks for writing it up...

[acerimmer]

I currently dual boot but that was almost too straight forward so will be following your guide this weekend, thanks for writing it up...

 

Cool. Post how it goes. PM me if you hit issues.

[bhoover]

THANK YOU for the tips on using the gptsync. I had the problem with windows 7 repairs and thought i was boned for sure.

 

One additional tip to perhaps help with triple booting: installing ubuntu from the "alternate" cd image automatically prompted me for the location to install the grub bootloader to, after I had done manual partitioning. Just make sure to note which partition (/dev/sdXX) you installed the root (/) linux file system to, where the first X is the letter of the drive and the second X is the number of the partition. My manual partition screen showed at the top the hard disk information (WDC blah blah blah SDA(0,0,0) ) and then listed partitions as #1, #2, etc. I installed ubuntu to partition #4 so when the install prompted where grub should be installed to I entered /dev/sda4.

 

Hope that helps clarify a little for those wondering about how to "install grub to your root filesystem partition."

[acerimmer]

THANK YOU for the tips on using the gptsync. I had the problem with windows 7 repairs and thought i was boned for sure.

 

One additional tip to perhaps help with triple booting: installing ubuntu from the "alternate" cd image automatically prompted me for the location to install the grub bootloader to, after I had done manual partitioning. Just make sure to note which partition (/dev/sdXX) you installed the root (/) linux file system to, where the first X is the letter of the drive and the second X is the number of the partition. My manual partition screen showed at the top the hard disk information (WDC blah blah blah SDA(0,0,0) ) and then listed partitions as #1, #2, etc. I installed ubuntu to partition #4 so when the install prompted where grub should be installed to I entered /dev/sda4.

 

Hope that helps clarify a little for those wondering about how to "install grub to your root filesystem partition."

 

Good point. I've only used the standard Ubuntu .iso but the alternate Ubuntu install .iso could certainly be used as well. If you have the time/energy/inclination, perhaps you could add an Ubuntu Alternate Installation post to this thread?

[acerimmer]

Update:

 

Admittedly, I've spent most of my time with Ubuntu. Installed the 10.04 LTS release. No issues.

 

Installed 10.6.3 upgrade - killed my audio. Downloaded Deviato's fix, but haven't installed it yet.

 

Windows - can't remember the last time I booted it.

 

NO system crashes or problems otherwise. I'm a happy camper.

[acerimmer]

Installed the latest deviato kexts. Got sound back but it still crackles randomly. AND still waiting/hoping that some kind coding soul will figure out the qe/ci issue for this model.

[acerimmer]

OMG! It's been a YEAR?! My DELL triple Hackintosh is running strong. I'm still on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - one more year to the next update. Will look into installing Lion at that time. Hopefully the happy iHackers will have a solution ready to roll by then!