Nightfly19 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 I've got my harddrive partitioned as follows sda1 NTFS (Windows Vista) sda2 HFS+ (OS X) sda3 Fat32 (files) sda4 Extended sda5 ext3 (Ubuntu) Using: LinuxMint 5.0 (Ubuntu 8.04) OS X 10.4.9 (Uphuck) Windows Vista (Home Premium) Vista was installed first, then Ubuntu was installed, then OS X. All had boot loaders installed to the master boot record. After installing Ubuntu I made a backup of the MBR. At that point in time I could boot into both Vista and Ubuntu. After installing OS X the only OS's I could boot into were OS X and Ubuntu, Vista would refuse to boot; I made another copy of the MBR. As a test I installed a copy of grub into the boot sector of sda5 (Ubuntu's boot volume), using diff I compared it to the copy I made of the MBR before installing OS X and it is identical. The OS X loader will load up grub, but Vista refuses to boot after being chainloaded from grub. If I restore the backup I made of the MBR before installing OS X I can still boot into Vista. This makes me think that Vista checks the MBR everytime before booting. I've tried using the chain0 Darwin loader to boot up OS X from grub by copying it to my boot folder in Ubuntu and chainloading it with the grub entry root (hd0,4) chainloader /boot/chain0 but it fails with a chainload error. I really don't want to start over from the beginning as I seem to have the basics put together already. What would be the best way for me to be able to triple boot Ubuntu, Vista, and OS X without having to swap MBRs when ever I want to switch between being able to use Vista or OS X? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perfran Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 Hi, I have a triple boot that works perectly well. I've set the MBR to load grub and then grub loads everything I want (windows, linux or OSX). in order to do that, under ubuntu type sudo grub-install hd0 then add the lines for vista and osx in the /boot/grub/menu.lst For vista you should have something like title Windows NT/2000/XP root (hd0,0) savedefault makeactive chainloader +1 and for OSX you should type (modify with the correct partition numbers of course) title Leopard root (hd0,1) makeactive chainloader +1 It loads darwin and then osx It works perfect on my computer try and tell me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightfly19 Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Thanks for the idea. I tried it but if failed with an HFS+ Partition error, which I'm guessing is because there is no boot loader in the boot sector of the OS X partition... What order did you install your OS's in? Also, who's installer for leopard did you use? I'd try writing the OS X booter loader from the MBR to it, but I'm afraid it would corrupt the partition... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phantom8 Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 The easiest way to triple boot these 3 OSes is to download EasyBCD for Windows. It will then modify Vista bootloader to boot up any of your OSes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perfran Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 The situation is a bit more complicated for me, that's probably why it did not work like for me. I have two hard drives: one with Vista, XP and Leopard, on this one the mbr launch darwin (I installed with Kalyway 10.5.2, but I don't remembe if I set GUID or MBR i think it was GUID..) On the second disk there's grub and some linux OS. I set the bios to boot the second HD and grub is able to load darwin, vista or XP (and linux of course). If I set the bios to boot the first HD then it boots darwin. I use grub to load everything because it's easy to configure, it's only one config file. I think Vista uses a modified grub for dos that is hard to configure, you could try what phantom8 told you I never tried (that's too dark for me ). I have had once an HFS+ partition error I don't know why but I rebooted and it disappeard.. Check which partition is flagged boot (you can see/change it with gparted under linux) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmarsh Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 As a test I installed a copy of grub into the boot sector of sda5 (Ubuntu's boot volume), using diff I compared it to the copy I made of the MBR before installing OS X and it is identical. I find grub (installed to MBR) boots all 5 of my OSs perfectly. Here is my tutorial for booting OS X from grub http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...st&p=606752 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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