Triple Boot on different hard drives - OS X, Linux RAID, WinXP

[LioNEXT]

I have a scientific work computer that we use every now and then for a modeling program that runs on Red Hat Linux Enterprise 4. Because the work is precious, we run it on a RAID (it was set up by our IT department). Along with these two HDs, I have XP on a different HD. Now I have added OS X 10.5.4 to the milieu as well on a different hard drive.

 

Red Hat Linux in RAID: Two 320GB HDs in a single partition (or two partitions if you count that small 109 MB boot partition also).

 

XP Pro: One 160GB HD with two partitions (D: drive is a recovery partition from the manufacturer).

 

Leopard 10.5.4: One 250 GB HD with GUID partitioning scheme and three main partitions (and that one small 200 MB EFI partition). OS X is on the first main partition (or to be specific, diskXs2)

 

Please see more info in the hardware profile.

 

Although I have seen tons of information here and on OSX86 wiki about dual and triple boot, most of them are about systems that have all OSes on single disk in different partitions. I have come across few threads that have OSes on different HDs but they were not in tutorial form to be informative; just help cries and specific solutions! Although I have grown sufficiently in OS X installation on PCs (and have good mac knowledge from last 5 years ) but my knowledge regarding multiple boot (GRUB and all) is pretty weak.

 

Will somebody be kind enough to suggest step-by-step instructions or point me to appropriate threads or websites for multiple boot for OSes on different hard drives? I will appreciate if out of too much work for you in writing detailed steps, you can provide me minimal steps with references to appropriate threads.

 

Thanks a lot in advance. Cheers to the hackintosh community.

 

========================================

Hardware configuration for this work computer

 

HPxw8400 workstation w/ Intel Xeon 5130 @ 2 GHz.

 

MOBO has six SATA ports and six SAS ports.

RAID is on SAS 0 and SAS 1 ports.

OSX is on SATA 0 port

XP is on SATA 1 port

 

BIOS has very minimal features as it is a workstation and not desktop. But here are few storage choices in it:

 

HD controller can be set to

1)RAID+AHCI

2) Combined IDE controller

3) Separate IDE controllers (Both primary and secondary controllers enabled). <--- I have no idea what it means.

 

Boot options allow order to be set in BIOS (Integrated IDE, Integrated SATA, LSI Logical Volume, etc for HD ; and USB, Optical, etc).

 

Boot order via F9 does not allow choosing what hard disks to boot from; therefore, that is why I need a multiple boot option.

 

Please let me know if you need more info. Thanks.

[wmarsh]

I have no idea whether your hardware supports OS X, But if it does, my tutorial should help you set up grub.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mp;#entry606752

 

I would suggest a small ext3 partition on your OS X drive on which you store boot_v8

Then you won't have to enter the hex code to boot off a different drive anytime you boot OS X

[LioNEXT]

I have no idea whether your hardware supports OS X, But if it does, my tutorial should help you set up grub.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mp;#entry606752

 

I would suggest a small ext3 partition on your OS X drive on which you store boot_v8

Then you won't have to enter the hex code to boot off a different drive anytime you boot OS X

 

wmarsh, I saw your post and reading through the whole thread right now to see if I can use for my purpose in a similar way.

 

As regards this hardware supporting OS X, it is simply amazing. I think it is closer to Mac Pro than my home desktop Hack Pro (see my signature). Memory, CPU etc are properly recognized. System is extremely stable, no crashes or hangs ever for the last month.

 

So I have iATKOS install. There are four partitions (GRUB scheme) on this 250GB disk - the first being small EFI one, and three other main partitions. Leopard is on first main partition i.e., diskXs2. So boot_v8 would also be on diskXs2. Is that right? Do I need to format everything and install again with what you say or can I do it right now on the OS X install I already have? How would I do it for the latter?

[verdant]

wmarsh, I saw your post and reading through the whole thread right now to see if I can use for my purpose in a similar way.

 

As regards this hardware supporting OS X, it is simply amazing. I think it is closer to Mac Pro than my home desktop Hack Pro (see my signature). Memory, CPU etc are properly recognized. System is extremely stable, no crashes or hangs ever for the last month.

 

So I have iATKOS install. There are four partitions (GRUB scheme) on this 250GB disk - the first being small EFI one, and three other main partitions. Leopard is on first main partition i.e., diskXs2. So boot_v8 would also be on diskXs2. Is that right? Do I need to format everything and install again with what you say or can I do it right now on the OS X install I already have? How would I do it for the latter?

 

Hi there,

 

I have Vista 64 Ultimate on one 500GB SATA HDD, partitioned into two equal size NTFS volumes - one Vista 64 System or Vista 64 Data.

 

I have OS X Leopard on another 500GB SATA HDD, parititioned as MBR and formatted as 4 Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volumes:

 

1st volume is a small 10GB volume at start of HDD that I use as a OS X boot volume with basic 10.5.2 install, which allows me to modify/test OS X updates on the main and backup volumes without ever risking not being able to boot into OS X from this HDD (and allows me to use Disk Utility etc. fix the other OS X volumes, install/remove files etc);

 

2nd and 3rd volumes are 175GB each, which I use for OS X 10.5.3 Main and Backup systems respectively;

 

4th volume is a 105GB OS X Installer volume with all archived OS X x86 installer software.

 

I have Ubuntu 8.04 on another 500GB SATA HDD, partitioned into 3 volumes (all done using the Ubuntu alternate install CD) as follows:

 

1st volume on HDD is a 1GB primary ext3 GRUB static bootloader volume [/boot];

2nd volume on HDD is a 185GB logical volume i.e. LVM partitioned as ext3 /root, ext3 /home and swap volumes;

3rd volume on HDD is a 279GB primary MS-DOS (FAT 32) volume, which is shared between all three OS's.

 

I then simply and conveniently use EasyBCD 1.7.2 in Vista 64 to set up an MBR bootloader to enable me to boot into each of the 3 HDDs as Windows Vista, Leopard [and hence any of the 3 OS X volumes], and Ubuntu.....

[wmarsh]

So I have iATKOS install. There are four partitions (GRUB scheme) on this 250GB disk - the first being small EFI one, and three other main partitions. Leopard is on first main partition i.e., diskXs2. So boot_v8 would also be on diskXs2. Is that right? Do I need to format everything and install again with what you say or can I do it right now on the OS X install I already have? How would I do it for the latter?

Actually, you need to put boot_v8 on a grub readable partition -- which can't be hfs+ or ntfs

 

You could put it on your LINUX partition. If you put it in \boot on your Linux boot partition, you can just copy the root(hd?,?) entry in the Linux portion of your menu.lst, but you would have to enter the hex code to change the boot disk when OS X boots.

 

But it would probably work better if you could make a tiny ext3 partition on your OSX disk -- ie diskXs5 -- and point grub there.

 

And no you don't have to reinstall.

[LioNEXT]

Actually, you need to put boot_v8 on a grub readable partition -- which can't be hfs+ or ntfs

 

You could put it on your LINUX partition. If you put it in \boot on your Linux boot partition, you can just copy the root(hd?,?) entry in the Linux portion of your menu.lst, but you would have to enter the hex code to change the boot disk when OS X boots.

 

But it would probably work better if you could make a tiny ext3 partition on your OSX disk -- ie diskXs5 -- and point grub there.

 

And no you don't have to reinstall.

 

thanks haxi and wmarsh,

 

Well that is great if I don't have to reinstall everything. Yesterday I filed a ticket with IT department for getting multiple boot on linux RAID set up and XP. Today, one person came and I told him about OS X disk also. He was kind of shocked to see at first but was willing to help. But he did not know how to sort this out with three OSes. so tomorrow he is going to ask someone more experienced about it. But I doubt they will have the know-how, so I have to go and figure out myself. Which is why I am here!

 

@wmarsh,

 

what utility do I use to repartition the last partition on OS X disk to make that tiny partition. I have tech pro tools. I will see if it gives any option to do so.

 

@haxi,

 

I think EasyBCD works only on Vista and I hate vista (for that matter windows also; just that I have to keep again for some few scientific and statistic programs). Is there any such solution for XP also.

[verdant]

thanks haxi and wmarsh,

 

Well that is great if I don't have to reinstall everything. Yesterday I filed a ticket with IT department for getting multiple boot on linux RAID set up and XP. Today, one person came and I told him about OS X disk also. He was kind of shocked to see at first but was willing to help. But he did not know how to sort this out with three OSes. so tomorrow he is going to ask someone more experienced about it. But I doubt they will have the know-how, so I have to go and figure out myself. Which is why I am here!

 

@wmarsh,

 

what utility do I use to repartition the last partition on OS X disk to make that tiny partition. I have tech pro tools. I will see if it gives any option to do so.

 

@haxi,

 

I think EasyBCD works only on Vista and I hate vista (for that matter windows also; just that I have to keep again for some few scientific and statistic programs). Is there any such solution for XP also.

 

Only by modding the boot.ini file in XP AFIK....but also see here ....it may get you underway....

[wmarsh]

@wmarsh,

 

what utility do I use to repartition the last partition on OS X disk to make that tiny partition. I have tech pro tools. I will see if it gives any option to do so.

I run SUSE, so I get to the Linux partitioning tool through YAST. In Red Hat you probably have another way of accessing the tool, I believe it is parted.

 

If you have any unused space, you can format it ext3. I have found there is almost always some unused space, even if only a few Kbytes. Boot_v8 is not a large file.

 

If you have no unused space, I know of no way to nondestructively shrink hfs+ partition.

However, in OS X, you can use disk utility to "restore" your partition to another place -- I use an external USB drive for this purpose. Then boot off that external disk, destructively repartition the drive using Disk Utility leaving some unused space, the use Disk Utility to "restore" your install back to the original drive.

[LioNEXT]

I run SUSE, so I get to the Linux partitioning tool through YAST. In Red Hat you probably have another way of accessing the tool, I believe it is parted.

 

If you have any unused space, you can format it ext3. I have found there is almost always some unused space, even if only a few Kbytes. Boot_v8 is not a large file.

 

If you have no unused space, I know of no way to nondestructively shrink hfs+ partition.

However, in OS X, you can use disk utility to "restore" your partition to another place -- I use an external USB drive for this purpose. Then boot off that external disk, destructively repartition the drive using Disk Utility leaving some unused space, the use Disk Utility to "restore" your install back to the original drive.

 

@wmarsh,

 

I think this is the way I will go if nothing else works out. Yesterday, I copied all the 250 GB disk (OS X one) to a back up disk using restore function of disk utility. However, I will say that I have never been able to boot from that restored install. I mean I have tried restoring using disk utility and using carbon copy cloner. they never seem to work. It looks like boot files are not copied somehow or some else that I miss. May be there was something else that I missed during these steps.

 

coming back to multiple boot option. Today the IT guys came and at least had my linux RAID install working again (something happened last time I reformatted my windows install using HP recovery partition; I pulled the cables from the RAID disk and after putting them back they never worked). GRUB is on it and linux boots fine. But we could not figure out how to get the windows and OS X disk on to there. They made the entries for windows and mac, but were not able to get them boot using the grub links. may be you guys can give me some clue and I dont have to reinstall stuff (at least not now; may be in the future I can streamline the whole stuff when I will get plenty time):

 

SATA ports 6 5 4 3 2 1(XP) 0(OS X)

SAS ports 0(Raid primary) 1(Raid secondary) 2 3 4 5 6

 

/sbin/grub-install /dev/sda --recheck
(fd0)  /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda	<-----These two are linux drives
(hd1)  /dev/sdb	<---------The Mac 250 GB drive with four GUID partitions (EFI/Leopard/FotoMuziq/Extra)
(hd2)  /dev/sdc   <----------the XP 160 GB drive with two partitions (C: & D: with recovery software).

 

Here is what I tried to enter for booting for OS X.

root (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader --force +1

and then hit "b" to boot. The output is GRUB 18 error (which means BIOS recognize the disk cylinder size as too large). Strange enough, above this error it says "File system not recognized" which then should be a GRUB 17 error.

 

I tried with "root (hd1,1)" also instead of 1,0 and did not work.

Using

root (hd1)
chainloader --force +1

give some fatal error NMI encountered. I did not add makeactive since I did not mention any partition.

 

So next I tried to see if I can get windows to boot. I changed rootnoverify (hd0,0) to

rootnoverify (hd2,0)
chainloader +1

and now this HOSED the GRUB again. I get GRUB error during reboot. This is called trial and error, eh! or stupidity!

 

Any help, folks? Thanks.

[wmarsh]

Well, you are correct that if you restore an OS X installation from backup, it will not boot with chainloader.

 

However, you are not chainloading OS X with my method, so don't worry about that.

 

I would have your OS X disk attached as you described above, and boot Linux.

 

Copy boot_v8 to the /boot directory of your Linux partition. I presume this is hd0,0 in grub but check your menu.lst to be sure.

 

Then try adding the following entry to grub's menu.lst:

 

title Mac OSX Leopard

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/boot_v8

boot

 

Reboot and try this entry.

 

When boot_v8 becomes active, you get 2 seconds to enter a hex code.

Try entering 82 (Its possible 81 will work instead).

 

BTW, if your backup drive attaches to your system, you can probably boot it at this point by entering 84 (for 5th HDD) or possibly 83.

 

Tell us if it works; then we can figure out about making an ext3 on the OS X disk so you don't have to enter the hex code every time you boot.