Triple Booting On Apple Mac

[antic]

Hi there all, I have been having a drink or two so this might not be the most coherent of all posts you have read.

 

The topic is related to triple booting using Apples recently released Bootcamp.

I've recently seen a few post saying how long will it be before we are triple booting on the mac. Well personally I don't think it's to far away.

 

When I first installed XP on my mac mini I did it without reading the the PDF that Apple had attached to the bootcamp files, thinking I new best.

 

I was most surprised to find that I was stuck with XP as the OS that automatically loaded by default. Pressing the “F8” key brought up the usual BIOS OS choice menu. Well what is my point!

 

When you are installing Windows XP would it not be possible to partition the preselected C: drive to two further partitions, one for XP and another for Linux

 

Although I haven't tried it out I think you could install two OS's on the XP partitions, set Windows as the default OS then then when XP is initially loading press F8 to select a further OS choice.

 

What do you think!

[Swad]

Hi there all, I have been having a drink or two so this might not be the most coherent of all posts you have read.

 

That's ok, most people I talk to say a few drinks are necessary before messing with Windows.

[CSMatt]

When you are installing Windows XP would it not be possible to partition the preselected C: drive to two further partitions, one for XP and another for Linux

No. Linux uses different file systems than Windows XP. What you would want to do is create empty space on the hard drive that Linux can format and use. Otherwise, this idea seems at least theoretically possible.

 

Here's how I see it being done (note that I haven't tried this so perform these steps at your own risk)

1. Create the Windows partition through Boot Camp and instruct it to restart your computer as if you were going to boot the Windows XP install CD.

2. Restart the computer, but insert the bootable CD of Partition Magic instead of the Windows XP CD. Because Boot Camp instructed the EFI to emulate a BIOS before the computer reads the CD, in theory Partition Magic should boot as it would on a PC.

3. Use Partition Magic to resize your new blank Windows partition so that there is unpartitioned space on the hard drive for Linux to use. The Windows partition should be the last one on the drive because it was the last one created. Do not touch any partitions before the last one, as these are most likely the ones used by OS X. I myself have never used Partition Magic, so I am not aware if it recognizes the HFS or HFS+ formats (chances are that it doesn't since Symantec would assume that Partition Magic would never be used on a Macintosh). If you're not sure which partition to resize, check the sizes to see which one matches the size you instructed for Boot Camp to use when it created the Windows partition.

4. If you feel that you're experienced enough in partitioning and formating Linux partitions, you can probably do so in Partition Magic now that you have empty space to work with. However, I would leave this up to the partitioner that came with your Linux distribution to do later.

5. Reboot into Mac OS X so that you can eject the Partition Magic CD and insert the Windows CD. Just tell Boot Camp to prepare the Mac for a Windows installation again.

6. Install Windows XP and the Macintosh drivers as instructed by Apple's Boot Camp documentation. Note that when you get to the partition selection screen in Windows Setup, although you still select the C: partition, its size will be smaller than the one you initially set because you resized it with Partition Magic. If you partitioned the other Linux partitions already, they will appear also, but you should still probably see your designated Windows partition labeled as C: since it is the first partition on the hard drive that Windows understands.

7. After the installation of Windows is complete, Reboot the computer after inserting your Linux installation CD or DVD. If you're rebooting from Mac OS X, you'll have to select the Windows partition as your Startup Disk.

8. Install Linux normally. As I said earlier, I recommend using the distribution's partitioner to partition and format the empty space rather than Partition Magic, but don't bother doing it again if you created them already earlier on.

9. Depending on your distribution, you should now have a bootloader installed on the Windows partition that lets you choose between Windows and Linux. Boot Camp may or may not recognize the Linux partition as bootable and display it as a Startup Disk. If it doesn't, boot into Windows and select Linux from the bootloader.

 

I suppose you could also use Disk Utility to resize the new partition, but I don't recommend doing so since the partition might not read correctly in the BIOS environment because it was not altered in that environment.

 

Then again, I don't know if the emulated BIOS will boot from CDs after Windows XP is installed. If it doesn't, tell Boot Camp to prepare for installation again and insert the Linux CD or DVD before you reboot. This process is purely theoretical, and I probably won't be testing it anytime soon since I don't own an Intel Macintosh. If something goes wrong, you can always insert the Tiger DVD and use its Disk Utility to wipe the drive clean of all partitions and reinstall the factory defaults.