Success - Triple Boot!

[matulike]

Hi,

 

Well, after lots of playing around, getting angry, formatting hard disks and trying again and again I've finally got Mac OS X booting natively, with Windows XP and SuSe Linux 10.1! )

 

The way I got it to work was as follows: (To do it I needed Norton Ghost (not an essential part, but handy) and Acronis Boot Loader).

I'm using a Dell D610 laptop with Intel Centrino and 1GB RAM, Intel Video.

 

As I had already got Windows XP and SuSe 10.1 successfully installed together and working and configured, I took ghost images of both (using Barts PE boot disk with Ghost) and used a mounted network drive later to 'reflash' them onto the laptop.

 

I used Acronis boot disk to remove all partitions, format the drive and recreated the partitions I needed. I used:

Partition 1: 10GB (for OSX) FAT32 - Primary

Partition 2: 9GB (for Windows XP) NTFS - Primary

Partition 3: 8GB (for SuSe Linux) ext3 - Primary

Partition 4: 1GB (Linux SWAP) SWAP - Logical

Partition 5: The rest for shared data drive. FAT32 - Logical

 

First either deactivate Acronis boot loader, or better still - install at the end.

 

To install, and also to run Mac OS X I find I have to plug in an external monitor. I'm not sure if the cable alone will do, but I would think so as I've heard it called 'the cable trick' and seen pics of the 2 wires in the VGA port which does the same thing. Without this, I just got the Apple logo and spinning thing for a few mins, then light blue screen.

 

So, with the external monitor attached (dont need to actually use it) I then put in the Mac OS X 10.4.6 DVD into the drive, booted from it, and using the Disk utility I made the first partition (10GB FAT32) into Mac OSX Journaled. Pressed erase, it formatted, close disk utility and continued with the install.

All easy enough, MAKE SURE YOU REMEMBER THIS: just before pressing install, press customise. Select the correct patches for your CPU and other bits and pieces. I didn't select anything but the CPU patches and fonts. Didn't need languages, or printer drivers. I kinda wish I'd tried the wireless support but after all the problems I'd had booting before I thought the more minimal ther better. I'll try adding those patches soon as I've got no network at all in the Mac OS yet.

After it installs, take the disk out, reboot and it should load Darwin without any interaction. I guess if you have Acronis installed and active at this point, it'll be fine. just select the Mac partition and boot. Setup the Mac Os, network, IP, name, password, etc.

 

Next, I booted from the Barts PE boot disk again, and using Ghost over the network (cmd>net use x: \\192.168.254.30\Isoz) I 'reflashed' the NTFS and ext3 partitions with their respective images (Windows and Linux)

I guess at this point, booting for a Windows or Linux install disk would do the job just as well, but I did it with Ghost )

 

I then installed and activated Acronis, set it up to point to the right partitions etc and it's all good ;o)

 

I can now boot to Mac OS X, Windows XP and SuSe 10.1 and share the rest of the drive between them for data!

 

YaY!

[cbmkgd]

Congrats.

Just a note: only four primary partitions are possible, so you must have used an extended partition containing logical partitions. So to clarify your guide you could give people which is which; eg, for me all my linuxes are in logical partitions.

[matulike]

Yes, made the edit.

 

I used 3 primary, the swap is logical and so is the Data partition.