some quidance please...

[dtakias]

hi

 

i have a toshiba u200 laptop with an intel t7200 cpu. i have managed to do quad booting on it with xp,vista,osx 10.9.4 and suse linux.i boot using grub and xp boot loader at the same time.

yesterday i tried to do the same on a new imac, just without vista, only to realise that its a cmpltely different procedure. i wasnt aware about the incompatibility of mac with master boot record. as far as i understand i need to boot first with mac cd and create the partitions from there.

i am going for three primary partitions(as extended are not supported on mac)

1:MACOSX(raiserfs journaled)

2:MAC-Data(raiserfs journaled)

3:Linux-Ext3

4:WinXP-FAT32

 

First i install XP, then MAC and then Linux and use GRUB or Lilo to boot all of them.

 

 

If you disagree on something or have any suggestions or a better route to follow i would appreciate if you could reply as soon as possible please

[billbear]

You may find this article useful:

http://refit.sourceforge.net/tripleboot/

I must say that one of its points is not true: it says " MBR only supports 4 primary partitions and GPT does not support extended partitions. Combining these two limitations means that a dual partition system disk can have a maximum of 4 primary partitions. In addition, Apple reserves the first primary partition for the "EFI System Partition". That leaves us with only three partitions to play with, one for each OS."

The truth is, you can have as many primary partitions as you wish, but windows can only see the first 4. i assume your linux distribution also uses MBR rather than GPT, so your linux partition must be among the first 4 partitions. So your partition scheme should be like:

1>GPT reserved

2>OS X

3>Windows

4>Linux

5,6,7...> Only visible under OS X

Also, for some reason Boot Camp expects the Windows "C:" drive to be the last partition present on the drive. If it isn't, Windows setup will crash with a "cannot find hal.dll" error after the first reboot. But if windows has been successfully installed, it's ok to have other partitions after windows. My suggestion, you do a typical bootcamp xp install first(that means you assign the whole disk to OS X,and then install apple's bootcamp, follow the instructions), then boot into OS X, create a disk image of your fresh xp using winclone( www.twocanoes.com/ ), save your winclone image to an external disk or DVD(note that your xp partition must be NTFS in order to use winclone). Now you can boot from OS X install DVD and partition as you like, install OS X, restore the winclone image to the partition you prepared for xp. Note that your winclone image is created from the third partition (when i say the third, i count the invisible GPT reserved) and can only be restored to the third partition or you will have to change boot.ini, but OS X cannot write NTFS and you will have to play some tricks.

 

The last step, install linux. i have not tried this on a intel Mac, i can give you no advice.

 

If you want a FAT32 to share files between OSes, maybe you can place OS X to the fifth partition, i am not sure.

[dtakias]

hi

 

Thanks for the help. I have managed to install windows xp, then mac osx and then linux ubuntu.

after that i installed refit on macosx partition and refit recognised all three operating systems on boot.

 

The problem is that GRUB is installed by default when you install Ubuntu and its being installed on the MBR of the hard disk.

That means that GRUB is being loaded every time i choose to boot XP or Ubuntu. If i choose to install it on the root partition of linux (hd(0,4) in my case) then it will not load at all when i choose linux on the refit menu, therefore linux will not load.

 

Please help me if you have any ideas

[billbear]

Is it (hd0,4) or (hd0,3) ?

In GRUB syntax, the first partition is (hd0,0)

Tell me your partition scheme

 

i also read somewhere that when ubuntu formats its / partition it causes a GPT/MBR mismatch. In GPT, it's a linux partition, in MBR, it is marked as EFI system. When you try to install GRUB into / patition it fails because an EFI partition is protected. So you must synch GPT/MBR before going ahead with the install. But if it's really (hd0,4), that is the fifth partition, MBR doesn't even know it's there, such mismatch will not take place and i think everything should be ok.

[billbear]

Today i managed to install 4 OSes into my MacBook: OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux. Boots perfectly with rEFIt. My partition scheme is:

0> EFI reserved

1> Vista NTFS

2> FAT32, for sharing files between OSes

3> XP NTFS

4> OS X HFS+

5> another HFS+

6> Ubuntu /

7> Linux swap

 

I will write a HOW-TO later.

[billbear]

i posted how i set up a quad-booting on my MacBook at onmac.net:

http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?p=12262#post12262

[dtakias]

hey,

 

Thanks for the help and the usefull information. I haven't checked in ages since i was away for sometime.

 

I am trying to follow your guide now but i keep failing to do it. On my Toshiba laptop I do Quad Booting of XP,Vista,MAC,Suse Linux using NT Loader and GRUB(option to boot MACOS from NT loader and GRUB as well), although multi booting on a MAC is a different case and i find it more difficult...but maybe its just me.

 

I ve also seen your updated thread on onmac.net where you explain that cloning of xp is not required.

 

So lets take it from the beggining. I want to install 3 operating systems on a brand new iMAC and then take an image of it and push it to another 29 iMACs. I am woking for secondary school in the UK and we are planning to Triple Boot all the new iMACs. I will need MACOSX,WINXP AND UBUNTU installed on them.

I will need to boot everything from refit, which means that XP will boot with NT loader without having GRUB load first and I need to load Ubuntu with GRUB or Lilo. Since pupils will use them they need to choose the XP icon on refit and have XP load straight away without having to choose XP from GRUB menu. That means that I have to install GRUB on the linux root partition or the shared FAT partition.

 

So my partition structure looks like this:

0 EFI protected

1 FAT - SHARED FOR ALL OS

2 HFS+ - MAC OSX

3 NTFS OR FAT32 - WINXP

4 HFS+ FOR MAC DATA

5 FREE SPACE FOR LINUX ROOT AND SWAP

 

I install OSX then reboot into OSX, install refit and restart so i can carry on with XP installation. After XP has finished copying files and the system is restarted it will not be able to carry on as i get all sorts of errors like, operating system not found or please instert correct media. Also same happens when i try to install ubuntu as well.

 

 

Please advise me as I need to finish this by Wednesday..

[billbear]

You cannot have more than one windows partition while installing XP. XP installer will recognize your 2nd partition as C drive and make it "Active" . This is bad because Boot Camp expects the XP boot partition to be the last (of MBR table, in your case, the 4th as MBR don't know there is a fifth) on the disk. You must mark the 4th partition as "Active" before you install XP to convince XP that the 4th partition is C:. In a quad boot setup, you can mark it in Vista and then start XP installation but as you only do a triple booting i don't know a way to mark the 4th partition "Active" in OS X. So, to accomplish your task, you must first format your FAT partition as HFS+, then install XP, and format it back to FAT. You can do the formatting by booting from Tiger DVD and use Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. And while installing XP, you should let the Windows installer format the C drive or Windows may not boot.

 

The above is based on my experience of dual booting on the partition scheme below:

 

0 EFI protected

1 OS X

2 HFS+ and then FAT

3 NTFS for XP

 

About Ubuntu, what error have you got? i think it should install without problems. Which version of Ubuntu did you use?

Do not install GRUB on the linux root partition. Do not install GRUB on an NTFS partition. Do not install GRUB to a partition which MBR can't see.

Besides the shared FAT partition, it's also ok to install GRUB on the OS X partition. (OS X do not need a PC-like "boot sector")