Travis Rolko Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 After much searching, I can't quite find what I'm looking for. I can't find a sure-fire way to pull this off. I'm totally new to OSX and Linux. I have Vista Ultimate 32-bit installed right now and here are my relevant PC specs: CPU - Intel E8400 video card - EVGA 8800GT 512MB motherboard - Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L power supply - Corsair 520HX HDDs - Seagate 320GB SATA and WD 250GB SATA RAM - Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800MHz 4x1GB Disc drives - DVDRW and CDRW I have the Kalway 10.5.1 version of OSx86 and Linux Ubuntu 7.10. Should I keep Vista installed and start from here or should I install OSX first? This thread explains that starting with OSX is easier. Reformatting the disk with Vista isn't a problem. I do only want to use the one disk for all three OSs though - the other disk is full. What order should I install them in? I'll probably be using Ubuntu as my main OS if that makes a difference. Will booting into any particular OS be difficult (depending on what software I use)? How much room on my HDD should I set aside for each OS? Can I add more OSs later (such as different Linux distributions I want to try)? Can I delete the OSX partition later if I don't like it? Will I be able to access files (such as Open Office files or games) on a Windows partition from Ubuntu? Will I be able to expand partitions later if they fill up? Basically I could use a good walk-through, but any help would be much appreciated. That's all for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BebopBlues Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 I suggest to get a third harddrive so you can have each OS on it's own drive. I suggest 20-50G partitions for Vista and Ubuntu, and at least 100G for Leopard. Many OSX apps must be installed on the OS drive, so you need a lot of space. Install each OS separately with one drive connected at a time. Make sure everything works for each separate OS, then set Vista as the first boot drive. I use Acronis OS Selector for multi-booting. I use it because it's simple to setup over Grub/chain0 methods. Acronis OSS is part of the Acronis Disk Director suite. You can install it in Vista and upon bootup, it should detect Leopard and Ubuntu. The bootup screen looks like the WinXP welcome screen, only it has OS icons instead of user icons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Travis Rolko Posted March 13, 2008 Author Share Posted March 13, 2008 I know that having 3 drives would be best and easiest but I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that. I'm planning on setting up a RAID 0+1 fileserver and I was just going to keep the OS drive on RAID 1 bc I really want redundancy. I don't want to have 6 drives, or even 4 drives. If there is another method of achieving redundancy then I'll consider doing the 3 drive thing. Also, as I said in the first post, I only have 2 drives currently and one is full. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmarsh Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 You don't need to wipe your drive. Either use Vista Disk Management (In accessories, system tools) to shrink your partition, or allow parted to do it as part of the Linux install. Make a primary partition for OS X. Linux and itshttp://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=85508&hl=grub swap partition can be in logical partitions. Install Linux, installing grub in process to MBR. Install OS X -- use disk utility to erase (really reformat) the partition you planned, not to reformat drive. Use grub as bootloader. http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...508&hl=grub Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BebopBlues Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 I'm not sure if RAID is supported in OSx86 yet, better check before you start because your RAID volume might not be accessible through OSX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Travis Rolko Posted March 14, 2008 Author Share Posted March 14, 2008 You don't need to wipe your drive. Either use Vista Disk Management (In accessories, system tools) to shrink your partition, or allow parted to do it as part of the Linux install. Make a primary partition for OS X. Linux and itshttp://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=85508&hl=grub swap partition can be in logical partitions. Install Linux, installing grub in process to MBR. Install OS X -- use disk utility to erase (really reformat) the partition you planned, not to reformat drive. Use grub as bootloader. http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...508&hl=grub OK I'm about ready to try this. Will I be able to access files from the Windows partition via Linux and vice versa? I read that I can't access the OSX files from either but that's not a problem. I'll report back soon. @Bebop: Thanks for the heads-up. I read that OSx86 doesn't work with RAID yet. Maybe I'll give OSx86 its own disk later on. This is only going to be my first time trying it, so I may not decide to keep it. I wonder if I'll be able to transfer files to and from the server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmarsh Posted March 14, 2008 Share Posted March 14, 2008 OK I'm about ready to try this. Will I be able to access files from the Windows partition via Linux and vice versa? I read that I can't access the OSX files from either but that's not a problem. I'll report back soon. @Bebop: Thanks for the heads-up. I read that OSx86 doesn't work with RAID yet. Maybe I'll give OSx86 its own disk later on. This is only going to be my first time trying it, so I may not decide to keep it. I wonder if I'll be able to transfer files to and from the server. Linux will mount hfsplus read only if you modify /etc/fstab Use Fuse (Linux) and Macfuse (OSX) and NTFS-3G (both) to mount NTFS r/w in Linux and OSX Google developed the code and hosts downloads for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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