help, Quad boot; dual SATA hard drive laptop; grub

[slo]

Quad boot; dual SATA hard drive; HP DV9335nr laptop; Ubuntu8.04, Vista, OSx86, and XP; all worked perfectly for 3 hours using Grub in MBR of first drive. Now all I get is a blinking cursor on a black screen. It first went bad after I booted each OS repointing standard links like My Documents, Bookmarks, Address book, etc to the same folders on a FAT32 partition. I hit the OSx86 entry in grub which was title Mac; root hd(1,0); makeactive; chainloader +1. I did NOT install chain0. It had booted like this perfectly before but this time I got a terse 'memory resource error' on a black screen, and it stopped. ctrl-alt-del and this time I get HFS+ partition error. I dig out the huge pile of guides I had already printed to deal with this error. Tried boot from CD -s; fdisk -e /dev/rdisk1; flag 1 (the mac partition); update; write; quit. Still HFS+ partition error. I confirmed in Ubuntu the mac partition type was type af, unhidden, and active. Reboot w/kalyway 10.5.1 disk in drive. On previous install attempts, with a non booting mac install on hard drive and booting from DVD and letting the timer run out, the hard drive mac partition would boot. But now when the timer runs out it leaves me with 1 boot option “hd(31,0) Leopard... Install” and it only boots the install routine from DVD with no HDD light activity except for very briefly at the beginning. So since I was there I erased the mac partition and reinstalled Osx86. Apparently a bad idea since now I just get the blinking cursor. No Grub, no errors, nothing.

 

 

 

 

So my question is how do I fix this without starting completely over. I've put 30+ hours into this so far with various failed attempts. But now I have somewhere on disk 3 fully updated OSes configured exactly the way I like, plus 25gigs of my data that is not backed up. All gone MIA due to a messed up OSx86 install.

 

 

 

 

All the guides I've found are for single hard drive setups. Though most of them recommend a dual hard drive setup as superior, none says how to do it. Here is how I did it. With both hard drives in the machine I ran Dariks Boot and Nuke. A very handy little tool that you can run from floppy, CD, or flash drive. Just type autonuke and it wipes EVERYTHING off of EVERY DRIVE it can find. So be sure you didn't leave a memory card with important stuff connected. Now go away a few hours while it runs. Now remove the second drive from the computer completely. Install Vista in the second partition of the now only drive. Remove that drive from the computer. Install the 2^nd hard drive in the 1^st spot. Now it is the only hard drive. Boot from the OSx86 DVD. Select Disk Utility. Select Partition. Under options, select MBR. On the drop box that says current, select 3 partitions. This makes 3 equal sized partitions which worked fine for me but you can drag the boxes to make each whatever size suits you. I made the first a Mac Journaled file system, labeled Mac, the second a MS DOS (fat) partition labeled XP, and left the third as free space. Install Osx86 to the first partition. Customizations were remove GUI EFI bootloader and select MBR EFI bootloader. NVINJECT video driver. Test and make sure it boots without the DVD in the drive. Now install XP to the second partition of this drive. Remove the drive from its spot and put back in 2^nd position. Reinstall first drive in 1^st position. Now each of the 3 operating systems now on disk were installed from the first position, ignorant of any other OS. None of their bootloaders are trying to boot anything but themselves. The only remaining OS to install is Linux. Handily the first partition of the first drive is still available and the Linux bootloader Grub can boot all of these. During install select manual partition. hd(0,0) becomes the / partition and grub is installed to its MBR. The remaining free space at the end of the second drive becomes 2 logical partitions. A FAT 32 data partition readable by every OS and a small SWAP partition. Take this opportunity to label all disks as you choose and select mount points. Strangely under Ubuntu 8.04 the installer was unable to mount NTFS partitions even though it could under previous versions. I also set the bootable flag of every OS except Linux to NO. Grub detects and automagicly adds working boot entries for Vista and XP. A quick edit to /boot/grub/menu.lst adding the entry for Mac as shown above. Now you have the amazing ability to boot into any of the most popular operating systems with a single choice from a single menu.

 

 

 

 

... until it suddenly and inexplicably goes wrong hours later. Help. I want that exhilarating feeling of accomplishment back.

[timewise]

You could try to reinstall ubuntu and it should remember your grub menu. Also the ubuntu forums have pointers on recovering grub.

 

If you still get the blinking cursor after you recover grub, you will need to run a script on your os x partition.

Unmount all partition on os x disk first from terminal on os x boot disk then run this script below.

 

Good luck.

 

Link to script http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mp;#entry677531

[$tealth]

Dude I also had a blinking cursor thing. What you need to so use these things

 

1. Use only one name like leopard or Kalyway or MACOSX when you format the MAC os X partition.... that will take care of the blinking cursor thing .

 

I have also the HP pavillion laptop 9704 Tx ... and triple boot is working like piece of cake without the any boot loader

 

When you install the MAC OS X make sure you only choose

 

1. Vanellia Kernel

2. Boot loader with EFI MBR

 

DOnt select anything

 

Download MAC OS X leopard 10.5.2 install it also download the latest version and fix of Vanilla kernel . For graphics use the NVinstaller v.41 from Scott dude thing it will take care of each and everything

 

Hope this works for you

 

With Regards,

Stealth

[slo]

I reinstalled grub from the live CD I was using to post from, didn't need to reinstall the whole OS. Works fine, but I still have the HFS+ partition error. No blinking cursor at least. Why does that happen anyway? $tealth, I don't quite understand you. How could I possibly format with more than 1 name? I called it Mac. Using Vanilla kernal on my machine results in keyboard and touchpad not working. I've had no problems with NVNATIT or NVInject. Selecting no video driver works but image is stretched horizontal on my 1440x900 screen. However the built in webcam has fewer glitches. I tried installing 10.5.2 kexts in the past with 10.5.1 as the only OS but it resulted in HFS+ error. Thanks timewise for the boot script. I haven't tried it yet. I like to understand as much as I can about the things I am feeding my only system. What is the difference between what you posted, efi V8, chain0, etc? What do they do? why should I use one over the other. Big question probably I should search more on that one.

[timewise]

The bootefi script installs the darwin bootloader for efi. Sometimes when installing from the kaly or iatkos that part gets screwed up.

I've tried other scripts to fix the efi/startup issues and they are all similar, however the bootefi works better.

Just make sure the other partitions on the same drive are unmounted. If grub is now working try the script on the os x partition.

Are you able to boot into xp?

 

Happy Easter

[slo]

Yes, I am able to boot XP but it took a long time, My Computer pulled out the old flashlight thing searching for drives, found everything but Ubuntu and Mac, said found new hardware need to reboot. I'm not clear on how I am supposed to run the scrips on a partition that wont boot. It will have to wait a little bit. I'm off to Easter Dinner. Thank you very much for your help

[timewise]

Run the script from a thumb drive and boot off of the osx86 dvd. There are instructions inn the zip file.

 

Have a good dinner

[wmarsh]

I reinstalled grub from the live CD I was using to post from, didn't need to reinstall the whole OS. Works fine, but I still have the HFS+ partition error. No blinking cursor at least. Why does that happen anyway? $tealth, I don't quite understand you. How could I possibly format with more than 1 name? I called it Mac. Using Vanilla kernal on my machine results in keyboard and touchpad not working. I've had no problems with NVNATIT or NVInject. Selecting no video driver works but image is stretched horizontal on my 1440x900 screen. However the built in webcam has fewer glitches. I tried installing 10.5.2 kexts in the past with 10.5.1 as the only OS but it resulted in HFS+ error. Thanks timewise for the boot script. I haven't tried it yet. I like to understand as much as I can about the things I am feeding my only system. What is the difference between what you posted, efi V8, chain0, etc? What do they do? why should I use one over the other. Big question probably I should search more on that one.

This is very easy to fix. HFS+ error happens using chainloader with grub.

This tells you how to load pc_efi like a Linux kernel, rather than chainloading like Win.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...st&p=606752

[slo]

Well, I ran the bootefi script. It proceeded without errors but after rebooting I still had the HFS+ partition error. So next I tried wmarsh's method of booting like a Linux kernel. It worked and was quite easy. In fact the efi_v8 file I used came from timewise's .zip. Mac booted nicely but I wasn't prepared for the 2 second timeout to enter the octal code for the drive to boot, so it attempted to boot the first hard drive by default. Which hosed the vista winload.exe. I can repair that with the Vista CD but the same thing will continue to happen each time I miss the 2 second window. That seems like a poor concept to me. Requiring another tiny partition to change the default value sounds silly. There must be a way to edit it to get rid of the delay and code a different boot drive as needed. Anyone good with a hex editor? Another strange side effect, I'm not sure which process caused it but now when I boot Mac I can choose XP, Mac, or DATA from a darwin menu. It only actually boots Mac though. Should I get rid of Darwin entirely? How?

[wmarsh]

Well, I ran the bootefi script. It proceeded without errors but after rebooting I still had the HFS+ partition error. So next I tried wmarsh's method of booting like a Linux kernel. It worked and was quite easy. In fact the efi_v8 file I used came from timewise's .zip. Mac booted nicely but I wasn't prepared for the 2 second timeout to enter the octal code for the drive to boot, so it attempted to boot the first hard drive by default. Which hosed the vista winload.exe. I can repair that with the Vista CD but the same thing will continue to happen each time I miss the 2 second window. That seems like a poor concept to me. Requiring another tiny partition to change the default value sounds silly. There must be a way to edit it to get rid of the delay and code a different boot drive as needed. Anyone good with a hex editor? Another strange side effect, I'm not sure which process caused it but now when I boot Mac I can choose XP, Mac, or DATA from a darwin menu. It only actually boots Mac though. Should I get rid of Darwin entirely? How?

Easiest fix is to make a tiny ext3 partition on your OS X drive

Put boot_v8 there (for consistency in directory /boot)

Modify grub menu.lst to the values for that partition.

 

The reason why this works is boot_v8 looks for an hfs+ partition by default on the drive it is loaded from.

 

If netkas releases his source code or modifies this himself, your solution would be better of course.