Post on 10-Jul-2015
transcript
Multi-booting on a MacTel
Intro
● Who am I?
● OS experience: Dos, 95, 98, XP, XP64, 7, Ubuntu 10.04/12.04 LTS, OSX 10.6+
● Why multi-boot? Convenient native access to multiple environments for browser or games gem testing
● Triple-boot Mactel is common, but what is the limit?
● Idea: how about 2 from each of the 3 major OS families?
Considerations
● Firmware interfaces: EFI vs BIOS
● Partitioning schemes: GPT vs MBR
● (refer to google for terms above)
● Is Mac EFI-compliant? Yes but...
● Windows (via Bootcamp) requires MBR partitions since Mac is not UEFI-compliant
Tools
● Installation / boot / recovery media
● Drivers (Bootcamp and others)
● Refit (bootloader for easy multiboot on Macs)
● Gdisk (fdisk for GPT disks)
● Time, patience and google-fu
Partition map (on OSX)
Partition map (on Ubuntu)
Partition info (gdisk)
Possible sequence of actions:
1. Create desired partitions through Disk Utility in OSX #1
2. Install refit and gdisk (via homebrew) in OSX #1
3. Install OSX #2 to sda3
4. Map sda4, 5, 8 to the MBR table (via gdisk)
5. Format Linux partitions to ext (so that they will be invisible to Windows installers)
6. Install Windows #1, #2 to sda4, sda8
7. Install Linux #1 to sda5, using sda7 as swap
8. Install Linux #2 to sda6
Just one Gotcha...
● MBR slots taken up by Windows #1, #2 and Linux #1, how to boot Linux #2 ?
● Linux is GPT-aware: use grub2 in Linux #1 (sda5) to boot kernel in Linux #2 (sda6, does not require its own bootloader!)
● Therefore, in theory we can have 6++ systems given enough time and HDD space
Grub 2 menu
Other info
● Beyond the proposed procedure:
– Installing/booting Windows on GPT disks (risky)
– Touching the EFI partition (sda1)● An easier starting point:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MactelSupportTeam/AppleIntelInstallation
Questions?