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?