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MAC Mini Triple BOOT! HOWTO Mac OSx + LiNUX Mepis + xp
Using Mepis OSX Utility
After fight LOTS of times with light instructions, I got it so want to make this method that was the ONLY way that I found for a newby to got the TRIPLE boot issue working.
There are lots of page that list all the GENERAL requirements for doing this set-up, so I am not to refer to all, BUT at the end of this post I POST the links of the pages THAT REALLY helps me to find the way and that have good general info and some good details.
First, after lots of experiments that almost make me mad...
I found how to use the Mepis OSX Utility and the MAC INSTALL Disk Utility to got the damn partitions set well, and in a way that COULD BE DONE BY A COMMON PERSON!!!!...
So I try to make it short and will list as steps:
1) Start wit a Mac mini or mactel with an original MAC SYSTEM FULL DISK INSTALL with MAC OSX disks proper for Your Mac. May be very possible to use an healthy existing OSX system or even a already partitioned OSX system, but for me was too complex the tricks to fix the things in order to get the partitions well made.
2)Boot in OSX and the insert Mepis CD and open it, in OSX directory run Mepis OSX utility, then readd all the info, then the partition utility WILL make the partition that will be used for XP, so give it the size that You could may use for it (After made the 3 partitions You almost have NO WAY to resize them son SIZE EVERYONE for FUTURE USE, for XP think about 10GB as good minimun). Start the utility and put a name for the XP disk, then set size to 10GB, and start (The screen of the Mepis Utility may APPEARS FREEZE, but it is working, so, not panic, it will take around 7 minutes for 10GB, so take it in account if You set a bigger size).
3) After finish the Mepis utility, You MUST turn off the Mac, and then ON in order that the Mac recognises FULLY PROPERLY the new partition.
4) Now, the Mac is turned On after made the above steps, run AGAIN the Mepis OSX Utility, and NOW IT WILL CREATE the partition that You will use for LiNUX! :-) So, Now set it properly and again a good size for Mepis could be 10GB partition, so set size, name and start, again mepis utility screen may see freeze, but after some minutes it would return to normal, and You NOW have the Mac disk with a set of GOOD PARTITIONS ( THIS is a shitty mess if You try to following some instructions in other methods, and never got the things works fine... until use the Mepis utility)
5) Now, THIS IS THE CRAPPY PART THAT FOUND NOBODY EXPLAINS WELL!... Boot with Your MAC OSX Install Disks (You may need to maintain pressed C key in order to force boot from CD), and after loading, look in the menus of the above the Mac DISK UTILITY, and it is a Graphic user utility, so, then when open and you set the HD insatlled on Your Mac, and check partitions You will look the Mac OSX original partition with the name that it have and TWO new partitions, named disk0s3 and disk0s4 (if Your Mac have more than one disk may name similar). So, using Mac Graphic DISK UTILITY, (Dont Touch Patition table Option, You MUST LEAVE the defaul option that is the 1st one,about GPT table for mactel), choose disk0s3 (that will be used for Linux), and type the name that could be linux or what you want, and choose UNIX filesystem in the filesystem options, and the choose erase (use the simple option, dont need to write special passes or things like that, use the basic option), the start, and it will run for about 5-7 minutes. then choose the partition disk0s4, choose name for XP partition, and choose FAT in filesystem options, and also do a quick erase. YOU NEED TO USE THE Mac OSX graphic utility in order to get FULLY RECOGNISED by the Mac all the 3 partitions, because, Mac use 2 diferent types of partition tables and if not use this way You may not got it working later (YEP; Some smart Guys could handle lots of CLI commands to do this stuff very tricky, BUT I AM NOT A GURU, and for sure I LOVE LINUX BUT I HATE CLI commands, because I am a common mortal user that came from Old Amiga OS and then win$shit when Amiga world dies... :-) ).
6) Then load OSX and check that OSX Graphic Disk Util "see" the new partitions, and that they are NOT in GREY letters its names, because if that happen, it means that You dont erase well in previous step, so, OSX dont recognises well the partitions and DONT MOUNT THEM. If the partitions appears fine inside OSX, you may try to create a file or blanck text file in every one to check that it are RW enable and fully recognized. then erase this test files.
7) You at this time, must have ready to instal the package ReFit (as is explained in the links that I talk at the beginning), the in terminal utility, inside OSX, type:
cd /efi/refit
./enable.sh
then turn of & on again and check if refit appears at the start of the mac if not check the links for additional help.
Load xp cd and start Mac holding C key in order to got CD load, start installation of XP as normal, when You get teh partition format options You should check that instalation said that the 4th partition is recognised by C: letter and choose that for install xp. Then be sure that installationa give You the menu that allows You to choose a QUICK FORMAT in FAT filesystem ( DONT CHOOSE ANY NTFS Option, IT WILL NOT BOOT in a Mac!!!), if You not luck at this, then check the references that I post in below, teh following instructions was taked from one of the links:" While attempting to manually partition my disk for tripple boot (J-HFS+, J-HFS+, FAT-32), I ran into a situation where the windows installer would see the target partition as type "FAT-32" instead of "unknown", and so would not offer to reformat it prior to installation. Consequently, the windows partition was not bootable, and I received "Disk error" any time I tried to boot from it.
One solution is to nuke the first bit of the windows partition with zeros, destroying the filesystem metadata. This causes the Windows installer to see the partition as type "unknown", and it will then dutifuly offer to reformat it for you. This can be accomplished with the following, where rdisk0s3 is your windows partition (typically this would be either rdisk0s3 or rdisk0s4)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdisk0s4 bs=1m count=100
Another solution that worked for me is to specify an invalid filesystem type for the windows partition when using diskutil resizeVolume. This allocates the space, but the MBR doesn't flag it as FAT-32, so the Windows installer again offers to reformat it at install time."
Then continues the installation as normal and if You installed refit and make well the steps before, the system will reboot and with refit menu buttons You could set that the Mac continues booting from xp partition, to continue and finish install of xp. Then, when You turn on You would see at the Mac initial boot, a menu with the apple logo and window$ logo.
9) Now, the most waited, LiNUX install, so put Mepis CD, and turn on with C key press... load Mepis, Run install as normal, BUT before start partitioning, do CTRL+ALT+F2 and in text terminal screen logon as ROOT with password ROOT and then do this:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/sda.mbr bs=512 count=1
This command saves Your MBR to the /tmp directory, so You could save a really vital data because it may help you to restore MBR if accidentally use some parted or similar program and damage Your MBR. then do CTRL+ALT+F7 and You will be back to Graphic mode, so start Konqueror and if You have a USB dongle-key memory or similar go with konqueror to /tmp directory and look for sda.mbr file and save to the usb memory.
Then continue the install, You could/may/will have to allow mepis to format the partition for linux, because is very easy that mepis DONT RECOGNIZES the unix format made in step 5, but dont worry, You could format as ext3 without trouble. Also be sure that DONT MAKE OR ALLOW any partition for swap, you dont need it by now and You could no have practical means to run a fifth partition for swap, since the mac work fine only with a maximun of FOUR PARTITIONS ONLY!.
10) Following the install in the normal setting and THIS IS THE OTHER CRAPPY THING THAT NOBODY SAYS AND OTHER OLD INFOS POINT YOU IN THE W R O N G direcction!... The GRUB build inside MEPIS is TOTALLY MAC READY AND COMPATIBLE!!!! so simple choose to instal GRUB on Root partition and NOT ON MBR!!!.... after doing this finish the install and reboot! if no mistakes and everything goes well...
You NOW SEE THE 3 Icons at Mac Reboot!
(If not, reread and look for other help from guys that may know what is to do,and no like me! :-)
Good luck and Best Regards!)
Other links:
Serach Ubuntu Forums with Mac Mini, Macbook, Mactel, etc.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=187465&highlight=MacBook+triple+boot+success
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Talk:Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp
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