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Multibooting on Macs?
Macler asks: "I'm new to this whole multiple OS on one machine thing.. I have been told that you can choose between 2 OS at boot up but is it possible to setup my system so that I can run Mac OS9.1, OSX and Linux on 1 harddisk and select which to run at bootup..I don't mind having to wipe the drive so any help will be gratefully recieved."
Boot to the head.
Whoosh-thump!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Kick it once-- that's single booting.
Kick it twice, that's dual booting.
Anything more and you're multi-booting.
Chances are it'll work as poorly for a mac as it does for a PC, but it just might make you feel a bit better.
It's only software!
If you have a recent mac, then holding (IIRC) shift (or option?) at boot will give a selection menu of "folders" that have blessed (=bootable) directories.
If your Mac is older than a few months, but still new-world, you should use yaboot to do it.
(If it's an old-world mac, your're out-of-luck as far as booting OSX and MacOS easily, but Linux should still be bootable with BootX.)
if its a NewWorld box (colored case, not beige) you should use ybin and yaboot. ybin will create a nice text based boot menu of OS choices including GNU/Linux (of course), MacOS, MacOSX, Darwin, along with some general purpose menus, CDROM, Network, and OpenFirmware. all of this is fully configurable.
c s.shtml
this explains how to properly partition the disk, you need to create placeholder partitions with MacOS's (or MacOSX's) partitioners at the start of the disk, and then delete them with the linux mac-fdisk (aka pdisk). as with x86 you need to create linux (and the bootstrap) partitions with linux and not macos.
/boot/boot.b ybin is akin to /sbin/lilo.
the most important step though is creating a bootblock. Macs don't have an MBR like x86 machines do, so what you need to do is create the first partition on the disk as a 800K type Apple_Bootstrap partition, the special type is recognized by OpenFirmware, but MacOS will not mount it. this is very important since MacOS will see that the parittion does not have real MacOS and will render it unbootable. making it the first partition lets you simply reset OpenFirmware to its factory default configuration and (if the bootstrap was setup by ybin) it will be booted by OpenFirmware *automatically*.
see my partitioning guide at: http://penguinppc.org/usr/ybin/doc/mac-fdisk-basi
as for distributions, only Debian GNU/Linux includes ybin and yaboot right on the boot floppies (you have to run them manually still, but they are there) ydl 1.2* does not have ybin (2.0 if its ever released might) no version of LinuxPPC includes it, and SuSE does not either (AFAIK).
the option key trick mentioned here only works on iBooks, and AGP G4s, not older NewWorld macs such as pre slot loading iMacs and G3s. its also rather slow as it probes all the partitions first. The ybin boot menu is fast (ybin configured bootstrap partitions show up with the option key chooser, as an icon with a penguin on it at that) and the most configurable thing you will find. ybin itself is a lilo like installer for yaboot, yaboot is akin to lilo's
http://penguinppc.org/usr/ybin
http://penguinppc.org/usr/ybin/doc/
(my homepage at alaska.net also has all of these pages)
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Ethan
you can boot up with the option key held down. Firmware will then show icons for each of the boot volumes. Select the volume, and hit the right arrow, and it will boot from that volume. May work with Linux as well.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The problem with most of the solutions that have been described, is that they're MacOS specific, meaning that they won't load Linux (I'm not sure about OS X), because Linux doesn't have a blessed System Folder.
What you need is a program called a bootloader. There are a good number of them for the Mac, and since you can find one for your needs on Google, I won't post any links here, because I don't have enough personal experience to recommend one.
What a bootloader will do, is pop up a menu on startup asking you which partition or OS you want to boot into. LILO (for X86) does this on a command line, but Mac boot loaders tend to be graphical.
I believe that Yellow Dog Linux comes with a bootloader that you can use to boot into Linux and MacOS, but I'm not sure about how it deals with OS X. Presumably, you could use it for any OS, since it doesn't actually interface with the OS, but rather simply points the bootstrap process at which partition to use.
One warning - bootloaders can be difficult to get rid of. When you install them, make sure that you know how to change things back, or you could be stuck with your changes. Also, if you don't know what you're doing, you could render your machine unbootable. So read up on it before installing. Good luck!
See Yellow Dog Linux's site for more info.
Dancin Santa