GRUB-PC booting Apples

[pxwpxw]

20091007

Thread for grub-pc (grub2) issues for Apple Mac.

This is meant for general discussion, ways to use grub-pc, which is installed by default now with Karmic beta, but can also be installed back to Intrepid.
The current version is grub1.97 latest is beta4.

General Grub2 basics -

Grub 2 (1.97~beta3-1ubuntu8 as of Karmic Beta)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2

GRUB 2 Introduction
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1285897

Following post is about one application, booting from an ubuntu live desktop iso on HD.

[pxwpxw]

grub2 grub-pc /boot/grub/grub.cfg menuentry for loop mount iso
(The grub loopback command was also available in grub0.97, might work, but would use the old menu.lst format)


### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file is an example on how to add custom entries

menuentry "slax iso desktop" {
search --set -f /slax-6.1.2.iso
loopback iso /slax-6.1.2.iso
linux (iso)/boot/vmlinuz from=/slax-6.1.2.iso ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw changes=/slax/
initrd (iso)/boot/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso " {
search --set -f /ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso
loopback loop /ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso vga=773 persistent
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.gz
}
# other options for linux - acpi=off noapm noapic nolapic
menuentry "ubuntu-9.10-beta-desktop-amd64.iso " {
search --set -f /ubuntu-9.10-beta-desktop-amd64.iso
loopback loop /ubuntu-9.10-beta-desktop-amd64.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-9.10-beta-desktop-amd64.iso vga=773 persistent
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###

[pxwpxw]

Booting from live desktop iso's on HD, grub-pc was installed to dev/sda MBR from a Debian501 amd64 (lenny) on dev/sda4, which had grub1.96 early version.

Three live desktop iso's on (ext3) /dev/sda4 root /
slax slax-6.1.2.iso (2.6.28 )
jaunty ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso ( 2.6.28 )
karmic ubuntu-9.10-beta-desktop-amd64.iso ( 2.6.31-11-generic #36-Ubuntu )

The ubuntu casper-rw peristence partition (ext3) on /dev/sda7

As seen by parted -

root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# parted /dev/sda p free
Model: ATA WDC WD3200AAJS-4 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
17.4kB 20.5kB 3072B Free Space
1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot
2 210MB 44.2GB 44.0GB hfs+ Untitled
44.2GB 44.3GB 134MB Free Space
3 44.3GB 54.9GB 10.6GB hfs+ Apple_HFS_Untitled_2
54.9GB 55.0GB 134MB Free Space
4 55.0GB 95.0GB 40.0GB ext3 root4
5 95.0GB 98.1GB 3083MB linux-swap(new)
6 98.1GB 138GB 40.0GB ext3 root2
138GB 138GB 848kB Free Space
7 138GB 140GB 2097MB ext3
140GB 320GB 180GB Free Space


---------------------------------------



Persistence

For a live usb stick, a 1GB casper-rw can be put on the same partition as the iso

# dd if=/dev/zero of=casper-rw bs=1M count=1K
# mkfs.ext3 -F casper-rw


But for the HD iso loop, a casper-rw persistent file on the same partition as the iso and a Debian installation did not seem to work. Perhaps it would if the iso was on a clean partition. So gparted was used to create a new 2GB ext3 partition on HD named casper-rw. That works for karmic and jaunty, in fact they can both use it but with some messy results initially when changing over, probably disastrous later on.

There is no problem with the default X driver when booted by grub-pc (bios boot), so no need to make scripts to change xorg driver.