rEFIt with multiple drives

[Fasopus]

I don't know if anybody can help me but I have a question about rEFIt and its behaviour, you'll have to forgive me, I'm sorta new to this whole multiple OS thing. So right now I have rEFIt on my mac pro and when I load it all 4 drives I have installed appear, one drive for OSx and then the windows formated drives I have (Windows 7, Windows Vista, and a storage drive). Right now everything is working fine but I'm looking to reformat my Vista drive and install Ubuntu on it. I didn't setup the computer originally (All I've personally done is bootcamp the windows 7 drive) but I know bootcamp doesn't support linux distros as an option. So I'm wondering, since rEFIt sees the Vista drive already, if I completely wipe the drive and install Ubuntu on it, what happens? I know rEFIt can boot linux paritions, so will it just bring up the options as it does now, except with the linux partition? All the solutions I've found online have been for macbooks and relate to using 1 hard drive with 3 partitions as opposed to 3 drives.

[MacHackers]

I don't know if anybody can help me but I have a question about rEFIt and its behaviour, you'll have to forgive me, I'm sorta new to this whole multiple OS thing. So right now I have rEFIt on my mac pro and when I load it all 4 drives I have installed appear, one drive for OSx and then the windows formated drives I have (Windows 7, Windows Vista, and a storage drive). Right now everything is working fine but I'm looking to reformat my Vista drive and install Ubuntu on it. I didn't setup the computer originally (All I've personally done is bootcamp the windows 7 drive) but I know bootcamp doesn't support linux distros as an option. So I'm wondering, since rEFIt sees the Vista drive already, if I completely wipe the drive and install Ubuntu on it, what happens? I know rEFIt can boot linux paritions, so will it just bring up the options as it does now, except with the linux partition? All the solutions I've found online have been for macbooks and relate to using 1 hard drive with 3 partitions as opposed to 3 drives.

If you are using intel, boot up a Ubuntu Intel disk (hold down the C) key...

When Ubuntu fully boots, Call to the command prompt (Accessories > Terminal).

Type in: sudo apt-get gparted

If it says you need to run dpkg, type this in the terminal.

Type in: (if it says run dpkg) sudo dpkg --configure -a

It should get done. Now, if you had to run dpkg, run the sudo apt-get gparted command again..

Now, navigate to: System> Administration > GParted. Type in your password and hit the enter key. Choose your device from over on the right and find the windows partition... should be formatted one of the FAT formats or NTFS. Choose it and hit the delete button near the top.... MAKE SURE IT IS THE WINDOWS Partition..... Now, click the Check key and wait.... If it pulls up an error message, please reply back with the error. We'll go from there!

Patrick.

[MacHackers]

I don't know if anybody can help me but I have a question about rEFIt and its behaviour, you'll have to forgive me, I'm sorta new to this whole multiple OS thing. So right now I have rEFIt on my mac pro and when I load it all 4 drives I have installed appear, one drive for OSx and then the windows formated drives I have (Windows 7, Windows Vista, and a storage drive). Right now everything is working fine but I'm looking to reformat my Vista drive and install Ubuntu on it. I didn't setup the computer originally (All I've personally done is bootcamp the windows 7 drive) but I know bootcamp doesn't support linux distros as an option. So I'm wondering, since rEFIt sees the Vista drive already, if I completely wipe the drive and install Ubuntu on it, what happens? I know rEFIt can boot linux paritions, so will it just bring up the options as it does now, except with the linux partition? All the solutions I've found online have been for macbooks and relate to using 1 hard drive with 3 partitions as opposed to 3 drives.

Hey, by the way, does rEFIT see the other drives? And are they external? Read my other post for help.....

[Fasopus]

Hey, by the way, does rEFIT see the other drives? And are they external? Read my other post for help.....

Yeah, rEFIt sees all 4 of my drives and gives me the options to boot to all of them, they are all internal. Ill post back tonight after I give the Ubuntu install a try. From reading your above steps I'm assuming that I can't just use Ubuntu's automated installer on the correct drive and have rEFIt work properly with it? Or is that what your steps are telling me to do? I'm not familar with installing Linux distros.

[dubmartian]

the confusion or apprehension may be from the misconception that a bootcamp partition must be made with bootcamp assistant which is incompatable with linux. bootcamp assistant is just a helper. using windows, linux, or macs disk utility to format a partition to any common filesystem (ntfs, ext3, fat..) is considered a bootcamp partition by osx. the helper will be useless if your adding linux to your multiboot scheme. also, it would be obvious immediately but i think gparted is already installed when running a live cd, but not installed after installation. lastly, if moving to a single drive, i recommend doing a dry run with a virtual machine. if keeping systems separated, maybe unplug all drives except one you want to install to. good luck

[Fasopus]

Ok so I installed Ubuntu and had no errors or problems. rEFIt shows everything I want it to on boot, and allows me to boot to OSx and Windows 7, but when I select the boot Linux option, it boots windows, I've tried reinstalling rEFIt and nothing changed. From my reading I'm guessing the problem is where I placed my GRUB bootloader? Ill probably just format the linux drive and try to install it again when I know where to place the bootloader, so does anybody know where I was supposed to put it? The linux drive is currently in bay 4 of my computer.

[dubmartian]

in your case, if ubuntu is the only system on sdd, you install directly to sdd.

example:

sudo apt-get -y install --no-install-recommends grub-pc

sudo grub-install /dev/sdd

sudo update-grub2

in my case, since i have ubuntu outside mbr on sda5 (mbr is sda1 through sda4) and grub needs to be installed within mbr. i install grub on sda3.

i would use the command:

sudo grub-install --force /dev/sda3

[Fasopus]

that's very strange, when I installed Ubuntu through the wizard I selected dev/sdd as the location for the bootloader, guess ill boot the live CD and execute those terminal commands and see what happens.

[Fasopus]

When I try to run the above commands I get the errors

/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error cannot stat `aufs'.

Does anyone know what this means or what I should do?

[dubmartian]

If you installed grub to sdd during install, that should have done it. Sorry, the commands I mentioned I use after booting from a "super grub2 disk" (very handy.) To install grub from a live cd you have to "bind" the live cd system to the installed system. My method for binding seems to be outdated so look around for bind, livecd and grub ..or check the manual page for the "mount" command (it's one of the few man pages I actually understand.)