Triple Boot MacbookPro (Lion, Win7, Ubuntu)

[tgeulin]

I've created the shared partition at the beginning and it worked for win/lin/osx.
After some days Win7 sees OSX partition instead of the shared one, and I don't know the why.

My hybrid MBR is:
1) Reserved
2) OSX
3) WIN
4) LINUX

Also the hard disk has other 2 partition:
5) Shared partition (NTFS)
6) Linux swap

As said above, the shared is working on linux and osx. I think Windows can see *only* the Hybrid MBR partitions (indeed the reserved one is seen from win7 disk utility).
Still don't know why it worked initially, very confused.

Unfortunately yes, Windows won't recognize the shared partition.

Personally I don't even use one since I have never really found a need to. Instead of a shared partition though, why not just have a "shared" folder in either the root of your windows or osx partition? this way you should have access to it from all partitions. It might work better in your windows partition though because in order for linux to write to your hfs partition you would have to disable journaling.

So if you have this "shared" folder on your windows root, you could make a shortcut and put that on your desktop, in osx make an alias of that folder on your desktop as well, and do the same for linux. Although in linux you may even be able to mount the folder by editing your fstab.

[andrix10]

Do u have to have the CD and USB for it to install?

And is it ok if I installed windows with bootcamp? Or I have to reinstall?

[tgeulin]

Do u have to have the CD and USB for it to install?

And is it ok if I installed windows with bootcamp? Or I have to reinstall?

For Linux you have to have both a live cd and live USB plugged in, and to boot it simply boot from the cd. I used bootcamp only for the drivers. If you partitioned your disk with bootcamp the process will still work. All you'll have to do after installing Linux is recreate your hybrid mbr.

EDIT: when you go to partition your disk for Linux, disk utility might give you an error about loosing your bootcamp. Ignore that and continue anyways. It will get fixed once you recreate your tables.

[jherm]

Thank you so much for this. It was exactly the information I needed. It applies to Fedora as well.

I tried with Fedora 16, 64-bit. I created a custom layout (thought I had already resized my NTFS partition, but I guess not). The install DVD wanted me to make a 2MB 'BIOS Boot' partition, so I did that. I used the rest of the disk to create a 25GB ext4 partition -- no swap, I just upgraded to 8GB of memory and an SSD, I can use a swapfile if I need to.

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640        76581511   36.3 GiB    AF00  Macintosh HD
   3        76581512        77851047   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
   4        77852672       183236607   50.3 GiB    0700  BOOTCAMP
   5       183236608       183240703   2.0 MiB     EF02  
   6       183240704       234440703   24.4 GiB    EF00  ext4

I ended up using partitions 2, 4, and 6. I set none of them to bootable. I used the default partition type codes for each partition and everything works A-OK now! Thanks again.

[ZERO_SHIFT]

Which OS provides the smoothest experience on the mac?

[tgeulin]

Which OS provides the smoothest experience on the mac?

OS X by far provides the smoothest experience on any apple hardware. OS X was made specifically by apple for apple products. Windows on Mac is improving, yet will not match the smoothness of OS X, partly because apple who makes the bootcamp drivers want you to stick primarily with OS X. Linux runs more as less as smoothly as windows, however installing the drivers you need is more difficult and not guaranteed to work on all apple hardware. I would recommend OS X for everyday use, and to use windows or Linux when you need them for specific tasks.

[ias]

Thanks very much. The main novelty is that you can finally install ubuntu! rEFIT has the option to restore the MBR, and I did that. It hung on the Penguin, grayed out, however. I restarted in mac, then restarted with the penguin and it worked. Great.

[bbhome]

Thank you. This post helped me get my Triple Boot MacbookPro5,1 (Lion, Win7, Ubuntu 11.10) working!

One simplification I found was I was able to use the Ubuntu Alternate CD (ubuntu-11.10-alternate-i386.iso) instead of the Ubuntu Live CD. Using the Alternate CD I did not have to use a USB installer as well.

After initially installing ubuntu it would freeze after selecting the kernel from the grub menu. I forced it to boot to a command line using info from this thread. I then was able to see that it froze after printing:

[drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: PRAMIN flush timeout

I found the solution from this thread. Basically I had to add "nomodeset" to the kernel command-line by editing the grub boot line.

This allowed Ubuntu to boot in graphical mode. I then installed "additional drivers" for nvidia and broadcom. Reboot and now Ubuntu 11.10 seems to be working.

I noticed others had issues getting Ubuntu 11.10 running on MacBookPro5,1. I'm guessing the nouveau issue is the problem.

[perrya]

Alright, so I begin knowing that their are many such posts out their such as this. This however, is what worked for me, and so i thought i would share. My experience was mostly trial and error and my solution came from researching other fixes. For this guide I am assuming that you know your way around your mac fairly well. Although if i have posted this in the wrong place, i apologize. But i digress...

My hardware: MacbookPro8,2

The problems

• Lion recovery partition getting in the way
• Windows not booting after installing Ubuntu…. "missing operating system"
• refit not installing properly

The solution:

download and install got fdisk for mac... http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/
download rEFIt... http://refit.sourceforge.net/

MAKE BACKUP: once gdisk is installed go to terminal and type 'sudo disk /dev/disk0'. it will take you to the disk menu. once there enter 'b', and type a file name (it will automatically save in your home folder). once finish quit by entering 'q'

installing refit... many people have difficulty installing refit. the trick is to install it manually (check out refit's documentation). reboot and you should see your new loader.

partition your disk... you need to create two new partitions for windows and linux (disk utility works just fine). format both of them to FAT.

install windows 7.... in the installer format the disk you want windows on as ntfs and finish through installation (note:your computer will reboot several times and each time it does make sure to boot from your new windows partition under refit). Once its all finished go ahead and install your boot camp drivers. your eject key won't work yet so you'll have to eject the setup disk from the control panel.

install ubuntu... for this you are going to need both a live usb and live cd. create live usb: http://www.nightlion.net/guides/2011...line-diskutil/ and for the live cd simply burn the .iso with disk utility. with both the cd and the usb inserted in the computer, reboot and hold down the 'C' key on restart. It may take several minutes but you should get to the installer. In the installer select the advanced installation option. format and use the partition you set aside for linux. set the mount point to '/' and *install the grub boot loader to whatever partition your installing linux on. It will give you a warning about not having a swap partition, but you can ignore this for now and create a swap file inside your ubuntu later. install and reboot back into lion

At the moment you now have a screwed up hybrid mbr table (this is because most likely your lion recovery disk uses one of your precious mbr slots)
in order to fix this we are going to create a new hybrid mbr table. i have attached screenshots of this process.
reopen terminal and again type 'sudo gdisk /dev/disk0'. this time enter 'r'. and then 'p'. this will print your partitions. now you need to create your hmbr so type 'h'. it will now ask you for the partitions you wish to enter. referring to the printed partition list, add your lion, windows and linux partitions. (in my case 2 4 5). next it will ask you to place efi partition first, select 'y'. now it will ask you for the mbr hex code for each partition. the codes you want are 'AF' for lion, '07' for windows, and '83' for linux. don't set any of the bootable flags. once finish enter 'w' to write these changes to the disks. You can also enter 'q' if you want to quit without saving changes. reboot and now you should be able to boot into each of your OSes.



Tip: if for some reason it doesn't work and you want to restore your gpt table, simply go back to gdisk, enter 'r', enter 'l', and then type your backup filename. reboot and you'll no longer have you win or linux partitions but your gpt will gpt table will be back to normal.

i hope this helps any and all of you. its not the prettiest guides and for that i apologize, but if you have any questions i'd be glad to answer them.

Cheers!

EDIT: if you want a 'common' partition, simply create three new partition at the beginning(one for win7, one for ubuntu, one for common).
If you decide that you want a shared partition after you install win7 and ubuntu, simply create a new partition and the recreate your hybrid mbr as described above.

Dual Boot Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 (Late 2009 iMAC Core 2 Duo) & Ubuntu 11.10 (32-bit) Successful !!!
June 1st, 2012

There were a couple things I had to do in addition to this post.

At the moment you now have a screwed up hybrid mbr table (this is because most likely your lion recovery disk uses one of your precious mbr slots)
in order to fix this we are going to create a new hybrid mbr table. i have attached screenshots of this process.
reopen terminal and again type 'sudo gdisk /dev/disk0'. this time enter 'r'. and then 'p'. this will print your partitions. now you need to create your hmbr so type 'h'. it will now ask you for the partitions you wish to enter. referring to the printed partition list, add your lion, windows and linux partitions. (in my case 2 4 5). next it will ask you to place efi partition first, select 'y'. now it will ask you for the mbr hex code for each partition. the codes you want are 'AF' for lion, '07' for windows, and '83' for linux. don't set any of the bootable flags. once finish enter 'w' to write these changes to the disks. You can also enter 'q' if you want to quit without saving changes. reboot and now you should be able to boot into each of your OSes.

The latest version of gdisk has an additional question before you select 'w'. I don't remember the question now but I said 'no' to it. I found gdisk here. (I had to learn how to install using the deb command, I think the command went something like sudo deb --install gdisk*.deb) From the Ubuntu 11.10 Live CD (In "Try Ubuntu" mode) I issued the following;

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

After that I ran gptsync_014 (download the latest version as only 014 or above was capable of fixing this issue) just to see what it had to say. It indicated that it had to perform a resync. I did just that and it worked just fine. (Install command for gptsync is something like sudo deb --install gpts*.deb, please check on how to use deb properly, that's just from recollection).

I think the command was something like

sudo gptsync /dev/sda

more on how to use gptsync here


Once I ran that I shutdown the system as per the instructions of rEFit. When I rebooted however the Ubuntu installation did NOT initially run. When I was about to give up I happened to remember an instruction to run a 'bless' command on the partition. I did this from OS X. (I did not reinstall grub however I did make an attempt and it didn't work, so I took a chance on not doing that) (also, I had to *manually* install rEFit and tested to make sure it was working before I did anything !!! rEFit comes with a readme on how to that)

bless --device /dev/disk0s4 --setBoot --legacy

More on how to setup a dual-boot Snow Leopard / Ubuntu style here!

in my case Ubuntu was installed on /dev/sda4 (yours may be different so the /dev/disk0s4 has to be logically in reference to your setup)

After I 'bless'ed the partition I did a shutdown I think then rebooted and just happened to check one more time for the Linux partition to work. It did!!!!

So....

Special thanks to everyone that helped make this possible. In my particular case Snow Leopard was fine for a development environment but given that my servers are running Ubuntu 11.04 I needed to setup a Ubuntu development environment on my desktop in order to resolve differences.

Thank you very much for taking the time to post the above and all the other pages on the web, you really helped me out on this. Your time and efforts are greatly appreciated !!!

Perry

Ps.
In my case I had a fresh Snow Leopard install on 1/2 of the 1 trig drive. So I could have reinstalled should something go wrong but I didn't have to. I did not have to repartition however I did have to use gparted off the Ubuntu 11.10 install Live CD to add a new partition and swap drive. I then had to manually make sure that this partition would be used during the install. (Also, i recommend using an earlier version of Ubuntu than the very latest as it is sure to have it's kinks worked out and also selecting the 32-bit version turned out to be a really good idea!) Good Luck !!!

-------
Perry Anderson
Software developer
St. John's, Newfoundland
www.unifiedobjects.net

[nmante]

Alright, so I begin knowing that their are many such posts out their such as this. This however, is what worked for me, and so i thought i would share. My experience was mostly trial and error and my solution came from researching other fixes. For this guide I am assuming that you know your way around your mac fairly well. Although if i have posted this in the wrong place, i apologize. But i digress...

My hardware: MacbookPro8,2

The problems

• Lion recovery partition getting in the way
• Windows not booting after installing Ubuntu…. "missing operating system"
• refit not installing properly

The solution:

download and install got fdisk for mac... http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/
download rEFIt... http://refit.sourceforge.net/

MAKE BACKUP: once gdisk is installed go to terminal and type 'sudo disk /dev/disk0'. it will take you to the disk menu. once there enter 'b', and type a file name (it will automatically save in your home folder). once finish quit by entering 'q'

installing refit... many people have difficulty installing refit. the trick is to install it manually (check out refit's documentation). reboot and you should see your new loader.

partition your disk... you need to create two new partitions for windows and linux (disk utility works just fine). format both of them to FAT.

install windows 7.... in the installer format the disk you want windows on as ntfs and finish through installation (note:your computer will reboot several times and each time it does make sure to boot from your new windows partition under refit). Once its all finished go ahead and install your boot camp drivers. your eject key won't work yet so you'll have to eject the setup disk from the control panel.

install ubuntu... for this you are going to need both a live usb and live cd. create live usb: http://www.nightlion.net/guides/2011...line-diskutil/ and for the live cd simply burn the .iso with disk utility. with both the cd and the usb inserted in the computer, reboot and hold down the 'C' key on restart. It may take several minutes but you should get to the installer. In the installer select the advanced installation option. format and use the partition you set aside for linux. set the mount point to '/' and *install the grub boot loader to whatever partition your installing linux on. It will give you a warning about not having a swap partition, but you can ignore this for now and create a swap file inside your ubuntu later. install and reboot back into lion

At the moment you now have a screwed up hybrid mbr table (this is because most likely your lion recovery disk uses one of your precious mbr slots)
in order to fix this we are going to create a new hybrid mbr table. i have attached screenshots of this process.
reopen terminal and again type 'sudo gdisk /dev/disk0'. this time enter 'r'. and then 'p'. this will print your partitions. now you need to create your hmbr so type 'h'. it will now ask you for the partitions you wish to enter. referring to the printed partition list, add your lion, windows and linux partitions. (in my case 2 4 5). next it will ask you to place efi partition first, select 'y'. now it will ask you for the mbr hex code for each partition. the codes you want are 'AF' for lion, '07' for windows, and '83' for linux. don't set any of the bootable flags. once finish enter 'w' to write these changes to the disks. You can also enter 'q' if you want to quit without saving changes. reboot and now you should be able to boot into each of your OSes.



Tip: if for some reason it doesn't work and you want to restore your gpt table, simply go back to gdisk, enter 'r', enter 'l', and then type your backup filename. reboot and you'll no longer have you win or linux partitions but your gpt will gpt table will be back to normal.

i hope this helps any and all of you. its not the prettiest guides and for that i apologize, but if you have any questions i'd be glad to answer them.

Cheers!

EDIT: if you want a 'common' partition, simply create three new partition at the beginning(one for win7, one for ubuntu, one for common).
If you decide that you want a shared partition after you install win7 and ubuntu, simply create a new partition and the recreate your hybrid mbr as described above.

When you are creating this common partition on the Mac, what format should it be in? FAT, Free Space, ExFAT? Also, is there a hex code for the common partition or is it not necessary?