Multibooting on Macs? 17
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."
Some resources (Score:1)
xlr8yourmac [xlr8yourmac.com]
macslash [macslash.com] or
Linux on PPC FAQ-O-matic [sourceforge.net]
other sites to look at may be:
www.linuxppc.com [linuxppc.com]
www.linuxppc.org [linuxppc.org]
I did a search on Google [google.com] some time ago on the same topic and found some links on OpeneFirmware hacks to give a CLI style bootloader similar to the Lilo, BSD or NT bootloaders. I used keywords like openfirmware, linux, and bootloader, or something. I'll be in a similar situation soon, if I had more time right now I'd do the searching myself and report my results.
Re:two flavours (Score:1)
Re:the boot! (Score:2)
Whoosh-thump!
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What I do (Score:1)
the boot! (Score:2)
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.
triple booting is possible on oldworld (Score:1)
This happens well before the stage that bootx loads, and so you could also have a Linux partition (as I did before I got the OSX beta) and use bootx to choose between OS9 and Linux.
This means (assuming OS 9 is the default system in system disk) to boot OS 9 - nothing special needed. to boot OSX - hold option just after the power key and until the screen lights up. to boot linux - wait for bootx to run (as part of the OS9 boot) and choose linux.
two flavours (Score:2)
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.)
Use ybin (Score:1)
yaboot is able to boot Linux and other Apple OS.
Re:more Open Firmware info, please? (Score:1)
however the catch is what i described only works on NewWorld macs, as they have a decent firmware and no hardware MacOS ROM. what you have is an OldWorld PowerMac, this has broken OpenFirmware and it will never boot linux in its default configuration, but it can be made to boot linux from OF. Note that the bootstrap partition trick won't work on an Oldworld, but its still useful to create one as i describe in case you ever want to move the disk into a newworld box, you will then be able to make it bootable.
OldWorld powermacs use quik instead of yaboot, its an OpenFirmware bootloader. Note that you must use Debian GNU/Linux in this case since all the other distros only include a broken quik that simply does not work. your OpenFirmawre configuration will need some changes, the load-base variable must be changed to either 0x600000 or 0x1000000. the input device should be set to kbd, and the output-device should be set to screen. this allows you to see OF on the console instead of a serial port. you also need to set the boot-device variable to the OF path to your hard disk, ybin includes a utility `ofpath' which can find this out for you (it unlike the rest of ybin works on oldworld macs, debian includes this on the boot floppies as well). you also may have to put something bogus in the boot-file variable just to take up space, sometimes OF/quik crashes if not.
OF variables can be changed from linux using the nvsetenv cmomand, and from within OF using the setenv command. if you have IDE disks you must install a large nvramrc patch otherwise OF will not be able to read the disk.
you can find the full OF configuration for a biege G3 at http://penguinppc.org/~jeramy/nvram.config-all [penguinppc.org] . just the nvramrc patch is at http://penguinppc.org/~jeramy/nvramrc.patch [penguinppc.org] . that can be applied via the command nvsetenv nvramrc `cat nvramrc.patch`. at least i think so, i have not tested this. also set the use-nvramrc? varable to true: nvsetenv 'use-nvramrc?' true
see the debian-powerpc list archives for some other help, and post thier if you need more assistence.
quik can be used to boot macos, see the quik.conf man page for an example of this, its similar to the lilo other= imagename.
one note of warning: DO *NOT* EVER change the load-base or nvramrc variables on a NewWorld (colored hardware) mac, or any mac with OpenFirmware 3.0 or later. if you do the bootrom may be DESTROYED and the motherboard will have to be replaced!
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ybin and yaboot (Score:2)
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 [debian.org] 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 [penguinppc.org]
http://penguinppc.org/usr/ybin/doc/ [penguinppc.org]
(my homepage at alaska.net also has all of these pages)
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more Open Firmware info, please? (Score:1)
I'm still not sure how OF figures into multi-booting. From what I've heard, it seems that OF should be the best way to multi-boot. None of this partial-booting of MacOS, loading an extension that allows you to switch, and then really booting. You mentioned OF in your post, so maybe you know more than the sketchy vagueness I've picked up over the years. The OF bootstrap you mention sounds pretty slick.
I've also heard that OF is not universal on all PowerMacs. How do you know if you can use it or not? I want to put a second drive in my beige G3 to keep different systems on.
Flamebait != Disagree
Re:On my 68040... (Score:1)
My Centris 650 runs System 7.1 just fine. Isn't Linux supposed to be a slim, trim system that's great for resurrecting these older boxes? Anyway, I hope it's not unusably slow, because I was hoping to get Linux or NetBSD running on it. I didn't really expect to be able to run X decently, though. How much RAM on your system?
Flamebait != Disagree
On a disk with an OS X and an OS 9.1 partition (Score:2)
Re:Wrong! (Score:1)
Do you happen to know if the same can be done with FreeBSD for the 68k? My school's been having trouble getting a good bootloader to work on those (old, unreliable, crummy, 603e based) Macs that Apple sold schools in the mid 90's.
Boot loaders (Score:2)
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!
On my 68040... (Score:1)
btw, running Debian m68K Linux on a 25MHz 68040 is REALLY SLOW!
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Yes you can (Score:2)
Dancin Santa