Thank You Wired – Triple Boot Mac

Every now and then there is a nugget of information that catches your eye and it’s as simple and as easy as falling off a log. Wired.com posted this and it’s made my day. Straight forward and clear instructions on triple booting your Mac. It’s nerdy but who cares? I need this functionality as my VMWare is crashing like a toddler old at the wheel. They do say this at the bottom but seeing as Ubuntu is free and nearly everyone has a copy of XP it makes sense.

Triple Boot Mac OS, XP, and Linux on a Mac

From Wired How-To Wiki

Can’t decide which operating system you want to run on your MacBook? The newest Macs allow you to boot up from Windows or Mac OS X using the included Boot Camp

disk-partitioning software. However, with some steps and a little elbow grease, you can add Linux to the mix and get the best of all worlds.

Warning! Be sure to back up all your important data before starting.

Contents 8 In the Future

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What You’ll Need

For this project, you’ll need:

• An Intel-based Mac (These instructions are written for MacBook and MacBook Pro, but they should work for all Intel Macs)
• Either Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” or 10.6 “Snow Leopard”
• Installation CDs or DVDs with various operating systems and the tools included with them
• The two additional (free and open source) apps listed below
• This process will take 3-4 hours if you do everything right the first time.

We recommend getting the following software

• Windows XP Professional (with service pack 2). If you don’t have XP with SP2, you can slipstream it in with nLite. Unfortunately nLite only works on Windows, so you can’t create your CD on the Mac. Therefore, you should make the CD using a machine that can run Windows. If you don’t have access to this, you can install a demo of Parallels to run Windows for a few days to create the CD. Instructions for slipstreaming XP with sp2 can be found at GeekGirls.

 

• rEFIt software. Get it from the Sourceforge download page.
  • click on rEFIt 0.12 (6.5M Mac disk image).
  • Save rEFIt image to desktop.
  • Double-click rEFIt-0.12.dmg to mount the image to the desktop.
  • Double-click rEFIt.mpkg and follow installation instructions.
  • Open Terminal (Applications\Utilities\Terminal) and enter the following code:
    sudo /efi/refit/enable-always.sh
  • Hit RETURN
  • Quit Terminal

 

• GParted software. Get it from the Sourceforge download page.
  • Click on gparted-live-0.4.1-2.iso
  • Save image to desktop.
  • Burn image to CD using Disk Utility (Applications\Utilities\Disk Utility)
  • Insert blank CD
  • Click Burn
  • Select .iso file and burn
  • Label CD when completed

 

• Ubuntu Linux operating system (free)
  • Get the latest version from the Ubuntu website
  • Save image to desktop.
  • Burn image to CD.

Partition Hard Drive with Terminal

Next you’re going to split your hard-drive into three separate partitions using the Terminal command window:

1. Open Terminal (Applications\Utilities\Terminal)
2. Type: diskutil list
3. Hit RETURN and a list of your partitions should come up. You should have one partition (disk0s2) right now if you already have Mac OS X installed. This list will also tell you how much hard drive space you have to partition. On my computer I had 232.5GB of space (The slightly smaller number, i.e. not the one with the * in front, is the one you want to use. It should be at the bottom of the list).
4. The syntax for your code looks like this:
   1. diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 80G JHFS+ Linux 72.5G JHFS+ XP 80G
   2. (This is the setup I used, 80GB for Mac, 72.5GB for Linux, and 80GB for XP. Note that when choosing your partition sizes, make sure they add up to the amount of space you have at your disposal.)
   3. Do not worry about the filesystems right now, as we will format them individually later
5. The partitioning should take a few minutes. It will show a “Verifying 0% ……………………” line for a while, but it’s not frozen. Wait a few minutes and it will complete partitioning.
6. Quit out of Terminal

Fix Windows Partition with GParted

Because the Windows XP setup won’t recognize the JHFS+ partition, you have to use GParted to change the filesystem to Unformatted:

1. Insert your GParted CD and reboot.
2. When computer chimes, hold down C key to boot from CD
3. Follow instructions to load GParted.
4. If GParted hasn’t started when desktop loads, double-click GParted icon.
5. Make sure the drive at the top right-hand corner is set at /dev/sda0 or /dev/sda
6. Select the Windows or XP partition and delete it.
7. Select the new unallocated space and create a new partition.
8. Make sure the type is set as Unformatted. Leave 128MiB to be free.
9. Follow the instructions to finish making the partitions.
10. When you’re done, shut down the computer by holding down the power button until it powers off.
11. Reboot the computer.
12. As the computer starts up, hold down the mouse button to eject the GParted CD.
13. When you get to the rEFIt menu, select the Start Partitioning Tool and hit RETURN
14. If rEFIt asks you if you want to edit the MBR, type ‘y’.
15. Exit out of the Partitioning Tool.

Install Windows XP Pro

Time to install Windows, the third best operating system soon to be on your computer.

1. Shutdown the computer from the rEFIt menu.
2. Insert the Windows CD on reboot and hold ‘C’ after the computer chimes to boot from the CD.
3. Follow the Windows XP on-screen instructions.
4. When you get to the partitioning menu, select the bottom partition (partition4). It should be labeled C:/. You may also be able to identify the partition by its name and size.
5. Follow the Windows XP installation instructions.
6. After Windows XP installs, your computer will take you back to rEFIt.
7. Open up Windows XP and finish the setup. If your computer crashes, shut down and retry. If it still crashes, hold option on the reboot and select Windows to boot from there.
8. Once Windows is set up, shut down your computer.

Install Ubuntu

Time to install your Linux operating system.

1. Insert your Ubuntu 8.1 CD as you reboot. Hold ‘C’ to boot from CD.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions to install.
3. When asked to choose a partition, choose partition 3.
4. Make sure to format the partition in EXT3.
5. Finish the Ubuntu installation.

Configure Drivers

You must install MacBook drivers on Windows XP and Ubuntu in order for all your hardware to function properly.

1. Load Windows XP.
2. Insert your Mac OS X DVD and follow the on-screen instructions to install drivers.
3. Reboot.
4. Load Linux.
5. Go to the Ubuntu support site, and follow instructions for configuring the version of Ubuntu you’ve installed to work properly with your MacBook.
6. Note: In the sound section, after adding ‘options snd_hda_intel model=mbp3′ to /etc/modules (i.e. before rebooting), you must also:
   1. Open Terminal, type: gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
   2. Hit RETURN
   3. Add ‘options snd_hda_intel model=mbp3′ (no quotes) to the end.
   4. In Terminal, type: sudo depmod -a
   5. Hit RETURN

Congratulations! You now have Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Ubuntu installed on your MacBook!

In the Future

While this is a more complete way of setting up multiple operating systems on your computer, companies like VMWare, Parallels, and Sun are making it even easier. Even competitors Apple and Microsoft have offered their own streamline solutions to running multiple operating systems on the same platform.

All of these companies offer virtualization software that allows you to operate most operating systems from within your existing operating system. In other words, you don’t have to reboot to load that Windows or Linux program you’ve been wanting to use.

Sugar OS and OLPC

OLPC

The project that kicked off a long time back (I think 2001-2?) was heralded as a large and complex operation that would encompass many governments, organisations and operatives. Since the many newspaper, blog and newsfeed stories that have chronicled the progress of the project it seems as though the OLPC has taken a slightly different track in it’s approach and direction. This sidestep is part and parcel due to Walter Bender leading a team with the OS rather than the hardware.

Sugar, the name for the OS that OLPC uses is a flavour of the Fedora Linux family and is also available through Debian, Ubuntu and, as I’m about to chat about, the live USB version. Although, I’m cheating a little, as I’ve actually got it through VirtualBox as as a separate installer. The idea is that I would like to use it in class as a live USB for the smaller children in another computing environment that windows for various reasons that i’ll come to ina moment. The live USB version, I would assume, is very similar in use as the main with some elements missing – but for this post I’m sure this won’t matter as the crux of the issue is classroom use.

So far, this OS (the Strawberry Sugar on a stick but not on a stick!) is working very well for me. i really like the interface, the simplicity and the ready robustness of the feel I played around with it and tried to think like a 5 or 6 year old would when they are presented with something new. The whole wow factor followed by the frantic clicking and then followed by the stop and look. I did this without precautiuon and ened up opening the turtle application. Now, my students (age from 4 to 11) are pretty familiar with windows and they see a changing desktop appearance week in week out but not the operation. The circular dial would, I feel, entice them to click on the picture. I mean, after all I set up icon shortcuts for them to “click-click” on daily and this seems kid centric to me. The circle of apps surrounds them too which is what I like also. So far, so good.

We have been using the Windows version of Gcompris for a while now as it has games and quizzes that are colourful and easy to follow and differentiate for  the more computer savvy 5 year old. Also, Gcompris is open source (resticted for Windows users) but the full set up available for your school should you run EdUbuntu or similar (or if your site manager allows you to run VirtualBox) coupled with Sebran and you have quite a setup for the bebinner ICT class for children (or OAPs getting used to a computer and keyboard).

What is really good about Sugar though is the potential of the site and the community that runs it. The model of the Mozilla extensions that has made web browsing sans IE has been used here too. The Activities menu is growing all the time and there are some reasonable addons here too. As any self respecting ICT teacher will know music is a brilliant factor in the attention grabbing eyes-on-the-screen activity where and hour zips by without a word said (headphones permitting). Tamtam Jam activities provide this with an easy download.

I am sure that I will hit stumbling blocks along the way and the fact I have to try and persuade my Principal to give me money for 25 2Gb USB drives so that I can operate this for my classroom is one of them. What I would then like to do is test and post up the pitfalls and the successes – especially the neighbourhood tool and see the reaction.