[perroboy]

Have read through many of the guides here. What I've noticed is that when installing Linux, one HAS TO ensure that grub is installed on the same partition as the Linux installation.

I've been trying to install LMDE but the installer won't let me select said partition (sda3), but only the partition where Chameleon resides or not at all. I chose not to install grub, but chameleon (0.8.5.pre) doesn't see it.

Am I missing something?
Should I set up the linux partitions manually rather than letting the LMDE installer do it for me?
Can I use another linux distro to do this manually after the fact?

Any help much appreciated.

pato

[PinnacleDesigns]

The manual partitioning is the only way to have the opportunity to select which partition to install grub and it has to bee on the root/boot partition in order to dual boot.

My suggestion is to partition when doing the SL installation first in disk management by setting it to 3 partitions. The size depends on your disk capactity and the first one to consider is the swap, which I would make about 1.5 times your memory capacity. Then split the other 2 partitions equally or as needed. Format the first partition as Mac OS Extended (journaled), second partition (root) and third partition (swap) as fat32. Install SL on first partition and when installing Mint, select the "Something Else" option to do the partitioning.

Here is a guide on manual partitioning Mint:

Manual disk partitioning guide for Linux Mint 11

If you need help or more of a step-by-step I am here. I recently finished a triple-boot OSX Win7 Linux Mint on a 10v. OSX and Mint would be a breeze compared to that!

[perroboy]

The problem is not that I cannot partition the drives the right way. It's that the installer for the Mint Linux Debian edition does not allow you to customize the installation process, for instance the Grub partition has to be the first volume on a device, which would kill my os x install.



So, what I did was partition the volumes as follows:



then install Mint 11. Grub went to the /boot device.
Then I went back in and removed the /swap, /home and root volumes, as the Debian edition only lets you install to an all-in-one volume.

Now, how do I modify grub to boot the Debian kernel?

[PinnacleDesigns]

The screen shot is very helpful. The image of the installer shows a button under Install GRUB that should be a drop down allowing you to change it from /dev/sdc to /dev/sda4, with /dev/sda4 being the linux partition to boot. If you are wanting to boot from Chameleon, you must install grub to the boot partition and Chameleon needs to be re-installed to see that partition.

I do have one question, did you setup all the linux partitions or allow the setup to decide?

[perroboy]

Yeah, the screenshot was misleading in that the drop down menu reveals that the grub boot loader can only be installed on the root of any directory.



Furthermore, the Mint Debian edition installer let's you specify / /boot and /home, but even then installs into one directory. So, it seems that the installer has reduced functionality for whatever reason.

Getting back to your suggestion, though, are you saying that I can save grub to /sda, the boot from my USB SL, then reinstall NetBootInstaller (the chameleon bootloader) and everything will be good?

[PinnacleDesigns]

I think I see the issue with this. I noticed that the only partition selectable is the one with the boot flag. I also see that there is a partition for windows.

THis bring me to the question of what type of partition table is the drive using? It looks as though your drive is actually a triple boot. Without knowledge of where you began and what you did up to this point it is difficult to help you correct your boot issue.

I would say that if your intention is to triple boot osx/windows/linux and you can afford to start over, that may be your best option. My experience with a triple boot setup is that it only worked for me with specific steps in the right order or it simply will not work. When I had a problem with one of the 3 operating systems, I was not successful in fixing the issue and had to reinstall a couple of them. Of the 3, linux is the trickiest because of how GRUB works.

[perroboy]

I thought the triple-boot install order was 1. os x 2. linux 3. windows
I know it must work because I just installed ubuntu netbook edition with grub on the /boot partition, and I could boot it in chameleon. I'd just prefer to go with mint debian to forego ever having to install the latest linux version and because I like it minty.

I'm currently using an EFI boot partition with chameleon. Any thoughts on my question? Can I install grub to /sda1 and then repartition it to install efi (what the Netbook Installer takes care of?) Guess one would have to know more about the way in which NBI works under the hood to answer that.
To my mind, if grub is gone then what boots the linux kernel. Chameleon can't.