[TopRowGuywithFeet]

Hey all,

Just wanted to recount the experience I had trying to get my DELLINTOSH/WINDELL/DELLUNTU to triple boot.

First off thanks to everyone who had a part in either creating the bootloaders, DellEFI, and this site. What would a newbie like me do without you?!

So, second let me just tell everyone out there that is considering getting the CD/DVD Drive that Dell offers with the Mini 9, which is made by I/O Magic, to forget about it. That thing is absolute garbage. 2/3rds of the time it took to get my triple boot system up and running could have been cut if I hadn't been trying to use that thing. I kept trying and trying to install OS's with it, or create media, and it would say it worked only to find it didn't. All the time I was thinking it was my inexperience, lack of knowledge. I ended up having to go out and buy a $100 HP drive. Once I had that sucker, it was cake.

You guys gave out some really great instructions. I did, however, deviate a bit and still came out with a triple booting Mini 9. I recommend to anyone wanting to do any sort of "hacking" of their Mini 9 to make sure they have a compatible optical drive. It is so much easier than creating liveUSBs and the like. In fact, I was able to use the Windows restore disk supplied by Dell. Previous posts said it had to be retail.

Anyway, on a 64GB Runcore, 59.7GB in actuality, I took the following steps, which I found worked best only through trial and error:

1) Use gparted to partition drive
- first - 16MB for DellEFI - unformatted
- second - 30.75GB for OS X - HFS+
- third - 20.75GB for Windows XP - NTFS
- left the remainder free so that Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix could do its own thing (Note: you may have to partition the remainder as EXT2 or 3, so that Windows doesn't get confused when you install it, but once Windows is installed, I deleted the 4th partition)
2) Using DellMiniBoot132 on USB, OS X retail disc on USB, and DellEFI
- transferred an existing OS X install from my 32GB Runcore to the second partition; obviously, I did not have to change any files on MAC OS Installer, since I wasn't "installing" it, just transferring the image (Note: I used a friend's Mac to make a USB version of the retail disc previously and installed it to the 32GB Runcore using the DellMiniBoot132 method described elsewhere in a FAQ by mechdrew)
- used DellMiniBoot132 on USB to boot into OS X and then ran DellEFI
- tested it, worked
3) Using nothing the HP Optical drive and DELL Windows Restore disc
- Installed Windows XP from restore disc
- tested it, windows worked, but couldn't boot into OS X; had to boot using DellMiniBoot132 and then chose 2nd partition; I could have installed the DellEFI again, but didn't bother because I was going to install Ubuntu next and thought I'd see what grub was capable of
4) Using Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix on a LiveUSB
- installed Ubuntu; it had qualms with installing to the drive, so I had to tell it to "go back" and install to the "most continuous free space;" therefore, it took up the rest of the SSD
- tested it, Ubuntu worked, windows was in the Grub menu list, and it worked as well, but OS X was not in the list
- did some research about editing Grub and found it to be very easy; added OS X to the menu.lst within Ubuntu and made some other changes
5) played with my new triple booting Dell Mini 9

The one problem I had was with the Ubuntu partition not showing up when I am logged on to the other OS's. So I did some research and thought that it might be the mount point being not what it should/could be. I found the package pysdm and researched how to use it. Apparently I didn't research that enough because I changed some settings in it and now Ubuntu will not boot the GUI. LOL. I'm going to figure out how to get the changes undone, but if I'm unable, well I guess I can just start all over! I wouldn't mind, I had that much fun!

Now I'm looking for friends who want to do the same!

Thanks again!!

[TopRowGuywithFeet]

So, here's a question. how is it that I can unallocate the first partition and windows stops working. Then, if I go ahead and reallocate the partition, windows starts working again. Wouldn't unallocating essentially erase the partition? Isn't that where grub is? or whatever bootloader comes with the last OS installed? I'm still learning all this stuff.

[mechdrew]

I'm testing out a new method with these instructions using the new DellEFIBootMaker, it has Chameleon on it so it is like Boot Camp on a real Mac. Anyone else tried this already? I had to start over myself because I partitioned things wrong. :x

[RobD]

Originally Posted by mechdrew

I'm testing out a new method with these instructions using the new DellEFIBootMaker, it has Chameleon on it so it is like Boot Camp on a real Mac.

I can't wait for the new instructions, I've got my Mini9 just sitting here waiting for a triple-boot setup!

[mechdrew]

Argh! I'm so frustrated with this. Maybe it's because I'm trying to install Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, but I can't get it to continue installing for the life of me. Actually, there was this one time where it actually completed the whole thing, but when I tried to install Mac OS then that just deleted everything! Stupid Disk Utility. I thought that this wouldn't be this hard... sheesh...

I also tried Windows 7, both with a MBR and GUID partitions, but the only time it worked was when it was given the whole drive, and it took up about 10 GB! The only reason why I've tried these two is I want the ability to use my USB TV tunes with Windows Media Center.

Anyway, back to XP. Anyone have any idea why my Windows halts after the first install step (meaning installing files in the DOS setup and then a restart) and tells me that the boot configuration is all wrong? I've done everything I can think of, GParted, Disk Utility, even the formatting options in the Windows Installer. And for clarification, I've only done MBR for XP.

[mechdrew]

I finally gave up on XP and went straight to 7. It's supposed to be able to install on GUID partitions, but no dice. In the end I created a slimmed down version of 7 using info from the Windows 7 forum here, and then imaged back my Mac OS X once it was all done. Now I'm running a dual boot Mini! (minus the benefits of GUID...)

As a note of help, you can eliminate some of the steps here by using the new DellEFIBootMaker. It negates the need for installing another bootloader on Windows, you just boot up using Chameleon now!

[jimogie]

I have it working after spending an embarrassing amount of time on this.

For a relative newbie, the tough part is picking out which pieces of the 'wooohooo' and 'how to install' posts that the triple boot instructions link to. For example, you have to ignore the instructions at one of those places to mount 'installer.dmg' from the Boot123 iso -- that file no longer is part of the iso and the steps involving fdisk, etc., are no longer needed -- the DellEFI application takes care of it.

Some other hiccups I'll point out (all of which are documented in various threads, but I managed to miss them the first time through):

- The first time you boot your OS X install from the Boot123 cd, make sure you enter the '-f' flag.

- After that first boot, BEFORE running DellEFI, check that you have OS X 10.5.6. If not, use System Update to update your system and reboot; then run DellEFI.

- After running DellEFI and rebooting, DO NOT USE THE '-f' flag anymore. It will cause strange errors, like your wireless card no longer being detected. If this happens, do a cold reboot from the Boot123 cd and skip the -f flag.

- At this point, I got an error that it seems very few people get. When I tried rebooting without the Boot123 cd, I saw this message:

• System config file '/com.apple.boot.S/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist' not found

The problem was that my OS X partition was no longer flagged as 'boot' (or active), which I found out by searching this site. The solution was dead simple: boot from GPARTD and re-flag that partition as 'boot'. Now everything works.

At some point if I have a free few hours to kill, I may try the whole thing over and document only the necessary and sufficient steps -- for you folks with lots of experience, it may be easy to flip from one thread to another and find the crucial steps, but I found that, um, challenging. So it would be nice to have a set of newbie instructions with all steps in one place...

Thank you so much to everyone who's documented how to get triple/dual/os x booting!

[ravenmsb]

Originally Posted by jimogie

I have it working after spending an embarrassing amount of time on this.

For a relative newbie, the tough part is picking out which pieces of the 'wooohooo' and 'how to install' posts that the triple boot instructions link to. For example, you have to ignore the instructions at one of those places to mount 'installer.dmg' from the Boot123 iso -- that file no longer is part of the iso and the steps involving fdisk, etc., are no longer needed -- the DellEFI application takes care of it.

Some other hiccups I'll point out (all of which are documented in various threads, but I managed to miss them the first time through):

- The first time you boot your OS X install from the Boot123 cd, make sure you enter the '-f' flag.

- After that first boot, BEFORE running DellEFI, check that you have OS X 10.5.6. If not, use System Update to update your system and reboot; then run DellEFI.

- After running DellEFI and rebooting, DO NOT USE THE '-f' flag anymore. It will cause strange errors, like your wireless card no longer being detected. If this happens, do a cold reboot from the Boot123 cd and skip the -f flag.

- At this point, I got an error that it seems very few people get. When I tried rebooting without the Boot123 cd, I saw this message:

• System config file '/com.apple.boot.S/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist' not found

The problem was that my OS X partition was no longer flagged as 'boot' (or active), which I found out by searching this site. The solution was dead simple: boot from GPARTD and re-flag that partition as 'boot'. Now everything works.

At some point if I have a free few hours to kill, I may try the whole thing over and document only the necessary and sufficient steps -- for you folks with lots of experience, it may be easy to flip from one thread to another and find the crucial steps, but I found that, um, challenging. So it would be nice to have a set of newbie instructions with all steps in one place...

Thank you so much to everyone who's documented how to get triple/dual/os x booting!

Thats why I wrote exactly the steps I took one after another on page 2 of this thread but I guess it was diffrent and people didn't like it idk

[youbecha]

I have been using my triple boot for a couple of weeks now. I pretty much used the instructions on the first post, but I did find them confusing because they didn't adequately explain that you needed two usb sticks, one 8gig or so, the other with more than 8gig formatted size (an 8gig thumbdrive is only about 7.5gig formatted)...so essentially a 16gig stick and an 8gig stick.

Format the 16gig stick GUID (so the apple install will work) install OSX on it...
...then use THAT install to create an install disk on the 8gig flash drive...you will edit a file on this one...so that this install disk will install to a MBR formatted HD.

Once I understood that part it was easy.

I actually had installed XP...used a Gparted boot disk, moved the XP partition to '3', put in the partitions listed, and created an 8gig partition at '4' for my ubuntu install.

I did an rsync to copy the Ubuntu install that came with the mini9 to the partition I created using the usb cable to Runcore (great idea).

The Runcore BTW works much better than the drive that came with the dell...and all OSs boot completely in about 30 seconds.

I'll be honest, I think OSX works so good, that it is now my primary OS on it (not a mac user).

I will soon be doing another one...but it will only be a dual boot with XP...and that is only for emergencies.

Thanks for all the good info...this website is almost perfect.

[tagejensen]

Thank you Pete
For your instruction and joining the different instructions together.
They worked very well indeed even for a newcomer like me.
I had some experience installing each OS in turn but I had never tried dual or triple boot.
I followed the instructions to the letter except I used DellEFI1.2a5 with chameleon to finish the installation.
I now have a fully working system with chameleon.
The only problems I have is 1: MS in card reader 2:Freezes on reboot after sleep
But that seems to be the same for everybody else.
I have been testing for some weeks now and fine tuned the system so I am ready to clone the disc to use as a clean install should anything go bad later.
I have looked everywhere but cant find a way simple way to clone the disc
Is there any clone software that can handle OSX,XP,LINUX all in one go

TageJensen

MiniDell 9 , 64G Runcore , 2G ram , OSX 10.5.6 , XP , UBUNTU 9.04