• From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Topic: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

So I want to dual boot #! on my mac so I can use #! and learn linux when I am not at my apartment (currently it is on my old desktop) but my mac is my baby, it is absolutely necessary for school so I am worried about messing her up. If I install it on a partition and I mess up the install will it mess up the mac side? Is it possible to mess up the mac side from the linux side after the install? When I run the installer and it asks me to select a partition will it be easy to identify between the partition that has mac on it and the partition that I want to install #! on? What format should I make the partition the options disk utility gives are Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), MS-DOS (FAT), ExFAT and  Free Space?

Sorry for all the questions. I just want to make sure I get this right before I do this.

  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

So on the installation guide it says

"If you prefer you can then continue to use 'Guided - use largest continuous free space'(see above), this will set up all the Linux partitions that you need, this is recommended if this is your first Linux installation on your PC."

Does that mean it will install linux onto the largest partition?

  • From: In Front of The Black Gates
  • Registered: 2011-04-26
  • Posts: 5,151

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Yes, it will work within the largest partition.. but..

I never like to do anything with any install that I do not have pre configured already and have that info plastered on a sheet in front of me..

I would recommend taking the largest partition you have and breaking it into a 20 gig partition for / (root), a 8 gig partition for a swap drive and the remaining as a /home partition

I would know everything there is to know about them from the LiveCD before I proceed.. Specifically what /dev/sd# they are

this is my methodology because I want complete control of the install

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  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

what if I don't want it to install on the largest partition? I was thinking about making like a 10-20gb partition just for #!

  • From: In Front of The Black Gates
  • Registered: 2011-04-26
  • Posts: 5,151

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Z-Yan wrote:

what if I don't want it to install on the largest partition? I was thinking about making like a 10-20gb partition just for #!

Yes, you would do that with a manual installation and select exactly where you want it.  You do not have to have /home on a separate partition, but it is strongly recommended.

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  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

So I should have a partition for mac, a partition for /home, and then one for #!?

  • From: In Front of The Black Gates
  • Registered: 2011-04-26
  • Posts: 5,151

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Yes.. The partition for the mac should already be there,  and is untouchable unless you need to resize it for space for #! (/ or root) and a /home partition

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  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Thanks for all the advice VastOne!

  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,867

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

AFAIK, installing on Macs isn't quite so easy, as MACs have UEFI and GPT, not your regular BIOS/MBR partitioning. Check out: http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook
http://scottlinux.com/2011/06/14/how-to … and-linux/

Last edited by el_koraco (2012-01-18 07:57:01)

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  • From: Denver, Colorado
  • Registered: 2012-01-18
  • Posts: 6

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

You could run crunchbang in a virtual, it works well in parallels in my expierence, VMware Fusion and Virtual box would be other alternatives, and Virtual box is free. By running in a virtual you'd loose some performance but you'd be running the os in effect as an application which would leave you osx install intact. Which would be safest way of trying it out without potientially messing up the osx install you need for school.

Last edited by xskoulax (2012-01-18 08:02:24)

  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

I have parallels so I will try it on that. What do I do when I instal it when I get to the part about partitions since I am using a virtual machine?

  • Registered: 2009-02-18
  • Posts: 591

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Use default settings (auto partitioning) etc.

  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

that won't get rid of my mac side? I thought that wiped everything and installed #!

Last edited by Cap'n #! (2012-01-18 15:36:33)

  • From: Denver, Colorado
  • Registered: 2012-01-18
  • Posts: 6

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

If you install using Parallels, it creates a file that holds the virtual computer so your 'partitioning' would be splitting that file up instead of your hard drive. I would create a virtual using the 'dynamic' option using that you can set a max size for the file holding the virtual. On my Mac I gave it a max size of 10GB which is plenty of space to install and leave you room for tooling around, right now I believe the file holding the virtual is around 3GB. If i was to install lots of programs or fill the virtual with tons of media it will expand out until it reaches the 10GB limit (I'm not sure what it would do at this point, either report disk out of space or request that you increase the limit I imagine). I hope that helps

Chris

  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

How do I select the dynamic option?

  • From: Denver, Colorado
  • Registered: 2012-01-18
  • Posts: 6

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

good question, let me go to my mac and check real quick

  • From: Denver, Colorado
  • Registered: 2012-01-18
  • Posts: 6

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Ok, when creating a new virtual if will first ask you for the install media either a cd/dvd or iso image. It will then try to auto detect what kind of os you have I ended up selecting it under more linux they have a debian option. It will then ask if you want a typical or custom virtual if you chose custom it will let you pick how many processors and how much ram to assign to the virtual (on a dual core I'd choose 1 processor so that if something were to hang OSX should still run allowing you to force quit Parallels). It will then ask how big a file to create and will have options for making a file that size or setting that as a max file size and letting it expand as needed till it reaches the limit.

Chris

  • From: Louisiana
  • Registered: 2012-01-16
  • Posts: 69

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Thanks xskoulax

  • .not
  • #! Junkie
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2011-09-03
  • Posts: 337

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

No offense, but installing Linux is not the easiest thing to do on a Mac, and if you don't exactly know what you're doing there is not the worst chance to really f*** things up. I would think about it twice, especially if your Mac is an important tool for work or education.

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  • hinto
  • #! Die-hard
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  • From: Cary, NC
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 567

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

el_koraco wrote:

AFAIK, installing on Macs isn't quite so easy, as MACs have UEFI and GPT, not your regular BIOS/MBR partitioning. Check out: http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook
http://scottlinux.com/2011/06/14/how-to … and-linux/

I dual boot on a Mac thanks to refit http://refit.sourceforge.net/
It does what you are talking about.
-H

"When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive."
-Robert A. Heinlein
  • From: 127.0.0.1
  • Registered: 2010-07-02
  • Posts: 1,274

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

Gdisk is a command line utility that seems to work better than gparted in my experience. It's used to create GPT partition tables. You can actually access and write to your mac partition from linux using hfstools and some other stuff. Make the mac side of the disk hfs+ and the linux side ext4. If your linux install stops having access to the hfs+ partition, you just have to boot up OSX and run some tool (the name is eluding me at the moment). You will also need a linux swap partition for virtual memory. If you're new to this and you're worried about losing your existing data, you should use clonezilla or a similar tool to make a binary back up of your macbooks hard disk before you start the procedure.

Last edited by mynis01 (2012-01-19 14:13:48)

  • hinto
  • #! Die-hard
  • Offline
  • From: Cary, NC
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 567

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

^ I booted the mac system disk and partitioned with Mac's tools.  I then pointed the installer to the partitions I wanted Linux to use.
-Hinto

"When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive."
-Robert A. Heinlein
  • From: Denver, Colorado
  • Registered: 2012-01-18
  • Posts: 6

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

.not totally agree, which is why I suggested using a virtual. Obviously not as good as using a real box but vastly superior to screwing up a 'critical' system. Can always back up and repartition the mac for a true dual boot at a later date when the downtime can be afforded.

Refit as mentioned by hinto does work well I had it on my laptop for a while without issue.

Still for this situation a virtual seems the way to go, leaves the 'critical' system working, allows a sandbox to learn Linux in, and has the added benefit that if the Linux gets borked you can pull up a browser or irc for help on the host and work through the issue.

Chris

  • Registered: 2012-02-25
  • Posts: 5

Re: Dual Boot on my Mac Questions

I have done the same process a bunch of times. I would suggest first off, to do a bunch of Virtual Box work first. Also, I might add, if learning Linux is the primary objective, do Slackware! Buy the Slackware Essentials and Disk Set, and spend time in Virtual Box with that. In reality, you can almost make your own Slackware as good as #! if you like, and you will learn a whole lot.

Always keep #! on the VB to keep your goals in mind, and stay tight with the people on the Forums at Crunch Bang, Arch Bang, Arch, FreeBSD.

The best documentation on booting scenarios on a Mac I have found are in the Ubuntu Forums. But even there, its not that cut and dry. I lost my whole OS X about 75 times now. A few times so bad, I had to have a Professional gal "Pray" for my MacBook Pro so I could get OS X back into it.

You can get an older Lenovo R61 series online for about $100 bucks these days. That would be the smartest I can suggest if your OS X is mission critical. With only 4Gigs of RAM, the VB can only be pushed to about 2.65Gigs before things get hot and SLOW on everything else.

Personally, for learning, I find Slackware to be the best Linux University going. #! strikes me as a very slick high tech Professional tool already configured by Pros, and there is not much learning involved as far as learning Linux goes. Slackware teaches you from the ground up, how to slice your drives to configuring, to everything. Its all stuff you MUST learn to learn Linux. FreeBSD is another fine way to go since all the documentation is very well kept. But I fell in love with Slackware as if it were my own personal Linux Professor. Inside Slackware you will find living breathing dinosours and everything imaginable  Linux. Stuff from before time, to bleeding edge and beyond. For about $70 bucks, its the best, in my opinion, way to learn Linux.

The Apple machines are full of stuff that takes a lot of fine tuning by hand to make work right. Most Linux Developers have Windows machines in mind when including ways and means to accomodate things. Mr. Moore at the PC-BSD, and Ubumtu have put a lot of effort to making a Distro to slide into a Mac pretty easy, but there again, you get a turn key Distro that does not teach you much about what you have under the hood.

You have good taste with #!, and that is very commendable. To be able to put together a system like this is something incredible, probably not from this planet!

Try Slackware on VB before you break your Mac is the best I can say for now. As solid as #! is, after looking at what all is inside going faster than light, something has got to break sooner or later. This thing is gnarly!!! Study the rEFIt manual too, you will need rEFIt to multiboot Mac.

Georg

MacBook Pro P8800/4G, #!, Slackware, ArchBang (broken), Arch (preconfig), on Virtual Box