Does Anyone Know How to Quad Boot Leopard, Vista, Xp and Ubuntu on a 13" Macbook??

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Multi-OS

The simple solution would be to install VMWare Fusion and run all those OS's under that. That way it is pretty much straightforward.

You should probably upgrade to a larger HD first.

(I am running Ubuntu Linux and XP Pro on a Mac Mini via Fusion).


John F
 
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13 inch white macbook, 2GB of RAM, 2GHZ Intel Core Two Duo, Intel GMA Graphics, 80GB hard drive
I still would prefer to natively boot them.
 
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Try Virtualbox it is FREE and will allow you to install all those OS the same as parallels or VM Fusion.
 

whj


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Thanks I agree, why does it matter that I have a reason, I like vista and XP and I want to learn how to use ubuntu. I did have a look at parallels but I would prefer to boot each one individually and besides parallels is expensive. I didnt think bootcamp could do anymore than one partition, I only found one guide that explained how to install vista, xp, leopard and ubuntu on a mac but i tried doing it about 7 times over 2 days and had no luck, if anyone wants to have a play with it or thinks they can help me go through it easier, please do. The address is: http://www.fosk.it/quad-booting-a-macbook.html.
Thanks Matt

The fosk.it guy just copied the ideas from http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=2793

and as billbear updates his post on onmac forum the fosk.it guy updates his HOWTO in his words. I don't think the guy knows the ins and outs coz his version always contains errors.

I have played the process several times and it worked always. Only that the latest ubuntu hardy has a bug that erases the MBR, so you'd better install ubuntu prior to windows.
 

whj


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You CANNOT quad-boot Mac with all of them residing on your drive. You can have only 4 primary partitions on Mac out of which first is EFI partition so now you can have max 3 partitions. So the only option to quad boot is to run one of them out of external drive. Booting windows out of external drive is pain so I would suggest boot linux out of external drive. Thats lot easier.

This is not true. The 4 primary patitions limit is only a windows limit. You can have up to 128 partitions in GPT table but windows can only see the first 4 coz windows only understands MBR partition table. MacOS and linux understands GPT and you can place them beyond the first 4. grub still doesn't understand GPT, so it needs to be on among the first 4 partitions--that is, you can only install it on (hd0) or (hd0,0) or (hd0,1) or (hd0,2) or (hd0,3). But (hd0,0) is the EFI partition and should not be touched.
So,
(hd0,0) -- EFI
(hd0,1) -- Vista
(hd0,2) -- grub on it, and a FAT partition shared with all OSes
(hd0,3) -- XP
then MacOS
then Ubuntu / , /home , swap ...
 
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This is not true. The 4 primary patitions limit is only a windows limit. You can have up to 128 partitions in GPT table but windows can only see the first 4 coz windows only understands MBR partition table. MacOS and linux understands GPT and you can place them beyond the first 4. grub still doesn't understand GPT, so it needs to be on among the first 4 partitions--that is, you can only install it on (hd0) or (hd0,0) or (hd0,1) or (hd0,2) or (hd0,3). But (hd0,0) is the EFI partition and should not be touched.
So,
(hd0,0) -- EFI
(hd0,1) -- Vista
(hd0,2) -- grub on it, and a FAT partition shared with all OSes
(hd0,3) -- XP
then MacOS
then Ubuntu / , /home , swap ...


So would you be able to step me through it if I have any trouble and would it be better to use my ubuntu 7 disc instead of my ubuntu 8 disc?

Thanks Matt
 
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I know this is an old thred, but you can read my post here: http://kevinthetechguy.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/how-to-quadboot-your-macbook/

if you have problems I have read tons of guides and found them to be too old to work correctly, or too hard to follow. If you need help you can pm me. By the way for the guy getting to xp and getting stuck it can only be a couple of errors. Either he didn't install it as the fourth partiton. Which it has to be installed on because of the hyprid partition table, or he didn't flag it active before the install so it can't continue. Sometimes also on the systems I have done this on the hard drives can get corrupted and need re formatting. But never in a case of a freshly formatted one like this. Usually just in the case of using it for a couple years and installing via bootcamp. See you guys later.
 

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