dual boot on a new iBook

[altern]

hi

> Hey folks. I'm pleased to report that I was finally able to get the
> funds together for an iBook to save my sanity while recovering from a
> rather intense spinal fusion surgery in January.
> 
> Before I repartition and reformat this three hour old iBook, I wanted
> to try and get some confirmation (and maybe some experienced advice)
> that I'm doing everything correctly.
> 
> It looks as though I need to blow away the single existing (~30Gb) OSX
> partition and split up the drive. Something like this?
> 
> /dev/hda1 ~820Kb Apple_Bootstrap
> /dev/hda2 ~20Gb HFS+ partition for OSX
> /dev/hda3 ~512Mb SWAP (I only have 256Mb of RAM now, but hope to add 512Mb more)
> /dev/hda4 [remaining space] ext3 for Ubuntu
> 
> It sounds like the Ubuntu *should* find my OSX installation (which
> I'll do before the Ubuntu install) and set up yaboot all by itself.
> Are there any issues I may run in to?
> 
> I can't wait to be a multi-platform Ubuntu user! :o) 

I have dualboot OSX/ubuntu on my G4 laptop. It took me few attemps to 
set the whole thing properly. Now i have OSX, another partition for data 
and another for Ubuntu. i will describe the whole process to get the 
dualboot  I am always thinking about puting this into the wiki but never 
find the moment to do it so here it goes, at least it will be on the 
mailing list archives. Hopefully this will help you knowing in advance 
issues you might bump into.

I am not a linux experienced user at all so i guess there are better 
ways to do this, this explanation below is just what i learned from 
different people in the list that answered my questioins about specific 
issues i had in the process. I am writing from what i remember so there 
might be something a bit different but in generall it should be like this:

- first BACKUP EVERYTHING! the whole hardrive will be erased when 
partitioning, if you have an externl HD shouldnt be a problem.
-Restart the laptop holding C key down (to boot from CD) with the OSX 
installation DVD in the drive. This launches the OSX instalation process
-in the top menu you can select the Disk Utility, with it we will format 
the HD creating the partitions. I guess you could do this from ubuntu or 
linux if you are an experiences linux user. I am not and i guess many 
mac users arent either so this is the mac way to do it probably :)
- with the disk utility partition the hard drive in 2 or 3 partitions. I 
did 3 because i wanted to have a data partition that could be accessed 
from both systems
- the first partition for osx in mac format (hfsplus), but no journaling 
(ubuntu doesnt like this apparently), I gave it 7 gigas and its a bit 
small actually, maybe better to give it 8 or more
- second for the data again mac hfsplus format (i set it originally to 
unix format but this turned out not to be very good option so i had to 
change everything several times. For me hfsplus works great)
- the third i left it as free space (later the ubuntu installer does its 
job very well intalling into the free space)
- apply changes. Its takes a while.....
- after this we will see 2 partitions (osx and data) and there is empty 
space that is not displayed by the disk utility
- now install OSX into the osx partition like any usual osx installation
-when finnished put the Ubuntu cd into the cd drive and restart holding 
C down to boot from cd
-follow the installation howto on the wiki on the ubuntu website, the 
only special moment you need to pay attention related to this dualboot 
is when it comes to partitioning the hardrive
- Here you select to mannually edit partitions and then it shows you the 
current state of the partitions
- there are few partitions and there are several free spaces. Aparently 
the disk utility leaves free space between other partitions, i dont 
uderstand how this works very well. One of those free spaces is the free 
space partition we created with the disk utility (you know which one it 
s because it should be the same size as the one we created at that 
moment, in my case 40G), choose this one.
- apply and then you get few options, select "install in free space" or 
"configure automaticly in free space" (sorry i dont remeber very well 
this step, could anyone confirm this?)
- Done. Follow the rest of the installing steps and in the end you will 
have a dualboot perfectly configured.

If you want to access the ubuntu from osx you can install an extension 
called ext2 or something similar, but i dont recommend it, sometimes if 
OSX crashes the ubuntu partition is not unumounted properly, there are 
some issues about this that are a bnit anoying. I have this extension 
installed, just in case i need some day to access the ubuntu partition, 
but i selected in the extension preferences not aumomount the Ubuntu 
partition (by the way called "Untitled" or "?" on my osx).

To access the Data partition from Ubuntu there are a couple of things to 
be done. First enable hfsplus support on Ubuntu by adding at 
/etc/modules the following two lines:

hfs
hfsplus

then in /etc/fstab to add the line about the new partition add this.

/dev/hda5     /mnt/data                hfsplus        users,noauto    0 
             0

  and finally i created a new folder called data in /mnt

for non experienced users (like me) that might read this email in the 
future I must say here that to do this last steps you need to be root 
user otherwise it wont you edit the /etc/fstab file and nether create 
the data folder at /mnt
THe easiest way to do this was to type in the terminal

sudo gedit

to get the text editor as root, then it will allow you to open the 
configuration files and edit them
and to create the mac folder do

sudo nautilus

and then you get nautilus as root, go to /mnt and create an empty folder 
called data.

Finally just remind that its good idea to calculate the size of the 
partitions before hand properly, if you find after few weeks of using 
the sytem that the osx partition should be bigger then you have to start 
again the whole thing ... I did it 4 times until i got everything ok, 
but now you what I experienced so it wont be that hard ;-)

hope this helps

-- 
enrike