The Steussy Ranch

It took a couple of days, but it’s up and running again. For those of a certain age, we remember the articles in Byte magazine by Jerry Pournelle. He tried to get all manner of technologies to work, with endless disappointments. His articles were funny in an “I’ve been there” sort of way.

First of all, Snow Leopard appears to be too new to have many folk interested in installing a new Triple Boot (OS X, Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP) on it. An upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard preserves a rEFIt installed Triple Boot, so it appears very few people have tried it. My situation (a new hard disk supplied by Apple during a repair) necessitated rebuilding.

None of the websites with instructions appeared to work. The one that came closest was located here. However, when installing Windows XP there was a curious fault. It would install just fine up to the first reboot. After that, the screen would display “Setup complete in 39 minutes”, the disks would run at intervals and nothing would happen for 2 to 3 hours until I physically rebooted the system.

I confirmed that this was a software error rather than a hardware fault by running the standard Bootcamp installation, which went OK. Unfortunately, the standard installation breaks down if you add a partition for Linux, so back to the drawing board.

I happen to have a disk image of my previously working Windows XP installation. I followed instructions on this website. They didn’t quite work for me. Here was my successful process:

• Starting items: Macbook Pro (version 2.1, Santa Rosa chipset), Windows XP Professional with SP2 DVD, rEFIt downloaded and installed on Macbook, previously installed Windows XP disc image on an external hard drive, Ubuntu startup ISO downloaded and burned on a disc.

1. Boot into OS X and Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility to create partitions for Linux (14GB as HFS+) and Windows (18GB as FAT32).
2. Reboot into rEFIt (previously installed). Run Partition Manager (icon at bottom of rEFIt main screen) to automatically sync MBR and GUID.
3. Insert and boot from the Windows XP Pro SP2 disc.
4. Install to the FAT32 partition until the first reboot (after partition selection and copying files to disk).
5. Reboot brings you into rEFIt. From there boot into OS X
6. Restore backup disc image to the FAT32 partition, overwriting all files currently there using Disk Utility (30 minutes)
7. Reboot into the restored Windows partition (failed)
8. Reboot into the Windows XP Pro SP2 CD and run Recovery Console
9. Run BOOTCFG /REBUILD and BOOTCFG /ADD to readjust the boot.ini file to the current setup.
10. Reboot into the Windows partition.
11. It works!

The Linux installation is easy in comparison. Just remember, no swap disk and to install GRUB into the Linux partition.

Since I had a stable triple boot with Leopard for over a year, I assume my difficulties stem from upgrading to Snow Leopard. My original system for installing the Leopard Triple Boot fails with Snow Leopard, so I’ve searched for a new one. The only one on the ‘net is here. I’m suspicious, since 1) they list Snow Leopard second, as if it is simply the same as Leopard and might well be untested, and 2) my attempts to make their system work have all ended in failure.

I’m certainly learning a lot about MBR and GUID partition schemes, but none of it is getting me where I need to be. More updates when I’m less frustrated.

No posts today. And maybe even tomorrow. Upgrading my Mac to Snow Leopard killed my triple boot, which allowed me to convert the computer to Windows XP or Linux. And I really need both of those operating systems to get things done here. I’m working through various installation techniques from discussion boards on the web – each iteration takes 2 to 4 hours before I know if it was successful or not. I’m on the third iteration now.

The joys of being cutting edge.

Southern California Edison is doing some work on the lines here, and we will experience a power outage on Tuesday for at least part of the day. Internet traffic will be re-routed to another server, but the blog will probably be down for most of the day. Sorry about that; business sites and email get my first attention.

So, I got my Macbook Pro laptop back from Apple earlier this week. They replaced everything (logic board, hard drive, battery). It’s a new machine. And a lot of stuff was broken. Time Machine (backups), Triple Boot (for Linux and Windows), other things. Not only has it taken me a long time to fix things, not all of them came back together.

My Triple Boot worked through an Open Source program called rEFIt. rEFIt no longer works reliably. I strongly suspect that Apple has sabotaged it. Here’s why.

While my computer was in the shop, I was using my wife’s laptop. It has a dual boot for Apple and Windows. I’d loaded the beta copy of Windows 7 into her system three or four months before, but now I found myself using it every day. It’s very, very nice. More responsive than the Mac OS, able to read Mac formatted hard drives, networking OK, etc. The only things missing are my iLife programs and my purchased suite of graphic programs for the Mac. This is really a competitive system against Apple’s OS X, at least from an end-user standpoint.

Yes, I prefer the Unix basis of OS X. I think it’s more secure, safer, fiddle-able, etc. But, dang, as a user Windows 7 is sweet.

Not only that, but Ubuntu 9.04 is clearly an effective operating system. It’s still not ready for a real enduser, but it’s very, very close.

Apple now has competition. And it’s serious. And I think they’re purposely making it harder for us to use multiple operating systems on their platforms.

My Macbook Pro (Santa Rosa) died on Monday. It’s in the shop for a week. Until then, probably slow posting here. Working on my wife’s Macbook Pro (Penryn) for essential work, but will be happy to have my own laptop back soon.