linux newbee important boot question

[jsplicer]

Hello all members,
I just stumbled across this OS and already love it. I built my own computer 2 years ago as a hackintosh. I have no windows OS at all on here. What I do have first I will give you my hardware specs, so you can advise me of my options for an install. Right now I'm running off of the CD.

Memory: GSkill 4 - 1 GB sticks of DDR2 800 MHz PC2 6400
Motherboard: Gigabyte: GA- EP45-UD3P LGA775 REv. 1.6 FE BIOS F12 boot Priority key
CPU: Intel Core2Quad Q8400 Yorkfield 2.66 GHz LGA775 95W
GPU: EVGA GeForce 9500 GT 512 MB memory
PSU: Corsair CX400W 120mm fan
Lite ON 22x DVD Burner IDE
Hard drives: 2 Western Digital BLue 500 GB each SATA3

On 1 of my drives I have Snow Leopard installed with chameleon bootloader from kakewalk. They are dropping security updates for snow leo and for some reason are not allowing me to purchase mountain lion from their store, they say my computer isnt compatible.

That's not my problem it's just to let you know why I intend on switching to another OS I can depend on. I notice if I try to put in another bootloader onto the other drive it will not go on. I am guessing 2 bootloaders will conflict with each other??.. I would prefer to still be able to use the drive with Snow Leopard on it and install Linux Mint onto the other drive. Will the linux bootloader over write the bootloader on the snowleo drive? Will linux bootloader even write to the other drive? Chameleon seems to want to be the boss and not let anyone else in so to speak...

Can this be done? If so I will need some instuctions on what to do. Formatting suggestions and swap space and partitioning of the other drive are greatly appreciated. Like I said I built this computer, managed to get Mac OS to run on basically a PC so I'm not totally dumb. I'm just a little dumb founded onto what to do to get another OS onto my computer without losing my snow leo drive. I have a lot of software there I use. It's just that being that Apple dedcided after only 2 years it is dropping support for it's OS and not providing anymore security updates, it is time for me to make a move away from Apple, possibly in the future for good.

I apologize if this is long winded but I am trying to give you as much info as I can for you to be able to help me. If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask. I follow instructions pretty good, and I'm sure I can become an asset in the future to this community. Which already seems polite and helpful;

[DJONO]

Hi there jsplicer,

Whilst this isn't a reply to your question, i just wanted to say i am interested in your question, as i am looking at building a Mint system and had thought about dual boot, so i will await others replies on here!

DJONO

[jsplicer]

I know if I unhook my working drive and let liniux mint just install a bootloader onto the other drive, then rehook my other drive, nothing will boot. Building a system is the easy part..

[DJONO]

Agreed, building the system is the easy part and that's why i'm on here too!

Interesting you are looking away from Apple, I am trying to move away from Windows

[jsplicer]

Well I'm looking away from Apple because they dropped security updates to Snow Leopard, and they will not sell me the new OS Mountain Lion, they do an online check and claim that my hardware isnt compatible. I gave up trying to get apple to take my money.

I also don't think it is right for a company such as Apple to bilk their customoers into newer computers when the ones they have are perfectly in fine working order. Just so they can sell more hardware every 2 years.

So I have tried everything, except building my own partitions that I do not know how to do in linux. I know my drive of OSX is called SCSI-0 P2 , and my linux mint is SCSI-1 in my BIOS. So I would be guessing that any partitioning would be done to sda/1 for the linux drive, then I would need to delete the boot loader partition from Mac OSX drive completely and let the grub bootloader handle both hard drives. Right now when I want to go back into Mac OS for something I just go into BIOS and set up the drive for the first boot device, and vice versa for linux. That works but as you can imagine is a major pain in the butt to keep going into my BIOS every timeI need to use a different system,

And no matter what the two bootloaders fight with each other, and for some reason if I let OSX's chameleon bootloader run as the first drive it will not boot into linux when chosen. The drive shows up but when I click over to it, it just boots into OSX anyway.

Very frustrating especially now that I have no back up of OSX because I only have the 2 500 gb HD's one has Mac OS and the other Linux. So for now I am tring to set up my linux to my main OS, becuaseI love it, and at least they proveide security updates to the OS.

[catweazel]

I would prefer to still be able to use the drive with Snow Leopard on it and install Linux Mint onto the other drive.

Does your hackintosh allow you to select the boot drive by pressing a particular key or sequence of keys at boot time?

A simple yes or no will do.

Alternatively, does your hackintosh allow you to gain access to the BIOS and set the boot drive manually?

A simple yes or no will do here too.

[jsplicer]

Yes: F12: to number 1

Yes: to number 2 - my BIOS does allow me to select boot priority. Which is how I go about switching from one drive to the other at the moment.

Thanks for helping.

John

[catweazel]

Yes: F12: to number 1

Yes: to number 2 - my BIOS does allow me to select boot priority.

Good. Then all you need do is install GruB to the MBR of the separate disk you install Mint to. During the Mint installation you will have chance to specify where to install the bootloader. Keep an eye out for it. I've missed it a few times, but at my age (84) that's not unexpected. Mint will want to install the boatloader to /dev/sda, which is probably not what you want if you have another OS on there.

By setting GrUB to install on the same drive that Mint is installed to you can use F12 to boot into Mint. This way is best until you get the hang of it all because it keeps Mint's GrUB install away from your other OS so there's less risk of causing inadvertent damage and not being able to boot one or both of your OSen.

[jsplicer]

TehGhodTrole ~ 84 god bless you ..I'm 51 and every bone in my body hurst at times.

Anyway I thought to myself after i posted my answer. He's gonna wanna kill me i forgot to tell him I took out Mac OS from the one drive with a fresh install by unplugging from the motherboard my Snow Leo drive, then plugging it back in after a fresh clean wipe of the one drive. Like you said exactly on install I missed the oportunity to put the grub on a different parititon than where "it" put it. Now i have Linux Mint on one drive and mac os on another, I can boot into either drive by going into BIOS and specifying which drive to boot first, but either choice I make, won't let me choose an OS on the bootloader screen. Both bootloader compete for for top slot I guess.

The wierd thing is , is that if I use linux as my first boot device, it boots into linux fine and even mounts, my Snow leo drive under 'computer' where it lists all your drives. but if I let Mac OS be the first boot device, When the OS loads up before the desktop it gives me a message that it shows an unreadable disk it can't mount. Gives me a choice weather to initialized (wipe it clean), ignore it, or report it. So I choose to ignore it then the finder loads & Mac OS runs but just can not or will not read the linux drive, but linux reads the Mac drive.

I'm wondering if I can get into the Mac drive from linux and erase the bootloader (chameleon) partition from the Mac drive, will grub on the linux drive give me a choice of which OS to run, from the linux drive... then I can turn around and just buy a relatively cheap extra HD and use it for back up storage.

But I'm not going to delete any partitions just yet until I back up both OS'es, cause i got Linux running sweet right now, and don't want to lose any of all the tinkering I did with it.

So I'll let you know how my test turns out, if it works or not, then maybe if anyone else is interested, there was another guy asking on this thread about it too, we'll know for sure that grub will mount and let a Mac drive work from the bootloader screen, as long as it is on a separate drive...