For the past weeks, I have been researching and testing out the possibility of dual-booting Mac OSX Leopard alongside my Ubuntu Gutsy on my laptop. It hasn’t been an easy task. Most of the guides out there are mainly about dual-booting Vista/XP and Mac OSX and are of little help. My laptop has been through many rounds of partitioning, formatting, installing using various OSx86 version before I finally get Mac Leopard to work perfectly, alongside with Ubuntu Gutsy (Yes, you hear me right…it works perfectly, even the airport, sound card and graphics). The OSX86 patched release that I am using is iATKOS
“iATKOS is one of the first FULLY patched Leopard v10.5.1 releases. It is also known to have a preinstalled complied efi which means that you can install legit Apple Updates without downloading any patches or 3rd party software and also you can stop worrying about reboots hanging on the “Loading Darwin” screen.” – InsanelyMac Forum
DISCLAIMER:
- The tutorial works for my laptop configuration. I can’t guarantee that it will work on yours.
- The patched release that I am using is only for Intel system with SSE2/3. If you are using AMD system, this guide is not for you.
- I shall not be responsible for any loss of data, and in the worst case, crash of your PC. Please backup all your data before you proceed with any of the steps below and do it at your own risk.
Assumption
Before we start, it is assumed that you are operating from one hard disk and have Ubuntu Gutsy already installed in the disk.
What you need:
- Ubuntu Gutsy Live CD – Get the .iso at Ubuntu download and burn it into a CD
- iATKOS_v1.0ir2.iso – There are two versions to this: iATKOS_v1.0i and iATKOS_v1.0ir2. Get the one with the ‘r2’ behind. The file size is 2.44gb. Source for it in Google. Burn the image to a DVD.
- pc_efi_v80.tar.bz2 – This is essential for configuring the grub. Download and place it in your Gutsy’s home folder. (Google the term ‘pc_efi_v80.tar.bz2′ and you should be able to find the download site.)
Let get started!
Creating a partition for Mac OSX
1. Back up your data, especially the /boot/grub folder. (Resizing your hard disk can cause data loss. Please back up all data before you proceed)
2. Go to your BIOS (check out your system user manual for the button to access your BIOS during bootup). Change the first boot device to your DVD-ROM Drive.
3. Insert the Ubuntu Live CD into the DVD ROM and reboot the PC.
4. Boot into Ubuntu (Select “Start or Install Ubuntu” in the boot up screen and wait for it to finish loading)
5. Open System->Administration->Partition Editor.
6. Select the partition that is installed with Ubuntu Gutsy. Click Resize/Move.
7. Enter the new file size. (iATKOS needs a minimum of 5GB for installation, so make sure that you have at least 5GB of free space after resizing). Click OK
8. Back to the GParted screen, you should now see a partition of free space that is unallocated. Click on it and select “New”. Allocate all the available space and format as FAT32. (Do not select any other format except FAT32).
9. Once you are done with the configuration, click ‘Apply’ to finalize changes. You should now have a ext3 partition that contains your Gutsy and a FAT32 partition. (You should also see a swap partition. Don’t touch that. It is necessary for Gutsy to run.)
10. Exit GParted and restart the PC.
Installing Mac OSX
11. The PC will eject the Live CD. Remove the Live CD and replace with the iATKOS DVD. Press ENTER to reboot the PC.
12. You should now see a darwin load screen . When it prompted you to install Mac OSX, press ENTER.
13. Wait. After some time, if nothing goes wrong, you should see the Leopard installation screen with a red apple.
14. Press the “–>” on the screen
15. In the next screen, go to Utilities->Disk utility
16. On the left side of the window, you should see the various partitions all greyed out.
17. Select the partition with the FAT32 format. Click on Erase on the right hand side, and under the format options select “MAC OSX Journaled Extended” and click Erase. This will format the FAT32 partition to HFS format. Once the disk is erased and formatted, you can see that the partition is now active (in bold) on the left hand side while rest of the partitions are still greyed out.
18. Exit the Disk utility. This will bring you back to the installation screen. Click Agree and continue.
19. In the next screen, you need to select the partition for installation. It should only show one partition (the one we formatted just now). Select that and click OK.
20. Sit back as the installation goes on for some 20-30 mins based on your RAM. (Note: Don’t click on customize and select unnecessary patches, drivers etc, The plain install will do.)
First Login to Mac OSX
21. Once the installation finishes, restart the PC without removing the installer DVD. You need it to boot into Mac OSX.
22. When the PC restarts, don’t click anything, even when you are prompted to install Mac. After a while, you should see the grey apple screen and then the beautiful MAC OS startup screen with welcome message.
23. Follow through the series of steps to set up your account. Once finished, you should have a functional MAC Leopard in your desktop. Depending on your hardware, the sound card and airport might/might not work. My sound card and airport work right out of the box.
Configure the boot option
Now that your Mac OSX installation is completed, we need to configure the boot so that you don’t have to boot from the installer disk everytime.
24. Remove the DVD from the drive and restart the PC.
25. Boot back to your Ubuntu. You should have no problem in booting back to Gutsy. (If Gutsy can’t boot due to corruption in the grub bootloader, reboot from the Live CD and restore the /boot/grub folder from your backup.)
26. In your Gutsy home folder, extract the pc_efi_v80.tar.bz2
27. In the extracted folder, copy boot_v8 to /boot folder (require administrator access). In terminal,
sudo cp /pc_efi_v80/boot_v8 /boot
28. Open the menu.lst in /boot/grub folder. In terminal,
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
look for hiddenmenu and replace it with #hiddenmenu
29. Next, look for something like
title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,x)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxx ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet
*Depending on your partition configuration, you might see something like (hd0,2) or (hd1,0).
Insert the following line below it:
title Mac OSX Leopard
kernel (hd0,x)/boot/boot_v8
*change the ‘x’ to the number shown as above.
30. Save and exit.
31.Now, reboot the PC.
32. In the boot up screen, there should be options to boot up Ubuntu 7.10 or Mac OSX Leopard. Select Mac OSX Leopard. You should be able to boot into Mac OSX
Access Ubuntu partition from Mac OSX
Mac OSX does not recognise ext3 format by default and it is not able to read/write to your Ubuntu partition. To access Ubuntu partition from Mac OSX, install Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem
Access Mac partition from Ubuntu
Accessing Mac partition from Ubuntu gutsy is easier. Install hfsplus and hfsutils
sudo apt-get install hfsplus hfsutils
Enjoy!
Special thanks to those that make this guide possible:
Thank you for this guide. Everything worked well except the menu.lst. I had to use the following lines:
title blahblah whatever you want
root (hd0,x)
kernel /boot/boot_v8
@Brandon: Some system requires you to define the root path before you define kernel path. Nevertheless, I am glad that it works for you.
Thanks for publishing this guide. I’m currently getting stuck at erasing my disk… After I set up a 40gb FAT32 partition with gParted, I boot up into MacOS Install. After pressing -> I go to Disk Utilities, select the MS-DOS FAT32 volume, set the format to Mac OSX Extended (Journaled) and press erase. The utility goes through preparing to erase and then just returns having done nothing. I have tried adding the “zero out drive” option and it gets to “creating” but freezes in the middle.
Any suggestions?
Ubuntu is installed on my Primary Partition which is 25 Gb and then Extended Partitions start. I used 1st partition of 30 Gb for Mac with HFS+ then another 30 Gb partition of HFS and then 60 Gb of Ext2 partition and then 5Gb of Linux Swap Partition. Is that alright for installation if no then please tell me what do u suggest.
My Installation for Mac is not working firstly I have rebooted the 2nd time after installation and no screen for creating user appears I waited for it for half an hour but it kept on –> to install mac again.
My installation stands on darwin boot load command and going no where what ever option i used
@Jerry: Did you verify your MacOS download via md5?
@Hammad: Why do you need 5GB for your swap partition? If you have only 1GB RAM, then 1GB of swap space should be enough.
“30 Gb for Mac with HFS+ then another 30 Gb partition of HFS” – why go to the extend of creating two equal partitions? The installation takes only 5GB of space. If you want to use one partition for storage, then you don’t need 30GB for the installation partition.
When you install the MacOS, DO NOT select darwin load booter. It will mess up your grub setting. After installation, restart your PC without removing the installer disc.
Damien: I just checked the MD5 sum and it matches.
I looked further into my problem and it is indeed erasing and formatting, however the installer is not able to mount the drive. When loading the installer in verbose mode (-v) I see the last line before the GUI comes up is an error message about not being able to mount the partition, error code 0x0000037 or something like that, I can get it exactly if you think its important. I made the partition and formatted it to FAT32 in gPartEd from Gutsy’s LiveCD.
I have a Dell m1530.
Hi Jerry, et al.
I had the same problem, but solved it by partitioning everything with the newest version of GParted:
0. Back everything up (no really, you need to partition the whole drive.)
1. Burn the current stable GParted Live CD from
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php
2. Reboot with the GParted CD and Delete all the partitions, then format at hfs+. (The newest version of GParted can read and create hfs+.)
3. Resize this to 22 GB or whatever you want your Leopard partition to be.
4. Make the second partition ext2 and install ubuntu there. Once ubuntu is up and running again, you can then start with the instructions from #18.
Thanks to everyone and best of luck. -p
Thanks for all of your help it worked with Ubuntu Linux when i followed only what you have said.
I have gone through many forums and they have asked to run sh scripts in MAC and i was unable to get my USB in Mac so I have to keep those files there that is why i made that partition just for running it.
Its running on my extended partition.
I have downloaded MacOSUpd_10.5.2 and Kalyway kernels update also and tried twice but every time i tried it the system fails to boot then I have to reinstall. Can you help about it.
Thanks you all the help. It Great.
@Hammad: I have no success with Kalway kernal. Netkas way works for me. You might want to check out my other post Upgrading your Mac hackintosh to 10.5.2
@Jerry: If you have the whole hard disk to spare, maybe you can consider formating the whole hard disk into FAT32 format and try the installer again.
hello, Installation seemed to have worked for me. But when I restarted with the disk in the drive and without pressing any keys I saw the gray apple screen but then all of a sudden pops up a message saying that I have to restart the machine in 3 languages with no more explanations on why that or any errors… What is happening?? I also tryied to boot it from grub after configuring it, but it says it cant boot from that kernel /boot/boot_v8.
I forgot to say that my machine is: Pentium 4 HT, 512MB, 80GB ATA Seagate, Motherboard: GigaByte GA-VM800PMC, Nvidia Geforce FX5200.
Will it work on pentium 4 ht??? at least it installed
@Lucas: It should work for Pentium 4, but I am not sure of your motherboard (cause your board is not found in the compatibility list in the osx86 site). There might also be an issue with the Nvidia graphics card. If your motherboard has integrated graphics, you might want to remove your graphics card and reinstall again.
I read somewhere in a forum that iAtkos is only for SSE3 and that kalyway would work for SSE2. What do you think? And why the boot via grub did not work? any ideas? I read that efi is only for core based processors, is there a boot_vX that works for non core based processors?
@Lucas: Oh yah…the iAtkos installer only works with SSE3, though there is a mention of SSE2 version coming out in early 2008. There is still no news till now. You can try the Kalway installer. It will work with SSE2.
Hi Damien! Kalyway worked for me :) I just had to find a kext for my network card, which is a VIA VT6102, I am glad I found it. But I cant figure out how to setup my sound card, it actually works, but is kind of noisy and low quality, also, it tends to come only from the left side… its an integrated via AC97.. Any clues?
“After a while, you should see the grey apple screen and then the beautiful MAC OS startup screen with welcome message.”
how long should I wait?
@Lucas: You may want to check out the Mac forum at http://www.insanelymac.com for more technical help.
@Andreas: Less than 1 minute.
Hello,Thanks for you help.It helped a lot
I was trying to get leopard installed.I have ubantu installed already on my machine with partition left.I started at step 11 and went through 21.I seem to have problem,at reboot I get this error – Error loading kernal kmod list .n~@volumes and bunch of information.
Any ideas what might be happening ?
Thanks for you help in advance….
Hi,
Thanks for the How To, it’s exactly what I needed.
I have a question regarding bootloader flags.
I can only boot into my installation of Leopard using the -x boot flag.
Can I do something like “kernel (hd0,x)/boot/boot_v8 -x”?
Or do I need to add the flags to “/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist”?
If it’s the latter, I think I’m screwed :(
Thanks!
hallo! thanks a lot for this guide, it worked perfectly for me with installation, except for grub preparation. i tryed the way you suggest, and also this:
title xxx
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/boot_v8
but always says: error 17 ‘something with’ kernel booting error, or similar.. but the error was 17.
do you know why? thanks a lot for answering.
exactly, the error is :
error 17: cannot mount selected partition.
i tryed also with (hd0,2), but the same.
what’s the problem?
thanks again.
@davide: Which partition did you install your Ubuntu? The number start counting from 0, so if your Ubuntu is installed in the first partition, then you should put (hd0,0). If your swap is first partition, Ubuntu second partition and Mac third partition, then you should put (hd0,0).
In addition, please check if you have placed boot_v8 file in /boot folder.
thanks for answering, but…???
hd0,0 all the way?
maybe you wanted to write another number? but in both case, I’ve tried 0,1 and 0,2 , since I have ubu on sda1, hackint on sda2 and swap on sda3.
I can mount from ubuntu desktop, hfs+ partition and navigate that, so I saw it has been mounted from sda2. now: if sda1 is 0,0, I suppose sda2 is 0,1.
am I right? or do I have to write down 0,0 all the way?
thanks again.
@davide: yes, zero all the way. The entry is meant to inform the bootloader the location of the boot file. Since you placed the boot_v8 file in hd0 under boot folder, it makes sense to point the path to (hd0,0)/boot/boot_v8. If you put 1 or 2, it won’t be able to detect the boot_v8 file, which also means it can’t boot up your Mac.
ok! sorry for my misunderstanding (and also my bad english…i’m italian..)
it make perfect sense, i’m gonna try that today.
yesterday i tried with cd for booting and it was ok.
my airport doesn’t work, but I have read driveras for my card are still in dev phase, on ‘insanelymac’ site. (intel3945abg)
last problemis with power off. it hangs without doing anything. and I have to operate on power button.
thanks, have a nice day!
I was able to dual boot Fedora 9 and Kalway using the following Grub entry:
title xxx
root (hd0,x)
kernel /boot_v8
Using “/boot/boot_v8” did not work as Fedora seems to read the boot partition location from the “root (hd0,x)”. So absolute path not required in case of Fedora.
Your guide is excellent. Thanks a lot.
PS. I have 10.5.2 Leopard.
I tried the boot_v8 option, but i get a “Unable to mount partition, unknown type”. Anyone had this?
Running Mandriva 2008 here.
@Checkerap: Did you configure the grub correctly? Make sure you configure the (hd0,x) to point to the Linux partition.
Will the steps work the same way for leo4all v3 and 64amd processor ?
leo4all is somehow different from iATkos and I have not tried it before, so I can’t say will it work the same.
I followed this tutorial and everything is working fine, I mean, my grub settings works fine, it finds mac os boot section but when it starts to boot (it shows first boot messages, ask to wait some seconds) and when it starts, it keeps rebooting.
I only works when the iatkos DVD is in the drive. Does anyone knows what is this problem?
read the instructions carefully… i had the same problem…
is the same for hardy heron?
i have ubuntu and windows, grub does all the booting part so i think the process y the same, only you have to add the mac part, right?
@ijaure61: Yes. It works for Hardy heron too.
This totally saved me! Thanks so much for this guide… My only issue was that I was using Hardy Heron, and once I installed OSX, I got an “Error 21” in Grub on reboot. All I had to do was hit “e” to edit the Ubuntu boot line in Grub, and change it to hd0,1 from hd0,3, and then hit “b” to boot from it. Once I was in Ubuntu, I edited the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, and replaced hd0,3 with hd0,1 and I was back in. Then the rest of you instructions worked perfectly. Thanks so much!
Please help me!
I made it to the installation, thank you very much! But after that the computer restarted, it boots from the dvd and i get the message “system config file ‘ com.apple.boot.slist’ not found”
I can still boot into linux, so that’s no problem.
But please help!
Did you verify the md5 checksum of your Mac iso file? Are you using iatkos or others?
I’m using iatkos 5i
I really don’t know that md5 checksum you’re talking anout :’D
@Niels: I also got the “com.apple.Boot.SList” error (installing Leo4Allv3 on an Intel D915GAG motherboard with a SATA HD and two IDE optical drives). I resolved the problem by removing the slave optical, and changing the jumper setting on the master optical drive from “Cable Select” to “Master”. I was then able to boot from the install DVD and install.
Hi,
Thank you for this tuto.
I was wondering what has changed with the actual version of ubuntu (8.10, soon 9.04) and iatkos (5i) ?
I saw here (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=103480) that the grub menu.lst entry has change
Have some people tried with an later version.
Is the procedure the same ? simplified ?
thanks
The method is exactly the same. I am currently running Ubuntu 9.04 with iAtkos OSX 10.5.5, using the exact same method described above.
pc_efi_v80.tar.bz2 has 209567 bytes, if anyone is wondering.
This “how to” worked perfectly for me! unfortunelly my laptop (MSI MS-163A, not wind) wasn’t 100% compatible… both network (some kind of gigabit ethernet) and wifi (seems to be an intel 3945) cards are not working. I’m trying to resolve the issue, but I’m afraid it might not be so simple, or even possible yet. AirPort isn’t even visible, while Ethernet is there, but it just doesn’t work.
I didn’t need to boot macos with my kalyway DVD, which came ready for AMD (although I got intel) and Mac OS X 10.5.2, so I just skiped that step and went directly to the simple configuration of EFI on grub boot.
After that I got into macOS and could see (almost) everything working nice. Bad luck for me, I suppose. :P
I’ll update here if I manage to make it work to say how, while I expect someone might help me with some more info.
May be a useless comment but pc_efi_v80.tar.bz2 size is “209567” bytes and its CRC is “164FAA46”.
And I could safely skip the step “First Login to MacOS” to boot with CD-ROM again for booting in the OS after it was installed, and I just installed the EFI boot on grub directly.
I had a really big issue with my partitions, the instalation decided to just unsassociate one of my partitions (the most important one) and it went 200 gb unalocated. I could fix it with TestDisk on ubuntu and those steps: http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p21.html#Recovering_a_Lost_Partition_With_
I didn’t even needed to get hfs on my ubuntu 8.10, it already worked.
Thanks a lot for this how to!
I have the same problem as Jerry, is there a way to install Mac OS without whipping out the entire harddrive?
in Disk Utility I get:
“Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000”
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed
It seems that it cant mount the drive properly. Is there a way to fix this partition (everything was done according to this tutorial)
Thanks!
It is not necessary to wipe out the entire hard drive, but you need to cater a blank partition formatted in the FAT32 format. The best tool is Gparted. If the one found in the Ubuntu Live CD doesn’t work, you might want to download the standalone Live CD from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Hi,
When I boot on the DVD, after a while I’ve this nice screen :
http://www.liliputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/s10-os-x.jpg
but nothing happen
an idea ?
thanks
I think i do have an idea. I tried the installation on two different computers. The first one had a gray screen like yours, ( actually if you wanna know something more about the errors occurred you should press F8 while the dvd is booting and start the installation verberose mode writing “boot: -v” ) the second one started without problems. I guess its a compatibility problem because the first computer runs on a pentium 4, the second on an intel core2duo. You should check your cpu compatibility with the mac os version you got.
Sorry for my bad english, i’m italian too XD.
Good luck
Trying this with iAtkos v7, but usually getting error 12 in grub… Any help?
i thought you were using a mac machine then installing ubuntu could you pleae write a guide on doing that
Thanks. I owe you one. I spent the past 2 days trying to figure out how to triple boot Linux, OSX, and Windows using Grub. You’re a bonafide hero.
A note reminding people that installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware is a violation of the license agreement would be in order. Also, downloading this Apple install DVD image is stealing; the very least you could do is nudge people to purchase 10.5.