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Can yaboot support three OS choices for Linuxes and Mac OS X?

If you've been reading my entries, you already know that I've been working on installing different Linuxes on my Mac OS X PowerBook system, with success. All works well until you actually have more than one Linux installed on the system, creating a tri-boot, rather than dual-boot Apple computer. The problem is that, by default, each Linux installs its own version of yaboot which only knows about Mac OS X or itself. So I needed to figure out how to significantly modify the yaboot configuration file to support both Ubuntu and Yellow Dog Linux simultaneously.

Dave's Answer:

If you haven't read my other article on customizing yaboot, your best bet is actually to start here: Tweak yaboot so Mac OS X is my default OS, not Ubuntu or Yellow Dog Linux.

Having installed Yellow Dog, I suddenly couldn�t see Ubuntu any more. If I hadn�t previously written down the partition number that I used to install Ubuntu, I would have suspected that it had just vanished.

A quick query to Ethan Benson, developer of yaboot, and I had my answer: I needed to move the individual Linux partition specifier (it says partition=2) into the YDL section and add another section for Ubuntu that specified the partition of the Ubuntu installation (partition=9).

I ended up with two image blocks:

image=/boot/vmlinux-2.6.8-1.ydl.7
	partition=2
	label=yellowdog
	read-only
	initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.8-1.ydl.7.img
	root=/dev/hda2
	append=�rhgb quiet�

image=/boot/vmlinux
	partition=9
	root=/dev/hda9
	label=ubuntu
	read-only
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img

When the Mac boots, I still see the standard yaboot options of linux, macosx or cdrom, but selecting linux now gives me the option of typing in either �yellowdog� or �ubuntu� to specify which I wanted to actually start.

Works like a charm!

Learn more about Ubuntu Linux for Apple Macs, or learn more about Yellow Dog Linux. Both are very cool alternatives...

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Categorized: Mac OS X Help , Unix and Linux Help (Article 3767)
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Comments

Hi Dave,
Thanks for being out there! I have a PowerBook and a G4 tower that I've struggled to configure with a dual boot OS X/Ubuntu and finally got on G4. (I had to get free space designated, installl Kubuntu first, then OS X. It finally worked. Figuring out the partition stuff for someone beginning from square one is a tough go. Anyway, with that drive set up, Kubuntu started by default unless I chose "X" from the options screen right at startup. But when I used the OS X preference menu to select OS X as the startup default, I lost the options screen (Yaboot?) so I can't choose Linux now—and it's not recognized in the OS X Startup menu. So, how can I get the startup choice screen back?
Thanks
Jim

Posted by: Jim at October 7, 2007 9:59 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!