Best way to dual boot Leo & Snow Leo with Chameleon RC3?

thorazine74 · #1 09-10-2009, 12:20 PM

I'm testing Snow Leo like mostly everybody else here. I'm currently booting SL from a USB stick, but I would prefer to just use the same chameleon loader I'm using for Leopard, how do you think is the best way to achieve this?
I understand Chameleon RC3 has support for loading a different set of extensions for 10.5 and 10.6 automatically but I tested this and never worked for me, probably because I did it wrong, most likely because that feature (like many of the great chameleon's features) is not documented or explained anywhere.
Did anyone manage to do that succesfully?
Alternatively I could always resort to putting 10.5 extensions in Chameleon's extra and 10.6 extensions in SnowLeo's S/L/E, but how do I go about chameleon's boot.plist? Can Chameleon RC3 read a different boot.plist apart from the one in extra?

My setup for now is like this:

Disk1 (MBR):
BootIt (FAT32)
Vista(NTFS)
Leopard+Chameleon(HFS)
Data(NTFS)
Fedora 11(EXT)

Disk2 (GPT)
TimeMachine+Data (HFS)
SnowLeo (HFS)

mormegil · #2 09-10-2009, 02:12 PM

I don't really see the point in those 10.5/10.6 folders. You can just put your kexts in /E/E folder on each partition. You need to have multiple Extra folders anyway to put your Boot.plist, smbios.plist etc.

Then just have this in your boot plists: rd=diskXsY boot-uuid=XXX

DocShadow · #3 09-10-2009, 05:36 PM

Agree with moremegil ... keep it simple.

I had Leo and SL on different drives. Each drive had the /Extra folder which contained the boot and smbios plists for that install.

I originally had Chame loaded on the Leo drive. At the Chame sceen, I would press a key and select the install (Leo or SL) that I wanted to bootup.

thorazine74 · #4 09-11-2009, 08:19 AM

I thought the \Extra folder is always read from the \boot partition. So can I have something like this:

Leopard partition:
\boot
\Extra\boot.plist for 10.5
\Extra\Extensions for 10.5

SnowLeo partition:
\Extra\boot.plist for 10.6
\Extra\Extensions for 10.6

mormegil · #5 09-11-2009, 08:43 AM

Yep.. and don't forget to put the boot flags in your SL boot.plist or else your kexts will be loaded from Leo's /E/E folder instead.

rd=diskXsY in your Leo's boot.plist is optional since it's the boot partition and kexts will be loaded from there by default.

thorazine74 · #6 09-11-2009, 12:08 PM

Well it didnt work so I guess I did something wrong, kexts got loaded from both partitions...

This is my disk layout:

Code:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *232.9 Gi   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         200.0 Mi   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Data HFS+ 232g          211.6 Gi   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Snow Leopard            20.9 Gi    disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *931.5 Gi   disk1
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 BOOT_FAT32              8.0 Gi     disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Leopard HFS+ 100g       100.0 Gi   disk1s2
   3:               Windows_NTFS Vista NTFS 100g         100.0 Gi   disk1s3
   4:               Windows_NTFS Data NTFS 650g          650.0 Gi   disk1s5
   5:                      Linux F11 EXT3 74g           73.5 Gi    disk1s6
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *232.9 Gi   disk2
   1:               Windows_NTFS External NTFS 232g      232.9 Gi   disk2s1

Chameleon's RC3 boot is in disk1s2.
I put this in disk0s3\Extra\com.apple.Boot.plist

Code:

<string>arch=i386 rd=disk0s3 boot-uuid=A39F7118-2705-3C16-9B74-77D5FDF72EFD "Graphics Mode"="1680x1050x32"</string>

disk1s2 Boot.plist is just:

Code:

<string>"Graphics Mode"="1680x1050x32"</string>

disk0s3 is Snow, boot-uuid refers to Snow partition.
When booting from disk1s2 (Leo) choosing Snow in Chameleon's menu, Chameleon reads kexts from both Leo & SnowLeo Extra folders, and completely ignores Boot.plist from SnowLeo (i.e. boots in 64 bits).
What do I do wrong?
I dont understand what rd= and boot-uuid= refers to, is it the same or different things?

thorazine74 · #7 09-11-2009, 12:08 PM

Well it didnt work so I guess I did something wrong, kexts got loaded from both partitions...

This is my disk layout:

Code:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *232.9 Gi   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         200.0 Mi   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Data HFS+ 232g          211.6 Gi   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Snow Leopard            20.9 Gi    disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *931.5 Gi   disk1
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 BOOT_FAT32              8.0 Gi     disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Leopard HFS+ 100g       100.0 Gi   disk1s2
   3:               Windows_NTFS Vista NTFS 100g         100.0 Gi   disk1s3
   4:               Windows_NTFS Data NTFS 650g          650.0 Gi   disk1s5
   5:                      Linux F11 EXT3 74g           73.5 Gi    disk1s6
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *232.9 Gi   disk2
   1:               Windows_NTFS External NTFS 232g      232.9 Gi   disk2s1

Chameleon's RC3 boot is in disk1s2.
I put this in disk0s3\Extra\com.apple.Boot.plist

Code:

<string>arch=i386 rd=disk0s3 boot-uuid=A39F7118-2705-3C16-9B74-77D5FDF72EFD "Graphics Mode"="1680x1050x32"</string>

disk1s2 Boot.plist is just:

Code:

<string>"Graphics Mode"="1680x1050x32"</string>

disk0s3 is Snow, boot-uuid refers to Snow partition.
When booting from disk1s2 (Leo) choosing Snow in Chameleon's menu, Chameleon reads kexts from both Leo & SnowLeo Extra folders, and completely ignores Boot.plist from SnowLeo (i.e. boots in 64 bits).
What do I do wrong?
I dont understand what rd= and boot-uuid= refers to, is it the same or different things?

mormegil · #8 09-11-2009, 01:46 PM

Think there's a bug in RC3 where boot.plist in /L/P/S takes precedence over /Extra. Try copying your plists there

DocShadow · #9 09-11-2009, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mormegil

Think there's a bug in RC3 where boot.plist in /L/P/S takes precedence over /Extra. Try copying your plists there

Hmmmm..... did not know that.

I have a boot.plist in /Extra on both my Leo and SL. The boot.plist on each drive contains the boot-uuid= the UUID for either the Leo or the SL drive.

My SL drive is my main boot drive, although I have Cham on both drives, and when Cham boots up it goes into SL by default or to the Leo if I choose.

About to delete Leo .... see no need for it now that SL's been stable for a while and I have a SL backup.

thorazine74 · #10 09-16-2009, 09:52 AM

I'll try that when I get a chance, but without being able to load a different set of kexts for Leo & SnowLeo we still have to put SnowLeo kexts on /S/L/E instead of on /E/E, not the best cleanest solution...