Arch Linux

Veovis Muad'dib

Member

Registered: 2009-06-12

Posts: 43

Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

I'm running on a Macbook Pro (Penryn) and I'm running OS X, Vista, and Arch.  However, the computer came with the EFI bootloader, Arch installed GRUB, and Vista did it's own as well.  To boot into Vista, I have to hold Option, type my password (not a big deal) select Windows, (which really means non-OSX) then wait for GRUB (which doesn't show up on my external monitor) then Vista sometimes shows its bootloader as well.  I tried rEFIt, but choosing either Windows or Linux brought me to GRUB, and I had to choose again from there.  Is there any way for me to just have one bootloader show all three OS's?  I'd prefer rEFIt, but adding to GRUB or Vista's would work as well.

Last edited by Veovis Muad'dib (2009-06-12 06:17:33)

Veovis Muad'dib

Member

Registered: 2009-06-12

Posts: 43

Re: Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

I have one hard drive in this laptop, with the GUID partitioning scheme.  I have each OS on a different partition, which means that I'm out of room for partitions. Also, I stated in my first post that I'm using GRUB.  And I'm quite impressed, one post with nothing offensive, and you're banned?  This seems to be a nice forum.

Peasantoid

Member

Registered: 2009-04-26

Posts: 928

Website

Re: Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

And I'm quite impressed, one post with nothing offensive, and you're banned?  This seems to be a nice forum.

Sorry for the offtopicness, but I just wanted to clear something up: The forum is a very welcoming place. This poster may have been banned because it's a duplicate account or something somewhere got borked.

You can have the machine boot directly to one of your partitions: see this post at the Ubuntu forum for more information. Basically, it involves using OS X's bless utility to set a PRAM variable that points to a boot partition. (When I did this, I had to move the /efi directory in OS X to something else to keep it from booting rEFIt.)

Veovis Muad'dib

Member

Registered: 2009-06-12

Posts: 43

Re: Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

Apologies for the long delay, but I've been trying to figure out things in real life.  (I think, that's what you call those tortuous hours when you're not on the computer, right?)

Additionally, I apologize for the forum remark, I was tired and didn't even think about those possibilities.

The bless command is awesome, and now I can boot straight to Arch if I want, which is awesome.  But to be quite honest, it doesn't solve the original question.

OFF-TOPIC: Pleasantoid: I checked out the link in your sig, good job!  I wish you luck, and I might watch it's progress as it matures, just because I love reading history of programing languages, (I just read one by a creator of erlang, very interesting) so watching one develop would be awesome.

xd-0

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-11-02

Posts: 327

Website

Re: Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

You need to repair grub and restore it to mbr. Also you need to make shure it holds a correct path to your other os. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Grub

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,384

Website

Re: Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

And I'm quite impressed, one post with nothing offensive, and you're banned?  This seems to be a nice forum.

Sorry for the offtopicness, but I just wanted to clear something up: The forum is a very welcoming place. This poster may have been banned because it's a duplicate account or something somewhere got borked.

You will find an account with that name was created on at least five different (and fairly unrelated) forums on the same day, all with links to a website in the signature...  It just so happen that this comment was on topic.  We never ban for no reason.

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Veovis Muad'dib

Member

Registered: 2009-06-12

Posts: 43

Re: Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

You need to repair grub and restore it to mbr. Also you need to make shure it holds a correct path to your other os. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Grub

GRUB works fine, it has Vista and Arch on it, and it's on my fake MBR that GUID creates.  However, that link, nor any other link I've found, has any information about adding OS X to GRUB.

You will find an account with that name was created on at least five different (and fairly unrelated) forums on the same day, all with links to a website in the signature...  It just so happen that this comment was on topic.  We never ban for no reason.

I already feel stupid about that comment, I was running on no sleep for a few days.  I apologize.  Although it is nice to know the reason.

xd-0

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-11-02

Posts: 327

Website

Re: Is there a way to narrow my 3 bootloaders down to 1?

Search osx +grub on google. Seems to be a lot of pages related to the topic. Sorry that I can't help you any further since I don't run osx.