Well, I feel like a total idiot.

[Zeep]

Long story short: I just had to reformat my hard drive, totally as a result of my own stupidity.

Short story long: I had been messing around with running Linux as a Virtual Machine on my MacBook Pro (as per my thread in Tech Central), but got frustrated with the limitations of virtual machines and decided to try installing it for real as another partition alongside my Boot Camp Vista partition. Turns out it's not quite that simple. All I want is a small partition: 4 to 5 gigs, at most. My Windows partition is about 24 gigs, and is withing half a gig of full to capacity (pretty much just with Steam games). The guide I was reading online for installing Ubuntu alongside OSX and Windows suggests using a portion of your Windows partition as an Ubuntu partition, but of course, I can't do that, so I figure it can't be too hard to just cut a 4 gig chunk off my Mac HD to use for Ubuntu.

Turns out I can't find any simple way to do that, so I have to go back to the Windows method. I need to increase the size of my Windows partition so I have some free space, so I copy an image of the entire partition onto my Mac HD, and erase the Windows partition, hoping I can create a new, larger partition and restore my Windows install to it. After deleting it, though, I find I can't make the main partition re-expand into the empty space, functionally leaving me with a 25 gig smaller hard drive. I try a number of methods to fix this, and end up trying to use Ubuntu's partition tool, which it turns out is not particularly user-friendly.
I think I've found a way to create that 4 gig partition off the Mac HD, so I try that. It hangs after a while, so I abort the procedure, only to find that it had erased my main Mac HD. When I reboot, my only boot options are the Ubuntu CD and my Windows partition with no data on it.


So now I'm in the middle of re-installing Leopard. I'm actually writing this on my Wii internet browser (thank god for USB keyboard support). Fortunately, I don't think I lost much of great importance. All my music is still on my iPod, so I should be able to find a way to restore it all onto my hard drive (suggestions please?). Most of the programs I used regularly were ones included with OSX (thank you Apple), and those that weren't, I either still have the install CDs or can just download.

The only thing I think I really lost of importance is going to sound rather strange... for a scavenger hunt I was in, we have to take photos of ourselves doing certain things on a list. We had only taken about two photos off the list, but they were amazing photos, and I really am not looking forward to having to get them again, as they involve standing naked (though tastefully covered) on top of a building on campus.

Basically I'm just bored waiting for Leopard to install and I wanted to share this with someone/anyone. Lesson learned: always keep backups of important stuff. As soon as I can (probably tomorrow) I'm going to buy a 500GB or maybe even 1TB hard drive so I can use Time Machine to backup all my data.

tl;dr: I reformatted my hard drive, but the only thing I lost of real importance was a photo of me and 3 other guys naked on top of a building.

[Travis]

Ouch, that blows. Sorry man.

[Garfunkel]

Hahahaahahhaahahahaahahahaahah

Sorry, I just.....hahahahahaah

OK, so what you ran into was, you needed to cut space for an ubuntu partition, Windows was full, so you needed to cut some fat from OSX right?

Simple, you could have just used the Gparted livecd to resize the OSX partition, making room for ubnuntu on a separate primary/logical partition.


-----------------------------------------------------------------

Now that it's too late anyway to fix that. But If you still are planning to run all threee OS's now, I would recommend simply resizing the OSX partition into three seperate ones right after installing so you don't stuff up again. Keep OSX at 4-5GB less then before,. and make XP the same as before, then use the left over space to install Ubuntu on. Install Ubuntu last, this way, it will it should add both other OS's to the boot loader automatically.

--------------------------------------------

Also, why did you try expanding the windows partition? that will not work if there is no space to expand it into.

I know the ubuntu partitioner is less then perfect, they used to use a gparted partitioner on the livecd, however they stupidly decided to move on and develop their own. Gparted is so cool I have no idea why they went off on their own, nobody ever complains about gparted.

[Zeep]

Trust me, I realize it was stupid. I was totally over-confident in my understanding of hard drive partitions and OS installation.

[Garfunkel]

If you want my msn, it should be in my profile somewhere.

Unawise, we can solve the problem here, or in tech central.

[Zeep]

I don't use msn, but thanks. I think I'm going to do like you suggested: install windows with a larger partition, then install ubuntu as a partition of that.

[Garfunkel]

You can do it with the ubuntu partitioner but i recommend the gparted live cd a lot more. You can then simply use the ubuntu cd to format the small partition as ext3 and install ubuntu on it.

[Negativity]

Jesus Christ computers are boring...

[Zeep]

You can do it with the ubuntu partitioner but i recommend the gparted live cd a lot more. You can then simply use the ubuntu cd to format the small partition as ext3 and install ubuntu on it.

So do you recommend i install windows using the Boot Camp partitioner/installer, and then use gparted to install ubuntu?

[Garfunkel]

Jesus Christ computers are boring...

Then don't post in a computer related thread.

So do you recommend i install windows using the Boot Camp partitioner/installer, and then use gparted to install ubuntu?

I would recommend this:

1. Install OSX on one big partition (I am assuming you are doing this now)
2. Use Gparted to shrink OSX and form 2 new partitions from the free space, one for XP and one for Ubuntu
3. Install XP on one of the new partitions
4. Install Ubuntu on the last partition. Being the smartest OS, it should recognize both other OS's and install the boot loader for all three (but i'm unsure if it will do one for OS X). If ubuntu doesn't do it, we can do it manually.

Whether you use bootcamp or not is up to you.

[Zeep]

Right now OSX is on one 150GB partition. i'm downloading gparted now. will it be fairly self-explanatory how to use it to create a windows and ubuntu partition?

[Garfunkel]

It should be fairly easy. I find it one of the easiest things in life, but I use it every day. Your experiences may differ.

Basically, download the .iso file. Burn it to a cd. I don't know what program you you to do that in your case, but most burning application have an option to 'burn image to disk'.

Then just boot your computer and change the boot order so that it boots from the CD. It will load up a Linux live cd with the main purpose being a partitioner.

Assuming you only have one big partition that takes up the whole HDD it should find your HDD and show only one partition. You can then simply right click it and click resize. Shrink it to make way for both xp and ubuntu. Then shrink the new partition again so that the second one is enough for windows and the third is enough for ubuntu.

So say, if it's 150GB you would:

1. shrink the big OS X partition to around about 120GB (25 for XP, 5 for ubuntu makes 30)
2. Shrink the 30GB so that it forms two, one that is 25GB and the other that is 5GB.

Done. You don't really need to format the XP or ubuntu partition, the OS installations will do that anyway so it's no bother, as long as you have created the partitions it doesn't really matter.

[Zeep]

So I went through gparted and it seemed to work but when i went to install windows it told me that it couldn't install on the partition because it was "GPT partition style" or something to that extent.

I have a feeling this has quickly gone from a GD-worthy thread to a Tech Central thread.

[Garfunkel]

then in that case windows is even more incompetent then i thought. format the partition as fat32. It will read that.

[Zeep]

Update: after formatting the partition as fat32 using gparted, the windows installer doesn't even recognize the partition.

i'm going to go to bed, but i'll definitely be at this again tomorrow.

also, does anyone know of a good free program to transfer from an ipod back onto a mac?

[Garfunkel]

Can we move this to tech central?

Damn macs make everything so stupid and complicated...are you using bootcamp to install XP? if not, try it. I am not a mac user and I know that Windows can obviously not use the GPT filesystem partitioning type, so maybe bootcamp fixes this up for you by changing the flag on the partition. Unless I am wrong I believe maybe the XP partition has to be at the end of the drive, but I don't know why apple forces you to do so.

EDIT: here, i found a link that would probably explain it better then i can:

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp

[haunted leg]

zeep. i have done the exact same thing. except i did it after already installing and deleting mint, (both from the live cd because for some reason grub won't work for me on mint but works fine on ubuntu) because i wanted more room for all my sims 2 crap. i actually tried running gparted and i still couldn't get it to work and so i backed up with time machine and formatted.

the problem essentially is that if you delete a partition from outside of os x then it still thinks there's a partition there and you can either fiddle with it from the disk utility on the leopard install disc or just reformat and since you're already there, might as well since it takes like no effort to just run time machine from the install cd (in my case).

i'm sure there was also some other crap going on for me since i had all my partitions set up with boot camp beta before i upgraded to leopard. but i think you should be okay if you just format/delete things from the disk utility in os x.

it's so odd to me though how many random distrobutions don't work even though the one's they're based off don't (i tried like 20 different one day because i think i was drunk or high on peanut butter).

and to have three partitions just do this:
1. install os x
1a. install refit, it's so awesome and makes this whole thing much easier: http://refit.sourceforge.net/
2. use boot camp to make one partition that will be for both windows and linux.
3. once you get to a point where it asks you to install xp or vista, don't. stick in a linux livecd instead (or just gparted).
4. delete your bootcamp partition from gparted. create two new partitions in gparted to represent windows and linux. (i'm not sure if you can install linux first but i'd install windows first just in case)
5. install windows. (choose any option besides "don't format")
6. go back to live-cd and install linux.

refit makes the whole process very easy since you don't even have to worry about holding down c to get it to run from the cd and can select how you want to start things off each time.

you probably won't be able to use bootcamp again after this but if you're fine with the amount of space you've already allocated you can keep messing with the non os x partions with gparted to your heart's content.

[Garfunkel]

^it is perfectly fine to install linux before windows, but the problem is, you won't have the bootloader, so you will either have to edit the windows/mac one or install grub manually.

But you may as well install it last to have grub.

[glamgurl36]

oops. i hate when i do stuff to my computer, and it messes it up

[seahorse]

plugging my ipod into my computer sometimes makes it crash. pisses me off.

[Zeep]

Can we move this to tech central?

Damn macs make everything so stupid and complicated...are you using bootcamp to install XP? if not, try it. I am not a mac user and I know that Windows can obviously not use the GPT filesystem partitioning type, so maybe bootcamp fixes this up for you by changing the flag on the partition. Unless I am wrong I believe maybe the XP partition has to be at the end of the drive, but I don't know why apple forces you to do so.

EDIT: here, i found a link that would probably explain it better then i can:

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp

I'm not using boot camp at this point. all boot camp does is create a partition and then boot you into the windows installer. I think what i'm going to do since this is being so complicated is delete the partitions i made with gparted, us Boot Camp to create a partition, use gparted to create an ubuntu partition off of that, then install windows, then ubuntu.

[WolfmanNCSU]

Can we move this to tech central?

Agreed and done!

One question you had is trying to get your music and/or videos from your iPod. Its easy. Connect your iPod and your computer will be able to read it as a HDD. You may need to turn on the "show hidden files/folders" option.

Access the iPod and go to the folder “iPod_Control” --> “music”. You will ffind your music there randomly scattered across multiple folders and with scrambled file names. But don’t worry, the ID3 tags are still fully intact. You can literally drag and drop your music from your iPod to your computer (whatever OS partition you keep your music on).

Whatever music library tool you use (iTunes, whatever) will be able to unscramble the file names by using the "Keep iTunes Music Folder organised" option.

There are other software apps that you can DL and do this same thing, but to keep it simple, just read as a HDD and pull it off that way.

[Garfunkel]

I'm not using boot camp at this point. all boot camp does is create a partition and then boot you into the windows installer. I think what i'm going to do since this is being so complicated is delete the partitions i made with gparted, us Boot Camp to create a partition, use gparted to create an ubuntu partition off of that, then install windows, then ubuntu.

I would say that that would be a good idea. It doesn't really matter if you use bootcamp to create the ubuntu partition or not because linux simply will not care if your using MBR or GPT as it supports both but AFAIK boot camp cannot create ext3 partitions so gparted should be used.

Agreed and done!
Whatever music library tool you use (iTunes, whatever) will be able to unscramble the file names by using the "Keep iTunes Music Folder organised" option.


Agreed. Any real decent media player will be able to write the filenames from the ID3 tags.

[haunted leg]

zeep even if you think i'm a complete idiot, at least install refit....

sigh.

seriously i have a mac, i've done the exact same thing as you, in more than one aspect of what you're describing, so even if you don't want to have to deal with using boot camp, just install refit, you install it on os x and it uses your efi partition to give you a boot screen where you can select which operating system to run or if you want to run from a cd. you can also easily remove it from os x if you want to.

http://refit.sourceforge.net

[Garfunkel]

zeep even if you think i'm a complete idiot, at least install refit....

sigh.

seriously i have a mac, i've done the exact same thing as you, in more than one aspect of what you're describing, so even if you don't want to have to deal with using boot camp, just install refit, you install it on os x and it uses your efi partition to give you a boot screen where you can select which operating system to run or if you want to run from a cd. you can also easily remove it from os x if you want to.

http://refit.sourceforge.net

If you install ubuntu last that's not exactly an issue.

[haunted leg]

and if you delete ubuntu and install a different distro refit will still be there, or even if he just sticks with os x and windows it will still be there, so i don't see the harm in using it since it's really simple, and much more elegant than ubuntu in that regard.

[Zeep]

If you install ubuntu last that's not exactly an issue.

But I can't install ubuntu last. every time i set up the partitions, gparted makes the windows partition unusable by the windows installer. and when i install windows with boot camp then make a linux partition off of that, again it makes the windows partition unusable.

i'm going to try refit, since i've tried every combination of partitioning and installing that i can't think of.

edit: so refit works, but i still need to create partitions for windows and ubuntu. i can use boot camp to create one partition, but then if i use gparted to create a smaller partition off of that is makes windows unbootable.

[haunted leg]

okay i'm sorry i was going off memory and i wasn't entirely right in what i said.
i finally just looked up how i did it, but it kinda seems like a long way around after reading most other guides but it worked for me. so here's how i did it.

1.install os x/update
2.install refit
3.make a partition with bootcamp that will be for both windows/linux
4.install windows on c:/ (use fat32 so you can dump stuff on it from os x)
also there was something mentioned about not reloading to finish installing windows after the initial install (i can't remember if it's necessary or think of a good reason why it would be necessary but i don't think it could hurt to just wait to finish until later)
5.load linux livecd/gparted and resize your windows partition
6.create your linux partition with the space left over and install

that's how i did it, and back when i did it was from the only guide i could find on the subject. but now most of the guides just seem to tell you to create 3 partitions from the start and ignore boot camp altogether which seems like an easy way to go but i just know that that's the way i did it to get the triple boot working.

i seriously should have looked things up though before responding instead of just trying to go on memory, i apologize.

[Zeep]

4.install windows on c:/ (use fat32 so you can dump stuff on it from os x)
also there was something mentioned about not reloading to finish installing windows after the initial install (i can't remember if it's necessary or think of a good reason why it would be necessary but i don't think it could hurt to just wait to finish until later)
5.load linux livecd/gparted and resize your windows partition

this is pretty much exactly what i've been doing (except for the not finishing windows part). problem is, after i resize the windows partition with gparted, it makes it unbootable.

[Garfunkel]

Can't you just make two seperate partitions with bootcamp? or is there native GPT partitioning tools for mac that can do this? Have a look at the link i posted in one of my previous posts.

[Zeep]

Bootcamp can only create one partition. It also requires that, before use, your hard drive be in one single Mac partition.

I've been following the guide you posted earlier and i think i just got the partitions set up, but now i have to go see if i can actually install windows.

[Zeep]

Update: all three OSs are up and running flawlessly. Thanks for the help, everyone.

[Garfunkel]

So the guide worked?

[Zeep]

yes it did, after some trial and error.

in other related news, i've managed to recover the naked pictures from the copies of them that were saved on my ipod. :D

unfortunately they're a bit scaled-down and now watermarked, but whatever. today's been a good day.