Never happened before, so this this warranted further investigations!
First I went into single user mode, where I saw notices of mDNSresponder that could not be spawned.
Figured out I tried to change some perms on the user interface, to increase security on my mother computer, and thus created a strange bug. A google search on mDNSresponder pointed me to: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/184944-os-hangs-blue-screen-just-before-login.html#post1055281 :
“it was caused by sharing the boot volume via Server Admin and then removing read access for ‘everyone’ (within Server Admin). In my opinion this is a serious bug - Server Admin settings should never be able to inhibit booting - preferably file sharing controlled by Server Admin should be totally independent of any local conventional OS X file sharing, or is this too much to expect?”
Solution : single user boot or CD rescue booth, then as explained in the post :
ls -ld /
(followed by the return key) ; Correct permissions are: drwxrwxr-t and the eighth character is critical. If it is not an r you can correct it as follows, so type:
/sbin/mount -uw /
(followed by the return key) ; then type:
chmod 1775 /
(followed by the return key) ; then type:
exit ; reboot
Thanks google, you save my day here !
There are various “Rescue CD” linux distribution out there. But I have yet to find one that can present itself as a boot option with a simple press of the “Alt” key during a MacIntel reboot.
Nothing impossible - just put a /efi/boot/bootx64.efi file out there - say Grub2 in x86-64 as explained on ArchLinux
This also works for your main distribution : you can put your grub there in /dev/disk0s1 that is reserved for EFI:
mkdir /tmp/efi && mount -t msdos /dev/disk1 /tmp/efi
Simple and effective.
Today I needed a windows machine to do some tests. But bootcamp instructions where not very clear to me - especially the part where you have to reformat the partition in NTFS from within the windows installer.
Here are very complete instructions to have a quad-boot (OSX, Linux, Vista, XP) + shared partition I found :
0.Prepare your Boot Camp driver CD. Backup your files.
1.Prepare your XP winclone image:
1.1 Boot from your Tiger install DVD, from the Utilities manu, choose Disk Utility. Under Volume Scheme, choose 3 partitions. Click the last partition, specify its format as “MS-DOS File System”. Make sure the other two partitions are “Mac OS Extended(Journaled)”, Click Partition. (Now all your data are destroyed)
1.2 Close Disk Utility. Install OS X to the first partition. Do a minimal install for you are about to discard it.
1.3 After reboot into OS X, download and install winclone from www.twocanoes.com
1.4 Insert XP install CD, reboot while holding the Option key. Choose to boot from CD. Install XP into the last partition.(marked C: ) You must format the partition as NTFS. (winclone cannot clone a FAT partition) Remember to hold the option key when reboot and boot from the Windows disk to continue install. After done, i gave the XP partition a volume name “XP”.
1.5 Now you have a clean install of XP, no need to install the hardware driver at this point, just reboot into OS X, make a winclone image of your XP partition. Save the image on an external hard disk.
2.Reboot from your Tiger install DVD, run Disk Utility. This time choose 6 partitions. Partition as below:
0 EFI protected (which is invisible under Disk Utility)
1 Name:Vista Format: MS-DOS File System
2 Name:FAT Format: MS-DOS File System
3 Name:XP Format: MS-DOS File System
4 Name:OSX Format: Mac OS Extended(Journaled)
5 Name:HFS Format: Mac OS Extended(Journaled)
6 Format: Free Space
3.Install Tiger onto volume “OSX”. After reboot into OS X, download rEFIt from refit.sourceforge.net ,install it to volume “OSX”. Now you have a boot manager. Insert Vista install DVD and reboot from it.
4.Install Vista onto partition 2 named “Vista”.(That is the first volume you can see under Tiger’s Disk Utility) You must format it as NTFS at this point. Vista will install with no problems. (It will reboot several times) After done, i gave the vista partition a volume name “VISTA”.
5.(Optional) Now you have a clean install of Vista, reboot into OS X, make a winclone image of your Vista partition for future use. Reboot into Vista and let Vista check the disk.(Do it now, don’t give XP the chance to check the Vista partition or Vista can be hurt.)
6.Restore your XP winclone image to the volume “XP” (/dev/disk0s4). Reboot into XP and let XP check the disk.
7.Now reboot to Vista. If Vista fails to boot, use Vista DVD to repair it. You may need a USB keyboard to do this. (I don’t know why but sometimes restoring XP’s winclone image makes Vista unable to boot, fortunately vista DVD quickly repairs it)
8.Insert ubuntu install live CD,(i use ubuntu 7.04 64bit) reboot from it. Launch install from desktop.
At step 3, choose your keyboard layout as Macintosh.
At step 4, choose to manually partition the disk:
create a / partition and a swap partition at the end of the disk.(Swap must be larger than memory to be able to “hibernate”. And one megabyte here is 1000*1000 bytes, not 1024*1024)
(Optional) You may notice there is a 134M free space(in fact 128M, 134=128*1.024*1.024) between /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6, believe me, it’s of no use. I create a 9th partition here for /boot to reclaim the space.
At step 7, before you go ahead with the install, click “advanced”, and tell ubuntu to install GRUB to (hd0,2), the FAT partition. (Yes, this is the right place. Installing GRUB into the MBR will let GRUB manage the windows booting, you will have to go through 2 boot manager to boot windows or linux, which is not what we want. Besides MBR, it seems GRUB can only be installed into among the first 4 partitions to be bootable, and the FAT partition right now doesn’t contain a boot code so it’s safe to have GRUB live there)
Proceed with the install. Reboot and you will see 4 OSes from rEFIt menu.
9.Install boot camp drivers under xp and vista. Google and find ways to make airport and wireless mighty mouse work under ubuntu. Google and find ways to fix the screen resolution under ubuntu. Google and find ways to enable touchpad scrolling/tapping/right-clicking under ubuntu.
10.Done! Enjoy your quad booting monster.
