Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista 225
An anonymous reader writes, "NeoSmart Technologies has just released EasyBCD 1.5, complete with support for Vista, Windows NT/2k/XP, and Windows 9x/ME. EasyBCD 1.5 adds experimental support for dual-booting any of these along with Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD — straight from the Windows Vista bootloader without any additional configuration needed!" From the article: "Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system. That's where EasyBCD 1.5 comes in!" EasyBCD 1.5 is free.
BCD? (Score:4, Funny)
Surprise, surprise. (Score:5, Funny)
"But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought...."
Well, who would have expected Microsoft to do that?
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Re:Surprise, surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
Personaly, I choose to instal lilo onto a floppy (the boot code). Then go in later and move it to the hard drive. This allows me to boot to a boot disk and streight into linux if neccesary. Also it allows for a backup of lilo's config in case windows trashes the partition linux is on.
Something i'm wondering is, Did microsoft do this in order to screw open source boot loaders and make the act of dual booting into a free operating system more dificult? It apears that the site is down for the EasyBCD loader. I cannot tell if it is free as in opensource free or just free as in no costs for now free. It could directly effect the way some distro's are compatible with VIsta.
I'm also wondering if the "opensource" free version if any, would be GPLv3 compatible because microsoft will no doubtly have certain levels of pattents pertaining to the vista boot loader that the EasyBCD guys might not be able to control enough to be GPLv3 compliant. Not to mention that newer microsoft OS's typicly create a volume serial number that is tied into booting and operation of the OS. This is most evident when cloning drives and when it doesn't keep the corect serial you get errors on booting. How would this be effected by the ANTI-TIVO type wording in the GPLv3 when a GPLed product is working with the code or programs? I Think some clearification might be in order on this. I have raised simular questions before with products like Itunes and Hardware that locks certain performances out in cheaper versions and the answer is always, they shouldn't be doing that or the Closed app should be open. I'm sure booting to vista in a free way might be more important then forcing apple to opensource Itunes in order to keep a GPLv3 frontend compatible with the GPL.
An no, I'm not trolling. These are legit concerns with the GPLv3 brought up by others too. I'm just putting them into relvent terms that can be related to in this context. It would suck donkey balls if GPLv3 licensed bootloaders are incompatible to dual booting with microsoft operating systems because of this. Especial when the entire idea behind the changes is to control the manufacturers hardware with previous versions of the GPL claims is outside the GPL's scope.
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Tarball /, put it on a backup drive. Install Windows. Install Linux with GRUB/whatever. Untar / back out again. Viola, you've successfully preserved your "working, tweeked and otherwise perfected install of linux". I do this all the time if I have to migrate to another box for whatev
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Uh... the windows installer doesn't trash the entire linux install (or even the bootloader). It just overwrites the MBR to point it at the windows bootloader instead of whatever was there before. Incidentally, this is exactly what the linux bootloaders do when they're installed. The
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Consider yourself lucky. When I installed Windows XP alongside Linux, it trashed my entire hard drive [advogato.org]. That was the last time I ever installed Windows. The system simply can not be trusted. I use Linux and OS X exclusively now.
Re:Surprise, surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funniest part? I use Ubuntu all the time.
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That's a horrible bug, but did they fix it or just document in a KnowledgeBase that "sometimes it completely corrupts your HD; this is normal". If the latter, then I could certainly understand why you'd share my desire to never use the system in question again. But I doubt it - I would be shocked to hear that attitude from Linux developers.
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It's not that "something went wrong" one time out of many. If you follow a specific, reasonable sequence of actions, the contents of your hard drive will be destroyed 100% of the time. Furthermore, the maker
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Now that I've checked the KB to confirm what I had recalled, I'm positive that it asks for confirmation for both partitions. See kb313348 [microsoft.com], step 11:
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I didn't modify the partition table during Windows XP installation, so this KB article is not relevant. What I did was try to install to an existing system with an unformatted NTFS partition as part of the following layout:
...umm, slashdot's lameness filter won't let me post it here, so I've updated the
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Jonah HEX
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Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of like stealing from a Las Vegas casino. Won't happen.
So... (Score:2)
This is why on multiboot systems I install Grub into the partition rather than the MBR. This way you can keep the Windows MBR and just set the Linux partition as bootable and it works as it's supposed to.
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Have you checked your license agreement?
Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch (Score:4, Insightful)
In case you didn't notice, you are installing an operating system. Generally speaking, machines have always shipped with one OS to control the entire system. It is certainly *not* unreasonable for Microsoft to overwrite the MBR. Especially when they expect that their OS will be the only one. You'd have a hard time convincing a judge otherwise.
The fact that Microsoft hasn't improved this part of the install as more hobby OSes have showed up just goes to show how little they care about letting you use your hardware as you want to use it. But they are under no obligations, especially when the installer warns you to make backups before you run it.
Getting lots of OSes running (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:5, Informative)
Take the 5 minutes to learn it.
Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:5, Informative)
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I use Windows 98 "DOS" to make batch files to run loadlin with a nice menu to boot either Windows 98 (not very often), or a selection of window managers in my knoppix remaster (see screenshots). I can use a "knoppix.img" file for ~/, or just do without that, and boot into the default IceWM. Next choice is Fluxbox, then KDE, then twm.
The Windows 98 desktop has icons for all of that also, and the menu too. So, can jump
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The GRUB command line is very, very useful.
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LILO can be very finicky and a system can easily become unbootable given bad parameters. An interactive boot shell that is filesystem aware (GRUB) can come in very handy. It is almost like having a real system firmware. Although if LILO works fine, there is probalby no reason to bother switching to GRUB. I mean, how often do you fiddle with boot parameters anyway?
-matthew
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grub has one really great feature that got me to switch, besides the fact that just about every linux distribution uses grub now: you can edit the commandline from the boot screen. Just hit "e" and you end up in a readline-equipped editor that allows you to, for example, change your root device, or add "single" to the command line.
grub also supports booting from more media than lilo does, so I pr
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Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:4, Informative)
The "last selected OS" is handy, and GRUB can be configured to do this as well, but what if you last selected single user mode, or memtest86? If you reboot your machine remotely, and forget that the last option selected has no network support, you have no way to access the machine. At least with GRUB, you can edit the config and tell it not to do that.
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Actually, EasyBCD requires Grub to be installed in order to boot Linux.
Now my problem is, it doesn't want to know what DRIVE I've installed Grub on... so I am doubtful it will work. :/
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2 OS's running simultaneously (Score:3, Interesting)
With the advent of dual core chips and O/S support for these chips, this doesn't seem all that difficult. Isn't Apple already doing it?
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What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment.
How is this possible without virtualization of some kind be it hardware or software? Oh wait its not...
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You mean like with this [vmware.com]? no wait, Vista's EULA won't let you do that unless you buy the pricier Vista...
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You could get around that with some fancy firmware to save the state to some storage device and load it up again, but it really isn't worth it. Virtualization does a better job for most of what you would want to do: Have a base
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Or the hypervisor in many mainframes, IBM POWER5 systems, or anything running Xen. The next generation of GPUs are going to include save and restore state operations, and newer x86 systems finally come with an IOMMU, meaning that a Hypervisor will soon be able to share everything, including the GPU, between machines.
The DirectX 10 driver mod
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Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.
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It can't and it doesn't. See Apple's Universal Binaries reader (a pdf). If you're a developer, it's time to recompile; fortunately Carbon isn't going anywhere. [apple.com]
Re:2 OS's running simultaneously (Score:4, Interesting)
None of which represent running "2 OSs at the same time without virtualization".
Rosetta: a PowerPC emulation layer for running PowerPC binaries on Intel. I don't know the details but I would assume that system calls to Mac OS X APIs are presented to the native Intel OS X components - so the whole thing isn't exactly running in the emulation layer. The OS components being called by the software are running native on Intel.
X11: A window manager for UNIX. X11 apps running on Mac OS X are still binaries built to run on OS X. The Window manager just handles displaying the GUI elements. This is not running a different OS.
Classic mode: A form of virtualization. It booted OS 9 in a seperate process under OS X. Similar to how VMWare or Virtual PC work. Probably a bit better in terms of hardware support, because Apple had fixed targets for possible hardware on Apple computers, rather than VMWare which for some devices (video cards) only offers basic support.
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No, you cannot run Classic under Rosetta. Classic is not just an application running an emulator. It directly hooks into the core OS and touches hardware.
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Dual-core chips have absolutely nothing to do with the ridiculous "multiple OS without virtualization" scenario you are imagining. Yes, it really is "all that difficult", actually more in the line with "impossible".
And no, Apple isn't doing it. Apple hasn't even stepped a foot in the virtualization bandwagon yet, so I'm wondering where you got that idea. Boot Camp is just a
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Multiple OSes certainly cannot share any of the same hardware. OSes function with and expect full control over that hardware. The only solution is a hypervisor, effectively a mini host OS which is loaded as the kernel of
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Currently, all operating systems expect that they have complete access to hardware, so running 2 or more at the same time requires modifying the operating systems themselves (Xen), or incurring a si
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2 processors
2 hard drives
2 sets of memory
2 motherboard chipsets
2 video cards
2 bioses
etc.
A physical switch that toggled between them. Basically two computers with a hardware toggle between them (just like an integrated KVM).
Now why can't you do it with one set? Because at some point something has to arbitrate between what gets access to the hardware at what time. And this is where virtualization comes in. Virtualization technology such as VMWare ESX server provides a small
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What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment. Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?
Personally, I'd rather this was done via virtualization. Virtualization allows you to use the most secure OS as the host OS with only it having access to damage the critical parts of your system. The guest OS's can run on top of it and benefit f
Despite the marketing speak... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm curious if this statement is more than marketing speak. What's so great about BCD?
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0001 0011 0011 0111
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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Except for the fact that... (Score:5, Informative)
1. Breaking Apple's Mac OS X license agreement, which says that Mac OS X is to be run only on Apple-branded computers
2. Pirating Mac OS X (Intel), since Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present
3. Running a horribly hacked version of Mac OS X, with critical pieces of the system modified, including the kernel
4. Running Mac OS X in an unupdateable state, since any official Apple software updates that overwrite modified pieces of the hacked version of Mac OS X will break it
5. Running Mac OS X in a state completely unsupported by its vendor
6. Possibly violating civil or criminal law in your jurisdiction
I hope that most people can find at least *one* of the above items that would make them reconsider running Mac OS X (Intel) on a generic PC without paying for it (some will no doubt argue that they should be able to "reuse" PowerPC licenses for Mac OS X in spirit, but the fact is that it's not the same product - that's like saying that you at one time owned one software product from a company that's similar, so you should be able to use this other one/newer version/older version/different version for free). I'm sure others will come up with all sorts of justifications why it's okay.
But isn't all of the billions of dollars or R&D and hundreds of thousands of manhours invested in Mac OS X worth something? What if their pricing is predicated on what is essentially a good faith agreement that you'll not hack it and run it on non-Apple hardware? Does Apple have ANY say in how they'd prefer it to be used?
I could go on, of course, but just thought this was worth mentioning.
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1. Breaking the law
2. Having an install which might not work right
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You state that OS X on non-apple hardware is neither stable nor production quality. Legality in terms of licenses is of little importance for personal use and no sane company would use such an unstable product so your "points" are redundant. As a result it is only viable for those individuals who either lack money or wish to play around with OS X, neither of whom is going to buy a Mac instead.
So
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Your arguments are the ones that are irrelevant, here. You don't get to decide that using Mac OS X in this fashion benefits Apple, therefore it's okay in the context your own moral or logical framework for people to pirate it and so on. Apple is the entity that gets to decide, and they have.
It doesn't have anything to do with having anything in anyone's backside.
Again, I'd love to hear about anything that I said that's inc
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Sure you do, assuming that is your moral or ethical system. Heck that is the definition of what is being done as someone is perfectly free to decide whatever they want to be moral or ethical. The trick comes in convincing other people of that and dealing with any consequences if it doesn't agree with societies morals/ethics/laws.
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Sheesh... get a fucking life Dave. Anyone with as much emotional investment in any company as you seem to have in Apple has some sort of serious emotional problems.
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Or, that this isn't relevant given the fact that the title and summary of this article makes it appear that you can just boot "OS X" on non-Apple hardware, when that isn't anything close to even being the case, and the only way you can use OS X on non-Apple hardware is still with the hacks that have existed ever since Mac OS X has been out on Intel, and will continue to exist indefinitely?
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1. Breaking Apple's Mac OS X license agreement, which says that Mac OS X is to be run only on Apple-branded computers
Contact your local cattle rancher?
2. Pirating Mac OS X (Intel), since Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present
Who says you need to buy it as a standalone OS to possess an install disk? Wanting to install Mac OS X on a PC does not preclude ownership of an Intel-based Mac. You can even balance out the seats by unins
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What about all the manhours the FreeBSD and OpenBSD engineers put into their product, so their code could be co-opted by others (like, ooh! Apple) and sold on with restrictive terms? What about all the manhours Red Hat and SuSE and the Debian project and Ubuntu and many others into a whole host of free Linux distros? Aren't they worth something, or does it have to come attached to
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I hate to support the Apple ranting guy BUT you are missing the point. People who release code under the BSD or GPL licenses give up certain rights deliberately. They could have released it as proprietary code initially but they CHOSE to release it licensed as GPL or BSD. Anyone who willfully releases code under the BSD license and then bitches about it's usage (lawful per the text of the license) is a moron. If yo
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The retail boxed version of 10.4.7 Server is Intel-compatible.
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Um, you can do just that, then?
...
(What are you trying to ask? Because Boot Camp will officially support Vista, and you'll legally be able to purchase and install Vista on an Intel-based Mac, and you can of course install Linux (yes, the final version of Boot Camp will very likely support more than two partitions and thus more than two OSes), and Mac OS X is obviously a supported OS on an Intel-b
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http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/PrdBrid ge.jsp?pclass=ST5000 [shopfujitsu.com]
Unfortunately, Apple still hasn't made good on their promise that discontinuing the Newton would result in interesting hardware to replace it.
William
(who wrote out this post on his Stylistic using RitePen)
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Re:Except for the fact that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple doesn't exactly try to get people thrown in jail for doing this. Sure, they frown on people who distribute hacked versions of their OS. But, I think they are right to do that merely from the point of view that they are protecting less savvy people from fucking themselves and also making it really clear that running OS X in that manner is unsupported and therefore unwise if you are doing any work that might actually be important. But frankly, I've spoken with lots of people from Apple on the subject (admittedly they are not from Apple Legal and are not speaking officially) and they pretty all say that if you want to hack something for the sheer fun of trying to get it to work and aren't redistributing their stuff, then knock yourself out.
The award goes to... (Score:2)
License: Freeware (Score:5, Informative)
It's freeware. Sorta looks like a Creative Commons license, but basically it's just plain old freeware.
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well... i will have to check this out later (Score:2)
But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well I just tried it (Score:3, Funny)
I had to replace my MBR for it to work, since I had loaded grub into it.
So I tried to boot into Linux. I must say, I don't remember Linux being a blank screen. I seem to recall it being more interactive...
completely pointless software (Score:2)
Boot in rescue mode and mount the linux partition
fdisk -l
mount -t partition_type
chroot
live distro's
For grub
grub-install
This has always been possible (Score:2, Informative)
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"among the most powerful"? (Score:2)
Then it is not necessarily among the most powerful. That is a absic feature among virtually all of the rest. Others do allow you to do that and m
or... (Score:2)
Boot Record Mastery (Score:3, Informative)
That's not "from" Vista, it's despite Vista.
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already slashdoted
microsoft overwrote it...
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Apple and the U.S. government established the anti-boot laws to keep people from booting OS X.
OS X checks the hardware while booting. This, as far as I know, does nothing to remove or bypass that check. Presumably, it may only be used to boot OS X if you are installing multiple OS's on a Mac or have applied other hacks to OS X. I don't see any likely lawsuits over this.
Tinfoil too tight? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry
Are you posting from the future, where the world has been decimated by killer iPods or something?
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You mean iPod Killers? No wait, those will never exist.
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Probably some cover up conspiracy where they only tell us the Slashdot vultures exceeded his allocated bandwidth.