Re: Dual boot NetBSD and Leopard

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%rek.tjls.com@localhost>]

On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 04:18:08PM -0500, Liam J. Foy wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> Currently my trusty Mac Mini is running Leopard (whole disk is dedicated
> to Leopard). Has anyone managed to Dual Boot NetBSD with Leopard? Or
> does anyone have any suggestions on how? I see a few google results but
> none seem to make me feel 'secure' :-)
> 
> Any suggestions/advice?

You want to replace Apple's EFI boot loader with "rEFIt", which has
both graphical and textual menus to let you select which partition to boot,
whether GPT or MBR partition.

It can then directly load the NetBSD bootblock from the NetBSD partition
and away you go.

If for some reason you have to use GRUB (e.g. you want to run NetBSD under
Xen and do not have a version of NetBSD with bootblocks that can directly
load Xen) be aware that GRUB has a nasty bug that causes it to not function
on the Mini in many cases.  Fixing this requires a patch to one of the asm
files and a GRUB rebuild.  Best to stick to the NetBSD bootblocks if you can.

Thor