# Macbook Partition Scheme

## bobber205

Here's what I want to do.

Dual boot gentoo and OS X. The http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Apple_MacBook guide seems a little overally complicated. I was looking for a "somewhat" simple answer but that does not seem to exists lol.  :Very Happy: 

I do not want shared folders. I do not want to triple boot. Each time I read the guide from the beginning, I Think "oh. here we go!" but then it diverges into things I do not need and it gets more convoluted each line. I can follow the guides ok but it seems unorganized.

If someone could help me sort out what I really need to do to get a dual boot with Gentoo (using a swapfile not a swap disk btw) I would really appreciate it.

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## Coelacanth

All you really need is one partition for OS X and one partition for Gentoo. Just leave the EFI system partition where it is. Create a second partition for OS X and a third for Gentoo.

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## bobber205

If I leave the EFI alone would it make it so when I hold down option gentoo is a boot option? What do i need to configure for the bootloader?

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## Coelacanth

You can install GRUB or LILO to the Gentoo partition, after you do that, you can install rEFIt which will give you a boot menu that allows you to choose Gentoo or OS X.

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## bobber205

The guide says I should install reffit first. So I will.  :Wink: 

I am making a backup of my macbook right now. I'll do a normal OS X install then restore my computer.

So when Reffit starts to boot my gentoo install, will GRUB launch?

I only have one ethernet cord going into my room so I'll be without IRC of forums until I have my wifi going. Should, once I get my kernel done and portage made, install the wifi drivers? (it's later in the install)?

Is that a good idea?

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## Coelacanth

 *bobber205 wrote:*   

> The guide says I should install reffit first. So I will. 
> 
> I am making a backup of my macbook right now. I'll do a normal OS X install then restore my computer.
> 
> So when Reffit starts to boot my gentoo install, will GRUB launch?

 

Yes, if you install grub to the Gentoo partition. If you put Gentoo on the third partition, after you emerge grub, just do:

# grub-install /dev/sda3

Make sure that you ran the partition syncing tool that comes with rEFIt first, or it will fail.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> I only have one ethernet cord going into my room so I'll be without IRC of forums until I have my wifi going. Should, once I get my kernel done and portage made, install the wifi drivers? (it's later in the install)?
> 
> Is that a good idea?

 

You should be able to install them at any time after you have booted with the new kernel. You can install them while you are still on the live cd, before you have chrooted into the new system, but you'll have to install them again on the new system if you do that.

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## bobber205

So before I reboot to install gentoo, I should run the partition syncing tool?

What will my grub.conf look like?

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## Coelacanth

 *bobber205 wrote:*   

> So before I reboot to install gentoo, I should run the partition syncing tool?

 

As long as you run it between when you partition the drive and when you install the bootloader, you'll be fine.

 *Quote:*   

> What will my grub.conf look like?

 

Your grub.conf should look something like this:

```

# Which listing to boot as default. 0 is the first, 1 the second etc.

default 0

# How many seconds to wait before the default listing is booted.

timeout 30

# Nice, fat splash-image to spice things up :)

# Comment out if you don't have a graphics card installed

splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Title

root (hd0,2)

kernel <path_to_kernel> root=/dev/sda3

#initrd <path_to_initrd>

```

Just put in the name you want for the entry and the path to the kernel file. If you want to use an initrd, you also need to uncomment the last line and put the path to the appropriate file.

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## bobber205

Can I just use bootcamp for this? The wiki mentions it I think.  :Smile: 

Anyway, thanks for all the help so far.

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## Coelacanth

You might not need the rEFIt boot menu, but you'll still need GRUB and you'll still need rEFIt's partition table syncing tool (bootcamp only does this if you have one HFS+ partition and one NTFS partition).

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