Can't dual-boot Fedora 14 on new MacBook Pro?

[Zaphodora Beeblebrox]

>I'm trying to install Fedora (dual-boot) on a brand-new MacBook Pro.

I have a somewhat older one, but it's 64 bit EFI, so it's probably
similar enough. I did not try this on Fedora 14, but I had the exact
same problem with Fedora 13 and Fedora 15 (since I used Preupgrade and
was also pleasantly surprised when it worked.)

>After the install is complete, I would expect to be able to hold down


>the Mac's "Option" key to choose which OS to boot since /dev/sda3 has
>a boot sector, but only the OS X disk shows up. (What does Boot Camp
>do, then, besides resizing the disk?)


Boot camp interfaces with the Mac's BIOS counterpart (sorry don't
remember what it's called,) but because of the differences between MBR
and GPT partitioning, only four partitions are allowed in a MBR/GPT
hybrid format. Fedora was being "clever" and made the Fedora partition
bootable; what you need to do is turn the boot flag off and then let
the bootloader work it's magic.

>I read somewhere that a boot loader called rEFIt would help, so I
>tried that. I installed it using the instructions on the project's
>website and rebooted. An option to boot Linux shows up in the rEFIt
>boot screen, but when selecting it, I get a black screen with an error
>message along the lines of "no operating system found."

You did actually manage to install it, it's just getting conflicting
signals, since the Fedora partition is set to be bootable. This should
work whether you keep rEFIt on there or not. First insert the live CD
again, make sure that you've synced the partitions, then run the
program 'parted' from the command line as root, like so:

  parted

  toggle 3 boot

  quit

   shutdown

then start Fedora exactly as you described. Because: I was able to use
rEFIt with Fedora 13 quite easily, but Fedora 15 created an EFI
partition of it's own and I couldn't log in via rEFIt (though it
logged in via the Mac's EFI -- with the 'option' key -- perfectly.)
It may be that it's created a 5th partition or "hijacked" the mac's
EFI partition.

if you need more info, I found this person's advice helpful:

http://blog.christophersmart.com/2009/12/02/how-to-triple-boot-mac-pro-with-os-x-fedora-windows/

Hope this helps, please tell me if there's something else or if I made
a mistake with the mailing list, I'm not quite sure of the
conventions.
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