When the refit menu comes up, highlight and enter on the icon that looks like a hard drive. It is below the bootable os icons. I am sure you have already done it. I can not remember off hand but it may also show the bootable flags and stuff as it sees it. It should also give any errors that it thinks it finds. Does all that check out and look normal?

Hey that Fedora efi project looks pretty cool. So basically they are doing what refit does now only adding linux specific tools.

Also, you have Fedora on partition 4. What is on the other partitions?

Have you tried this
Maybe you have a disk that just will not boot from mac. Maybe someone will chime in and clarify what disks can be booted. It seems that error message is trying to tell you something. :)

hi,

rEFIt does not recognize the partition as legacy OS. everything else is fine. gptsync shows both the tables are in sync.

any way to make the rEFIt see the linux as legacy OS?

OK

All that the refit app does, is that it is a front end for the command bless, which does support legacy devices. I used the bless command in scripts and network policies to force boots into Windows XP on my Macs at work.

Now, I still say use a virtual machine, they are awesome and run very smoothly on my Macs. However, if you still refuse to try that, you may try this.

Do note that you will need to place the path of the partition you wish to boot that matches your configuration. This configuration in my command shows that disk zero slice 3 has my Windows partition on it. The legacy switch forces it to boot from a master boot record, not EFI, and the next only switch says don't make this the new permanent boot drive.

Hi,

I executed the command and tried booting again. Same errors :(

Have you tried the fedora forums? Is there a way you can post the partitions of your drive with the flags and types listed. A partition map perhaps.
Actually I think you have this backwards. You dont want the partition to be seen as legacy. My fedora partition does not show up as legacy.
Although I have seen that happen and actually I have a mystery partiton that shows up in the refit boot menu that claims to be a legacy os. It is a grey windows icon. When I click it nothing happens. It is a I think it is leftover from some early bootcamp thing I did.

@tlarkin

Really? So I can get rid of refit and use the command above and Fedora 10 will be listed when I hold down the options key? I also have a winxp partition on that same drive. Would that change anything? I do not seem to be using a legacy os with fedora and certainly do not want to mess up a working solution. This means that if I drop the --legacy option then the only thing I am doing is setting the boot flag. Is this correct?

Yes, really. I have highly managed macbooks in my environment and all users are non admins. So they can't run things like refit or even access the system preferences to manually pick windows XP to boot into. I used the bless command to get around this. I even posted a video on youtube on how we did it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_rlv...e=channel_page

Open up terminal and type diskutil list and copy and paste the results would you? I don't try to boot from USB but I have read it can be problem prone on Macs. Do you have firewire you can boot from?

Yes, very slick.

Hi,

i don't have a firewire.

/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: GUID_partition_scheme *111.8 GB disk0
1: EFI 200.0 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 111.5 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk2
#: type name size identifier
0: GUID_partition_scheme *298.1 GB disk2
1: EFI 200.0 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS Untitled 1 99.2 GB disk2s2
3: Apple_UFS Untitled 2 96.2 GB disk2s3
4: EFI 200.0 MB disk2s4
5: Linux LVM 99.1 GB disk2s5

please type this into terminal and then paste the results

diskutil info /dev/disk2s5

is /dev/disk2 UFS format? I know that UFS is no longer bootable in OS X, or maybe it never was...

OK, so if you launch this command from terminal and then reboot, does it boot into Linux? You will probably need to run it as sudo

Device Node: /dev/disk2s5
Device Identifier: disk2s5
Mount Point:
Volume Name:

Partition Type: Linux LVM
Bootable: Is bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported

Total Size: 99.1 GB
Free Space: 0.0 B

Read Only: No
Ejectable: Yes

Hi,

i hope now everyone agrees i have not been making any major mistakes :)

I think this should say "Partition Type: Microsoft Basic Data" at least that is what mine is working with.

Although I am unclear what partition type "Linux LVM" is exactly. I know there was/is a windows LVM. I think lvm was a way to get past the 32GB size for fat volumes. I really think that needs to be a different type. Did you try partition with type 82 or 83? I used ipartition to get fat32 ms data type.

Where is the File system type? I do not see it listed. I assume you are putting a file system on the partition?

Here is my disk info for the Fedora Partition.

Device Identifier: disk1s4
Device Node: /dev/disk1s4
Part Of Whole: disk1
Device / Media Name: Linux

Volume Name: UNTITLED
Mount Point:
File System: Ext2

Partition Type: Microsoft Basic Data
Bootable: Is bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: ATA
SMART Status: Verified
Volume UUID: 016A50B8-228A-4B4A-83F8-311F475840E3

Total Size: 20.0 Gi (21474836480 B) (41943040 512-byte blocks)
Free Space: 0.0 B (0 B) (0 512-byte blocks)

Read Only: No
Ejectable: No
Whole: No
Internal: Yes

what i did was partition my drive in disk utility into 3 partitions. one HFS, one UFS and leave the other as free space. i also checked the partition type to be GUID.

then i used the installation DVD to install fedora in free space. after that you can see the status in diskutil list of the drive.

how did you configure your harddisk? you must have formatted it in windows.

http://rentzsch.com/tidbits/intelbas...ncompatibility

i contacted the guy who has written this article and he said i need to format it in GUID. still no improvements.

You know performance wise booting from USB is probably not going to be any better than a virtual machine.

Also, the new Macbooks have 1 high powered USB port, and it is the first device you plug in. Do you have multiple USB devices plugged in?

will i have only one USB plugged in. i have told you that i have used VMware which is a virtual machine. works like dead.

and the only reason of using a harddisk is that it can be used with any machine. i am working on a hardware based project and we need a fedora environment to work on.

Hmm, always format the linux partition in MS-DOS in disk utility and never leave any free space when installing linux or any os. I have never used UFS so we can assume that will not help us here either.

My thoughts are use Disk utility as before only select MS-DOS as the format/partition type for the Fedora partition and the partition that had as Free space. When in disk utility lable the partition you want to be linux "Fedora10" or any such name and then label the Free space partition something as well.

When you get that done run the above commands again and post the results.

Also, tlarkin has a very good point about usb ports. I hope you are using a drive that plugs into an electrical outlet or is the first one in as he states. Even though Fedora uses disk labels to assign partition maps you could still probably confuse it by plugging and unplugging different usb "drive" devices while you are installing linux.

Are you running leopard? I cant even get ufs to show up as an option.

strange but i am not getting MS-DOS in the disk utilities. i think its the same as UNIX file system, which is what shows in my menu. i am using tiger only.

now i am removing all free space and making 3 partitions, one in HFS and two in UFS(which i think is your MS-DOS).