Fedora on the Mac Pro, Partitioning with Leopard

Having recently gotten the success of installing Fedora 8 on a triboot MacBook Pro, I thought I would plunge in and get it installed on the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is my workstation that I use to create images, manage servers, and organize my classroom material, so it's pretty important that I have a working Mac partition after this adventure. Luckily, I had already installed Leopard, so making the partitions were easy. ^_^

Bootcamp Built Into leopard
Those of you who have been using Linux for a while may laugh at this (Joseph did when I told him), but I was excited to find out that creating new partitions in Disk Utility for Leopard doesn't automatically delete the information in the original partition. It just resizes it! This is huge, since I have spent a lot of time creating partitions and installing multiple OSes for 22 lab machines. It also means that creating my partitions for my Windows and Linux installs were relatively painless. I just needed to be sure that the information on the original partition was small enough to resize without error.

It seems that the partition can't be larger than about 75 to 80 GB when using Disk Utility. So, it meant having to delete my Parallels virtual hard drives. That's fine though, I can easily replace them without any trouble. Once cleared, I could create the new partitions, and get started.

Tribooting again
Just like all my previous experiences, I started with installing Windows XP, and setting it up with all the relevant software and drivers. Once done, I removed the disk, inserted the Fedora 8 install disk, and rebooted.

Fedora 8 Install on the Mac Pro
The install was pretty clean, working just as one would expect. The installation didn't take long, and then I rebooted into Windows (I'm still paranoid about that). Everything looked great, so I rebooted again into Fedora.

Then a problem: I couldn't get past the udev module. It would just hang, eventually telling me that it would try to run it in the background. Well, this was a problem that I didn't expect. So, off to Google and the boards to see if there was another person with a similar issue.

Luckily, there was this posting for Fedora 7, with a fix:

In /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist add:

blacklist b43
blacklist sbs
blacklist mac80211
blacklist cfg80211

In /etc/modprobe.conf add

alias b43 off
alias sbs off
alias mac80211 off
alias cfg80211 off

Of course, this means I needed to get to a command line. With a Mac, it's easy, just boot up with Command - S to get to single user mode. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that in Fedora. So, I booted up with a Ubuntu Live CD, and used Terminal to get to the Fedora partition. There, I made the edits with pico, saved, and rebooted.

The next thing I know, I am in Fedora making the final setup entries. ^_^ It's nice to play with Linux again, and I am really happy with Gnome. I was a KDE user back in the day, but Gnome has become more user friendly, if just because it is slightly like the Mac interface. Within a few minutes, I had Evolution Mail set up, Pidgin set up for AIM and Jabber, and I'm all set! I will still use the Mac for most of my work, but it's nice to know that when I need Linux, I have it.

Triboot Saga Continues: Mac 10.5, Windows XP, and Fedora 8 on a MacBook Pro

For those couple people that have been following my blog for a while (thank you both!), you will probably remember me posting my woes and eventual triumphs regarding tribooting a MacBook Pro. I was trying to install a total lab image that would allow any instructor to teach a given class on their chosen platform without worrying about lab restrictions. It took a week, beating my head against a brick wall, and a lot of forum/blog readings to do it, but I finally managed to complete my mission.

If you remember, I also tried to use Fedora 7, but failed to get it to install properly. I then installed Ubuntu, which managed to install with a lot less coaxing than Fedora 7. Of course, the Linux classes that the University of Utah will be offering for credit (starting this spring! Two registered already! ^_^) will be focusing on either Red Hat or SuSE. Well, technically we could probably get away with Ubuntu, but I want the experience to be as close to the real thing as possible. That means getting Fedora to work.

The Download, Partitioning, Mac and Windows Install
I managed to find several repositories of the DVD iso for both i386 and x86_64 releases, so I downloaded them both. The final FTP mirror I used was located here on campus, so I was able to download both at about 7 minutes each (I love being at the U!). I then followed all the steps I outlined in September for the inital Mac 10.5 and Windows install. Yes, I am still using XP, if only because Vista isn't being used in our labs (and if our network guys have their say, it never will).

Fedora 8 x86_64 Install
I started the Fedora install by testing the disk. After the fiasco that was my Mac 10.5 upgrade, I'm playing it safe. ^_^ I then started the basic installation process. From what I remember of 7, Fedora 8 has a much more streamlined install process, more like Ubuntu Feisty. I was really impressed! I walked through the process, set up a partition as ext3 for Fedora, and then selected the software.

Then, I got worried. It not only didn't ask me what bootloader I wanted, but it didn't ask me where I wanted to install it. Bugger! Would I have to reinstall Windows, and compile Grub on my own? I really didn't want to do that, because it would be a mess. Well, we would just have to see. I started to sweat, worried that I would be in for another huge project that I had hoped would only take me a couple of hours.

I finished the install, and then rebooted the machine. Refit came up with all three images, which was a good thing (that didn't work with Fedora 7). Then I selected Windows. I would know if Grub had messed with the Windows MBR if it came up as I tried to boot. The screen went blank, my heart raced.. and Windows booted! I was thrilled!

I then rebooted to get into Fedora. The setup was beautiful, the boot clean. The desktop looks a lot like a cross between Tiger and Leopard, with a splash of Windows in there. Happy that the installation worked well enough for a Lab machine, I turned the machine off. Is everything working? I have no idea. Does everything need to work? Not at all! This isn't a machine that needs to run audio content, play games, or chat via the internet. This machine is meant to be a test environment for students to learn about the core OS.

Maybe, if time allows (after updating all the machines to both 10.5 and Fedora) I am interested in getting the Fedora install working at 100%, I will do that. But for now, I give a huge Kudos to the Fedora team for creating a boot installer that installs Grub on the destination Root partition, instead of the MBR for Windows. ^_^