FC5 Grub and GPT (GUID Partition Table) won't play nicely

[Scytale]

Ok I thought I'd have another crack at running Fedora on my MacBook Pro now that Apple has released boot camp and the EFI firmware updates, after updating the firmware I now have the bios compatibility layer in my EFI and bios based OS's should work (win XP installs) but, I've hit two problems with Fedora:

I can boot the fedora installation but when it gets to the disk druid part of the installation it throws up an error message about GPT not being supported in Fedora, I can either ignore /dev/sda (the internal hard-drive) or I can erase all data and create a new partion table. Now OSX requires GPT to run, because it uses EFI so this makes it impossible to dual boot.

The other problem is worse and I suspect its related to the way Bios is handled by the macs EFI, Once the fedora installation completes (after errasing the entire hard disk first) and I reboot the computer Grub freezes on the "loading stage two..." message. And Thus my laptop is essentially worthless, can't install OSX because there is now no GPT and Fedora can't boot because grub refuses to load.

So what I'd like to know is there anything I can do to

a) Either get Fedora to work with GPT I Can still boot into rescue mode from the install cd's so all hope is not lost here, maybe I can chmod into the installation and cook something up as I've heared parted is supposed to be able to create a GPT (though why the installer didn't work has got me stumped)

b) Or, get Grub or another bootloader working. I don't know if elilo will work, as I think it can only handle Kernels with EFI support, which the default kernel won't have, again maybe I can chmod into the installation and patch the kernel from there, haven't had a lot of luck with Fedora kernels and EFI support in the past, which is why I went down this road in the first place...

Anyway before I go off and inevitably waste most of my weekend doing just this, I thought I'd see if anyone had any other ideas/suggestions. I can't believe WIN XP and NTLDR works with GPT and Fedora + Grub doesn't seems really bizare to me).

[spidersweb]

Have you still got the OSX install disks? When you start the installation, you can go to the Disk Utility (it's on the menu bar). You could format the drive as a HFS+ partition and as far as I know mark it bootable. (I might be wrong on that last bit).

However, when it comes to installing linux, as far as I know you'll have to update to at least Fedora 6, because that was the first release with GPT compatibilty. I've installed FC6 and F7 on my MacBook Pro using the same method each time. Here goes.

You must have Mac OSX on the first and second partitions to get a GPT table. The first one is a boot partition. After you've installed OSX and updated firmware etc., install Bootcamp and shrink the OSX partition and create 2 new ones, one for XP, one for Fedora. Install XP. Also install rEFIt (http://refit.sourceforge.net/) which is a bootloader for intel macs.

When it come to installing Linux, this is where I had problems. The Disk Utility will force you to create a partition with some sort of file system (I used DOS, FAT32). However, when it came to partioning with disk druid I was told there wasn't enough free space and you're supposed to do a default partioning setup (not custom). So I exited the install, and used a Knoppix live CD to delete the partion OSX had created. Then re-did the install and chose 'Use free space for default setup'. Also make sure you install grub on the Linux partition, not the MBR.

After completing the installation, reboot and when the rEFIt screen comes up use the arrows to pick out the Partioning Tool and use that to sort out your MBR table. Otherwise, you won't be able to see the Linux drive. Even after that, when you do see a second or third hard drive in the menu, when you chose it you'll get Missing Operating System instead of Grub.

The cure for this is to reboot using the Fedora CD and go into rescue mode. I had to use an external keyboard to move the arrows. After you've typed:

chroot /mnt/sysimage

then type

grub-install /dev/sda3 (or whatever the linux partition number is, just make sure you get that right!)

After that, reboot and the next time you see the rEFIt menu, there'll be a Penguin right beside Windows XP!

I know that all seems very long-winded, but I completely re-built a brand new Mac 4 times in one week before I got that sorted. Hopefully it works for you.