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Author Topic: When uselessness ends?  (Read 2825 times)

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Promiceus

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When uselessness ends?
« on: July 20, 2009, 12:25:54 PM »
Hi, creators of Chameleon!
I hope you read these these threads and can answer my question.
First of, thanks for your hard work, Chameleon works OK on my system!
However, I was advised to switch to Chameleon to organize nice multi-boot. 2 HDD's are involved so... It turned out that Chameleon turned out to be pretty useless. It cannot load Win XP from other drive (this was discussed a lot here). So, the question is: when do you plan to release a version that CAN boot XP or similar stuff from other HDDs?
So that it doesn't look like a paranoid shout out, I'll give some in-depth explanation. There is a way to create a small HFS+ volume on WinXP HDD and install Chameleon there, but obviously: 1) having this little "drive" around on desktop is not pretty at all, cause it is a little mess anyway and 2) If future releases of Chameleon plan to boot OK, then the future holds total reinstall of Windows just to get rid of that little HFS+ partition or some other partition tweaking, which is not good too.
So, RC1 was released quiet some time ago. So if this is possible, may be you can actually release some newer version which may have ability to boot several-HDD systems or at least mention what was your release date plan? Just a simple something like "today, week, month, year, never" or something like that? You're doing great job, but sometimes it is good to have some clarity to plan everything on the other side (end-users). I hope you understand what I'm talking about and I hope you can give out some simple plain answer. Thanx in advance!

mackerintel

  • VoodooLabs
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Re: When uselessness ends?
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2009, 04:08:29 PM »
We don't have any fixed plans. Basically developpers implement whatever they want to implement. You can try to interest someone in your case. Actually you can try grub2 which has features necessary to boot windows from second hd. They implemented some features for loading OSX ( http://grub.enbug.org/XNUSupport ). I heard they have made an OS autodetection and graphical menu conceptually similar to the ones found in chameleon but had no time to check. So probably grub2 will suit your testcase. If you prefer to use chameleon for loading OSX we support multiboot. Just add the following entries to your grub.cfg:
menuentry "Chameleon" {
   root=hdX,Y
   multiboot /boot timeout=-1
}

menuentry "Chameleon silent" {
   root=hdX,Y
   multiboot /boot timeout=0
}

Promiceus

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Re: When uselessness ends?
« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2009, 04:59:15 PM »
Wow!
First of, I'd prefer Chameleon (if possible) since it loads OS X perfectly and I definitely LOVE the gui!
Just to clarify: the method you've mentioned should make it possible to boot WinXP from a different HDD? Currently any attempt to boot XP via Chameleon results in cursor blinking forever, while booting through BIOS goes OK. So does editing grub.cfg fix the situation?
Also (sorry, I'm nub) where can I find grub.cfg?
And "hdX,Y" means something like disk1s1 etc. or something else?
Thanx a lot in advance and keep up good work!

mackerintel

  • VoodooLabs
  • Posts: 38
Re: When uselessness ends?
« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2009, 09:13:15 PM »
First of, I'd prefer Chameleon (if possible) since it loads OS X perfectly
In my tests XNU support in grub2 wasn't far behind Chameleon even if some features may be missing. If you test post here your results I'll be interested
Quote
and I definitely LOVE the gui!
http://grub.gibibit.com/Themes
Additionally using grub as primary bootloader is recommended (other way round grub complains about blocklists)
Quote
Just to clarify: the method you've mentioned should make it possible to boot WinXP from a different HDD? Currently any attempt to boot XP via Chameleon results in cursor blinking forever,
It's a known bug in windows
Quote
while booting through BIOS goes OK. So does editing grub.cfg fix the situation?
menuentry "windows" {
root=hdX,Y
drivemap -s hdX hd0
chainloader +1
}
Quote
Also (sorry, I'm nub) where can I find grub.cfg?
/boot/grub. You need grub2, not grub1 though
Quote
And "hdX,Y" means something like disk1s1 etc. or something else?
Either use grub-mkconfig - it creates good entries or type "ls -l" in grub shell it should give enough info to identify partitions

Promiceus

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Re: When uselessness ends?
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2009, 08:41:45 AM »
Oh I see. This was all regarding GRUB...
Ergh, not exactly what I was looking for.
I was looking for a working solution, not testing cases;) Really need a working machine...
And some simple ones, like Chameleon and nothing else. Or probably GRUB and nothing else. However their warnings on possible problems with DSDT...  ???. So I guess I'll have to try something else until Chameleon team 'suddenly' releases an update any time soon. Hmm, how can I possibly interest someone in my case? Especially when HDD1_macOSX+HDD2_WinXP might be one of the most popular configs (my guess would be something next to 'Leo and Win on one HDD')?
Ehhh...

youminbuluo

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Re: When uselessness ends?
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2009, 04:52:18 PM »
err
actually i am quite interested in grub2