BootThink 2.4.6 (2010-01-28) support ubuntu 9.10 GRUB 2

[xiezhy]

According to the author's other posts in Chinese, it seems like for Windows, Boot Think simply supports 1 activated NTFS partition.

 

I don't have first-hand experience on this issue... Other guys jump in?

 

 

Yes, Boot Think 1.1.0 only supports one activated NTFS partition per disk. But 2.0 will supports all partitions with windows system soon,

and it will strengthen the guide of Linux.

 

 

 

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[Jacky Wang]

Yes, Boot Think 1.1.0 only supports one activated NTFS partition per disk. But 2.0 will supports all partitions with windows system soon,

and it will strengthen the guide of Linux.

-------------------------

 

Thank you XieZhy! It's GREAT to know that! =D

[thorazine74]

Yes, Boot Think 1.1.0 only supports one activated NTFS partition per disk. But 2.0 will supports all partitions with windows system soon,

and it will strengthen the guide of Linux.

-------------------------

 

Thanks for giving some support here xiezhy!

Is there any official or semi official english forum or blog for this bootloader?, if not there should be one, it would be a pity if the language barrier would stop this really promising bootloader from going west...

Anyone knows if the source code is available/is going to be available?

[MuppMan]

Amazing bootloader, it can even boot MS-Dos :-D

 

However, anyone also having problem with the cd-boot option ? 

 

Everytime i try it the computer reboots. Anyone know why, perhaps ? 

[thorazine74]

I think it can boot anything as long as the partition is bootable by itself.

Booting the DVD doesnt work for me as I already reported, maybe if we could report our hardware along with the results we could find out what works on what systems and what doesnt...

 

Me:

- Boot Think installed with default options on a 128 Mb USB Drive formatted as MBR/HFS+

- GA-73PVM-S2H (nForce 630i).

- Booting from USB.

- It boots any partition from the SATA HD (SATA controller is in AHCI mode, disk is partitioned as MBR).

- Doesnt boot the retail DVD from an IDE Drive.

[Le-Bebop]

installed on an OSX partition. all HD are SATA HD. Can boot all HD and all OS (OSX and XP), on MBR and GUID, with IDE or AHCI mode, Retail or not Retail... boot on Retail DVD not tested.

 

How to show only bootable partitions?

 

THKS!

[dong]

Since netkas released source code for pciefi10, will it be possible to add snow leopard support in boot think 2.0?

[FavleX]

I think this thread must go on New release subforum.

Thanks xiezhy for ur work.

[Cheezmen]

I just installed this and its great

 

Once SMBIOS.plist support is added, it will be the best bootloader

[Dr. Hurt]

I just installed this and its great

 

Once SMBIOS.plist support is added, it will be the best bootloader

 

+1

[helob]

Thanks xiezhy for the excellent work.

I just installed Boot Think 2.1 on my 10.5.7 MBR partition.

I can see all the bootable OS on startup.

However nothing happen when I hold either Alt(option) key or Ctrl+V or Ctrl+S key during startup of the bootloader.

What do I have to do to enable the Boot quick key in Boot Management setup?

How to config key like #b=x or #p=- etc?

The only thing I can do right now is to select the OS and press enter to boot up without option of verbose, safe user mode etc.

Any help will be appreciated.

[xiezhy]

Thanks xiezhy for the excellent work.

I just installed Boot Think 2.1 on my 10.5.7 MBR partition.

I can see all the bootable OS on startup.

However nothing happen when I hold either Alt(option) key or Ctrl+V or Ctrl+S key during startup of the bootloader.

What do I have to do to enable the Boot quick key in Boot Management setup?

How to config key like #b=x or #p=- etc?

The only thing I can do right now is to select the OS and press enter to boot up without option of verbose, safe user mode etc.

Any help will be appreciated.

 

 

1.The Boot quick keys become effective only when having setting the default boot partition

2.You can make some configuration under command line after press F8

 

 

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[CharredPC]

1.The Boot quick keys become effective only when having setting the default boot partition

2.You can make some configuration under command line after press F8

 

 

Just to be clear; there is no way to set BootThink or the apple loading screen to 1280x800x32? ...tired of everything being stretched...

[Cheezmen]

Just to be clear; there is no way to set BootThink or the apple loading screen to 1280x800x32? ...tired of everything being stretched...

Hold down alt when booting

press f8 at the disk selection screen

 

 

type

 

# g=1280x800x32

[CharredPC]

Hold down alt when booting

press f8 at the disk selection screen

 

 

type

 

# g=1280x800x32

 

Tried that repeatedly, thanks. BootThink and Apple boot screen are still stretched.

[zarac]

Tried that repeatedly, thanks. BootThink and Apple boot screen are still stretched.

well, it works for me with resolution 1920x1080x32 and its not streched.

 

press f8 at the disk selection screen, then type

# g=1280x800x32

press f8 again and then hit ESC key - that is the moment i got resolution i wanted.

[CharredPC]

Tried that, no go. But I think I figured out why.

 

According to one person (and it makes sense) the bootloader is using VESA mode. Therefore, the only resolutions it allows are the ones it knows it can do. Make sense so far? Okay, so I used the ?video command to bring up a list of VESA resolutions.

 

The first three of mine are garbage (0x0x0), and the next ones listed are 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. So it isn't taking my 1280x800 because it thinks it can't do it, and if I do change the resolution to anything else, it's still stretched. With me so far?

 

From my quick initial research, it looks like the available VESA modes are pulled from the BIOS; some people seem to have gained more modes by upgrading it. Unfortunately, I have the latest, and I doubt they're putting out any more for my machine.

 

So, hoping I'm not thread-stealing, is there any way to manually feed Darwin a list of VESA modes? Or can I force it to use an unlisted one? Obviously my machine is capable of it, Darwin just doesn't know that. Or does anyone feel I'm on the wrong track here?

[xiezhy]

Tried that, no go. But I think I figured out why.

 

According to one person (and it makes sense) the bootloader is using VESA mode. Therefore, the only resolutions it allows are the ones it knows it can do. Make sense so far? Okay, so I used the ?video command to bring up a list of VESA resolutions.

 

The first three of mine are garbage (0x0x0), and the next ones listed are 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. So it isn't taking my 1280x800 because it thinks it can't do it, and if I do change the resolution to anything else, it's still stretched. With me so far?

 

From my quick initial research, it looks like the available VESA modes are pulled from the BIOS; some people seem to have gained more modes by upgrading it. Unfortunately, I have the latest, and I doubt they're putting out any more for my machine.

 

So, hoping I'm not thread-stealing, is there any way to manually feed Darwin a list of VESA modes? Or can I force it to use an unlisted one? Obviously my machine is capable of it, Darwin just doesn't know that. Or does anyone feel I'm on the wrong track here?

 

The boot GUI of the Boot Think only supports the VESA modes.

 

-----------------

[MiniHack]

Thanks Xiehy. This is a very friendly bootloader and is a breeze to use.

 

I am using with the ZOTAC 9300 board and with a SATA slot loading dvd drive with no eject button, so the facility to use a simple package to install the loader to a USB stick and then be able to select the original DVD for install is great and is a feature that Chameleon is lacking.

 

You have a good selection of kexts that works for many boards. I haven't yet tried the EFI install, but will do as I see you have a script for updating the kexts easily in that - maybe I will switch my main install from Chameleon to BootThink as I have found a few things that Chameleon just refuses to boot...

 

 

Anyway, really very good work and thank you very much for this and the guide. I will keep this handy on a USB stick for those times when I need a new install.

[Ryan Rhee]

I just got a 4hdd raid10 disk using apple's software raid. (disk utility)

Is it possible to use bootthink with software raid?

 

(on a side note...)

version 2.0 is out!! I can't wait to try it out

[thorazine74]

I tried Boot Think 2.1.0 and sorry but I havent seen much progress.

Same setup, used the installer, with default settings, installed to clean USB Stick formated as MBR/HFS+, booting from it, on a Nvidia MCP73 mb with SATA HD & IDE DVD.

It boots fine but it only shows 2 HD partition icons, from my 1st MBR-partitioned HD, Leopard and other that seems to be Linux (identified by disk number, not label); Vista partition is missing, and doesnt ever show up even after p=+/-

Leopard starts to boot but crashes before getting to the desktop. It seems some kexts loaded by Boot Think with the ones loaded by Leo or something.

 

Try to boot from retail DVD, pressing "c" repeatedly, I get either:

a) the Apple loading screen indefinitely and no sign of the DVD disk being read at all (the drive activity light is off);

It accesses the DVD drive (light blinks briefly) and I get a "EBIOS disk error" message printed on top of Apple grey screen repeatedly if I press "c".

I dont understand whats the problem with DVD, its hard to diagnose because I dont know how to boot from the dvd AND at the same time use "verbose" mode (pressing CTRL+v+c doesnt seem to work).

 

Also I still dont understand why BT has 2 sets of extensions.mkext files, one in /Darwin/S/L/ and another in /Darwin/rc/, whats the purpose of that?

One seems to contain a big set of kexts from 10.5.6/9.6.0 and the other just the ApplePS2Controller+ps2nub kexts (which btw are probably why it didnt boot my leopard, it would fight with VoodooPS2 I have installed on /S/L/E). There is no AppleDecrypt or dsmos there now (there was in 1.1) so I'm guessing we need to include it ourselves now?

Anyone care to explain how are we supposed to customize the extensions.mkext? (say for example if you want to just use vanilla kexts from 10.5.7, do you remove the big Extensions.mkext? or do you move the Extensions.mkext from your /S/L/ to Boot Think /Darwin/rc?). Also it seems the kernel is loaded from the boot device and not from the system partition?

 

What about the source code, is it going to be released to the public?

[MiniHack]

Okay....seriously impressed now.

 

Having tried this on a USB stick, I decided to then partition my OSX drive and add Windows 7. Then I installed the Bootthink2 windows package (not sure what it does exactly, but I guess it adds recogniton of the type of install and maybe does something with the windows bootloader). Then I went back into OSX and used the Leopard installer to install to EFI.

 

I was a little worried, but after checking my OSX volume on the desktop I saw the Darwin file and the update command and put my custom kexts into the extensions folder and ran Update.command. This then put my needed custom kexts into the install.

 

On my next start up, the Windows 7 boot manager came up with selections of "Windows 7" or "Bootthink". If you click Bootthink, then you are delivered straight to the Bootthink GUI - ie the bootcamp type screen - where you can select either your MAc volume or a corrctly labelled Windows 7 install. Here, if you have modded your kexts like me, you should on the first boot press f8 to go to the text version and then boot with -v -f to force the new load.

 

Then everything just works......

 

Previously I have had a terrible time trying to get a dual boot arrangement like this sorted properly (never succeeded with it before on my Zotac), but with Boot Think it worked flawlessly.

 

EDIT: Actually, not quite flawlessly as even though the bootloader is installed to EFI in OSX, installing the Windows version (which I seemed to need to make the combo work) seems to make the HDD not be recognised for booting real Mac afterwards.

[EGOvoruhk]

Is anyone using this as your only bootloader? I want to set it up as a sort of EFI-X device, and keep my HDD vanilla, even the EFI partition

 

What are some of your guys' Extension folders looking like? I deleted the default Extension.mkext because I don't use PS/2 anymore

[MiniHack]

Is anyone using this as your only bootloader? I want to set it up as a sort of EFI-X device, and keep my HDD vanilla, even the EFI partition

 

What are some of your guys' Extension folders looking like? I deleted the default Extension.mkext because I don't use PS/2 anymore

 

At the moment I am using this as my only bootloader. I deleted the Extensions.mkext and put my own extensions in the extensions folder. I had this on USB stick first and for me it did not boot my Windows partition using that alone.

 

I switched then to put Bootthink on the EFI partition of my HD and i used the really nice update function to switch from the std kexts to my own. That worked for me, booting optical and Mac OSX. However it only booted Windows after I used the windows bootthink version to install on the Windows 7 partition. After that it would boot everything, via the bootthink interface in combination with the Windows 7 bootloader. However, I think the Windows bootloader part then made the OSX partition not able to boot real Macs. Also, if I install linux to a separate HDD my boothink on the other disk sees the Linux installation, but will not boot from it (to be honest I am not really bothered about Linux, but I just wanted to see how Bootthink would cope). That might just be a "Grub" issue perhaps. Having said that, i have also had real issues in the past playing with real Mac triple boot systems.

So the bootloader for me works on the hack, but still doesn't seem to be the all singing, all dancing one we are waiting for.....

What I want (too much to ask?) is an easy bootloader that I can use which will let me install from a retail disk, boot OSX and Windows from a GUID partitioned disk and still let me hook up that disk to boot a real Mac. All this please without the need to play with BIOS settings between boots.

My system for the record is a Zotac 9300 Mini-ITX with GUID disk in AHCI mode.

So while this is a step forward (nice to be ale to boot a retail disk, OSX, and Windows) it is still lacking a little.

[chokia]

I have 64bit XP, Vista, Windows7, Ubuntu, Tiger and Leopard on GUID

 

Since i hate ubuntu native installation will ruins the boot loader creating the ugly grub, swap partition and displaying as "hd04 Linux" instead of "Ubuntu" on Boot Think GUI, so i decided to install Ubuntu using wubi on empty NTFS partition labeled as "Ubuntu" via XP, only then it displays as [ubuntu] on Boot Think GUI and boot instantly when click it on Boot-Think GUI.

 

Boot think v1 recoqnizes all partitions including DVD and my shared non-bootable partition for data storage.

 

But i still hate XP doesnt boot directly but have to go through its bootloader. Vista and Windows7 are unable to boot from Boot Think GUI but only boot via XP boot loader which appears after clicking XP logo on Boot Think GUI.

 

 

Now I boot leopard and install Boot Think V2 on it and restart. The GUI is more cleaner now displaying only bootable partitions. Leopard|Tiger|Ubuntu|XP|Vista|Se7en

 

 

But Now I can only boot Leopard, Tiger and Ubuntu. None of the windows partition can boot.

 

 

Any help? and i really want them to boot directly without windows bootloader menu.