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UPDATE (nov08): When using Mac OSX 10.5.5 and Ubuntu 8.10 this process does NOT work! It does with 10.5-10.5.3 and Ubuntu 8.0x. I’m trying to figure out an update at the moment for the latest version of the OSs.

Completely forgot to post about this but I successfully finished a weekend project recently, believe it was earlier this month.

The objective was to get a triple boot system going on my MacBook so I could use my two favourite OS, the of course being Mac OS X and Linux, plus the necessary evil Microsoft Windows (XP or Vista).

My first approach was much too complicated. I attempted to use Boot Camp to partition my disk then via the Terminal partition the second partition made by Boot Camp into two partitions, one for Linux and the final one for Windows (Windows must be on the final partition no matter how one tries to partition the disk). This proved to be very challenging since the boot loaders all have to get along etc etc.

Cut a long story short, the solution was actually a lot simpler:

1. What one needs in any case is a little tool called rEFIt which takes over the boot loading for us. Download, install, restart to test.
2. Starting with one full partition for Mac OS X as a fresh starting point, I used Boot Camp to carve out a partition of 20GB for Windows.
3. Then I used the Mac OS X Disk Utility, clicked on the Mac partition. Since Leopard there is a little Plus sign by the partition that allows to split this partition into two. For the Linux partition I only used 8GB. Now to make the following step easier I suggest to use the Startup Disk tool in the System Preferences to select the Windows disk as the disk to start up from.
4. Now we get to the interesting part. Put the Windows installation disk in the drive, restart, rEFIt will show your Mac partition and the Windows installation disk. Select the disk and go through the installation procedure. When the system needs to restart, which it will a few times at least being Windows and all, and you followed the suggestion above you won’t have to select the Windows partition manually but can let it run unattended.
5. With Windows running there is one partition left to fill with one OS left to go. Put the Linux installation disk in the drive (I prefer Ubuntu Linux) and restart, in rEFIt select the Linux installation disc for booting. The linux disc loads and you can enter the Installation. Enter a few details and when you get to the partition screen, select the manual option. Then choose the middle partition (it would most likely be SDA03) and select an EXT3 partition formatting and select “/” as the mounting point which stand for the partition root. On the last screen (this part is important and will differ if you are not using Ubuntu) you see an “Advanced…” button. Click on this Advanced button and make sure to install GRUB on the same partition (it will most likely be SDA03) rather than anything else. This loads the Ubuntu boot loader GRUB onto this partition and provides the vital piece that makes the whole proposition of having three OS on one machine work. At the end of the Ubuntu installation the disc will be ejected and you can hit enter to restart.
6. After the last restart you will be presented with the rEFIt menu, showing you a selection of the three OS installed on your machine: Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP/Vista.

Enjoy!

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