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I have Ubuntu with grub2 installed in an Apple Macbook pro with dual boot (using rEFIt), and I would like to use grub2 to boot the LiveCD ISO image of a system based in Debian too (CrunchBang). The ISO image is saved in the same hard disk, same partition as Ubuntu.

I can easily boot many other LiveCD ISO images, but I cannot boot this one, and I cannot boot the MacOS system, from the grub menu, either. The installation of Ubuntu left a couple of menu entries to boot MacOS, but they never worked. SO I don't know if it is possible to boot them, and how.

I have tried many options, but the menuentry I am trying now to boot crunchBang is this one:

menuentry "crunchbang-10-20120207-i386.iso" {
   set isofile="/home/user/Desktop/ISO/crunchbang-10-20120207-i386.iso"
   loopback loop (hd0,3)$isofile
   linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz1 iso-scan/filename=$isofile toram=filesystem.squashfs findiso=$isofile boot=live config --
   initrd (loop)/live/initrd1.img
}

And I copied it from here: http://linux4netbook.blogspot.com.es/2012/08/due-crunchbang-e-un-pennino.html

..........

coteyr and akurczyk: I am already using rEFIt.

akurczyk: I don't have a separate /home partition and don't understand what you say.

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  • Any luck with this, I got to where you are at exactly trying to boot crunchbang from usb.
    – Pykler
    Apr 29, 2013 at 21:58

3 Answers 3

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You can't boot mac from grub2 using BIOS mode, and linux won't wok well in EFI mode on a MBP. So booting mac from grub2 is not going to work. refit is a good workaround. You can set it to boot linux first in the config file stored in /efi/refit/.

Your menu entry looks fine except grub has no concept of / or /home try something like

menuentry "Crunchbang" {
loopback loop (hd0,3)/home/user/Desktop/ISO/crunchbang-10-20120207-i386.iso
linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz1 options=here
initrd (loop)/live/initrd1.img

}

This is not an answer to any of your questions, it is what you wrote.

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So here is what worked for me, livecd wise

menuentry "CrunchBang - Live" {
 set isofile='/iso/crunchbang-11-20130119-i686.iso'
 loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
 linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz initrd=/live/initrd.img iso-scan/filename=$isofile toram=filesystem.squashfs findiso=$isofile boot=live config --
 initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

Got the text installer to sort of work (it fails mounting the cdrom) with the following:

menuentry "CrunchBang Install" {
 isofile = "/iso/crunchbang-11-20130119-i686.iso"
 loopback loop $isofile
 linux (loop)/install/vmlinuz iso-scan/filename=$isofile toram=filesystem.squashfs findiso=$isofile quiet file=/install/crunchbang.cfg
 initrd (loop)/install/initrd.gz
}
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  • 1
    this is working fine for me Mar 20, 2015 at 17:17
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If You have a separate home partition you should use patch without /home and number of the home partition.

I don't know if it is possible to boot OS X from Grub. OS X isn't like Windows. It uses EFI instead of MBR to boot. Grub is using MBR too.

You can use rEFIt to create a boot menu with Mac and Linux.

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

This is not an answer to any of your questions. It is what was done in the laptop you are talking about.

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