China DOS Union

Partition C is the primary partition, installed with winxp as the active partition. Partition D is also a primary partition, installed with maxosx. No matter how I use grub to boot d:macosx, it just shows HFS+ partition error.

////////////////////////////
timeout 30
default 0

color black/light-gray light-gray/black
title 1. c: winxp
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

title 2. d:macosx
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1
/////////////////////

If changed to

////////////////////////////
timeout 30
default 0

color black/light-gray light-gray/black
title 1. c: winxp
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

title 2. d:macosx
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive //Add boot, it can start, but next time can only start from d, d has become activve
chainloader (hd0,1)+1
/////////////////////

It seems that GRUB doesn't say it supports macOS, or just use the built-in bootloader of macOS.

Originally posted by fujianabc at 2006-8-4 20:20:
It seems that GRUB doesn't say it supports macOS. It's better to use the bootloader that comes with macOS.

Then why can it boot by adding an extra makeactive? :P
Theoretically speaking
GRUB's chainloader is to load the sector chain loader, so it doesn't care about the partition format of the destination. As long as it reads the boot information and then hands it over to the BIOS to start, that's how I understand it. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

[ Last edited by paldos on 2006-8-5 at 15:22 ]

According to what you said, maybe macOS must boot from an active partition. The makeactive command activated this primary partition.

But with Power Quest Boot Magic, although I don't know its principle, it seems that it doesn't modify the active partition attribute either. It can achieve dual-booting of WinXP and macOS.