OS X bootloaders

open source:

boot-132 is a bootloader made by Apple (as part of their transition to Intel x86) to boot normal desktop PCs that have a BIOS and not EFI. On normal Macs, which have EFI (and not a BIOS), the EFI itself contains the bootloader needed to boot the OS so this file is not necessary.

boot-132/DFE 146 is a modified/improved version of the original boot-132 mentioned above, specifically optimized to be able to boot the full retail OS X disc on an ordinary desktop PC.

chameleon is a fork of DFE's boot-132 aimed to provide extra functionality, the current version as of the time of this writing is 1.0.11, with 1.0.12 being much anticipated with a boatload of fun new features (including graphical booting similar to Boot Camp on a real Mac, and larger than 64k size, so many more potential improvements!

Not open source:

PC_EFI v9 is basically chameleon with one extra bug (potential hard drive destruction) and one extra feature (deep sleep aka hibernate support) personally not recommended.


Linux bootloaders

GRUB is very easily configured to boot OS X. Example given below with a dual-boot Linux (Ubuntu) & OS X system. All that's required is to edit the menu.lst ( /boot/grub/menu.lst) to point towards the OS X partition (which must be primary, not logical) and OS X's bootloader (boot-132) will take care of the rest, this is done in the same chainloading fashion as with Windows on a Linux/Windows dual-boot system.



Lilo is outdated and outside the scope of this explanation.


Windows bootloaders

Vista:
EasyBCD is a boot configuration tweaker for Windows Vista using the new BCD boot process. Windows Vista and above (Win7) no longer use the boot.ini/NTLDR (NT Loader) system of booting up, they use BCD (Boot Configuration Data), and EasyBCD is free software for configuring Vista to work with the OS X (& Linux if necessary) bootloader.

XP:
Chain0 is a file located in /usr/standalone/i386 containing the x86 bootsector for Darwin. If you copy it over to the root of your Windows system partition (usually C:), it can be used to boot Mac OS X through Windows XP's boot selector by adding a line to boot.ini.

Syslinux/Isolinux has long been popular as a primary booter for usb sticks & cd-roms, although they may soon be superseded by chameleon.

both syslinux/isolinux & GRUB can be configured to use the "boot" file from a boot-132 variant as a multiboot kernel, even froma non-hfs filesystem. if extra kexts are to be loaded at boot time from an "alien" FS, then they are packaged in an image, typically called initrd.img

so in grub, loading kexts from initrd.img, menu.lst would look something like:


in isolinux.cfg (using multiboot.c32 as the primary multiboot kernel) the same thing looks a bit like:

A full list of boot-132 variants with links is a good idea.

PC_EFI 9 in cludes /Extra and DSDT.aml , as well as deep sleep

chameleon/mackerintel supports /Extra & DSDT.aml

gah, no mention of the one i released?

supports EFI partition, for great justice.

but tbh it sounds like xpc is going to blow them all away...

by all means add it! also see http://projectosx.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=116 which needs fleshing out (I might bug zef with it now that the 2rc1 thing has calmed down a bit)

What about Boot Think 1.1.0 it has a CD ROM drive inside?
This boot loader became popular in Croatia...

+1

but imho situation will change with the release of xpc gui this week.

Nice to have some of mine kind around...

Yes I think that xpc will do it right
But Boot think still deserve his place in all this

I had the whole week not the time to develop much further. But on it since two days now again. So i hope i will make goo progress. I hope i can give out an new build before my vacations (3 weeks) :/

Where are you hiding? On IRC?

That is to say, where can we get the latest version of XPC?

It almost worked for me last time I tried it, I'd like to test some more.

Not to bring up arguments, but lilo still is used in many Slackware based Linux distributions. To just mention it for the sole reason of saying it's outdated.. well that makes no sense. It's confusing whether it's insulting the bootloader or what. Either provide info about the bootloader or don't if you want to include it in a list.

Instructions for lilo.conf, let's say your HFS+ partition is /dev/sda2 - add this to the bottom of the conf file:


That's it.