Sorry if this is a stupid question. I was trying to install a dual boot with OS X and this is what it told me:
“delete partition /dev/sda1”
As far as I can tell, this means it wants to delete OS X. On my mac’s terminal, the linux partition is “disk0s3”. Am I correct to assume that I should be custom partitioning in the OpenSUSE installer and have it create all its partitions out of sda3 only? Thanks for any help.
sda would be the first disk so don’t let it thrash it if you have another disk to install on. When I install another OS on my Mac I generally remove the OS X disk to avoid any problems during the installation.
After the install of OpenSuse is finished, put back the OS X disk, hold the ‘Alt’ key on the keyboard when booting and EFI will show you all available boot drives. You can select to boot OS X or Linux from there.
I’m sorry I don’t understand what you mean by remove the OS X disk. I’m afraid to do anything to OS X as I don’t have the original install disk available and so have no way to restore my system from a backup if anything goes wrong. I googled a bit and found this:
Selling Free Software for a Living: My Mac-SUSE Journey - Part 1
Which seems to be telling me my instinct to override the installer’s default settings is correct?
I thought you could remove the physical disk (hard drive) that houses OS X from the Mac. I have an old Mac Pro and that’s what I do. From what I understood, you’re installing OpenSuse on a separate hard drive, right?
No, I’m installing it on a partition of my Macbook Pro’s internal hard drive. SOrry for being unclear.
OK, definitely stay away from sda1 (EFI partition) and sda2 (OS X) partition. How did you repartition? Did you use Boot Camp? You should use Boot Camp to create the partition for OpenSuse and then install there. Do not let OpenSuse do anything except format that partition Boot Camp will create.
Don’t have time to reexplain the method in details but if you search the forum a little bit, you’ll find several posts on that topic. As stated by 4dbv, do not let openSUSE do anything. In openSUSE setup, you should choose the option “Create Partition Setup” - “expert mode” and nothing else and just select the partition you prepared under Mac OS X. Btw you don’t need Boot Camp. Boot Camp was meant for Windows/OS X dualboot. Shrinking your Mac OS X partition and creating another one for Linux is sufficient. Pay extra care that YasT doesn’t write a generic boot code to MBR - it would ruin the EFI partition. Take a look at the pictures here: (net-)installation on a multi-boot system: MBR overwrite](http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/453540-net-installation-multi-boot-system-mbr-overwrite.html#post2285422) .
I used Disk Utility over Boot Camp anyway. It allows more control over size than dragging a slider. Thanks for the advice. I’m going to do all that, but wait until my OS X restore disks get mailed to me from home just in case something goes horribly wrong.