On Tuesday, April 24, 2012 05:40:50 PM Gé Weijers wrote: > Any way you'd like. CentOS can't BOOT from a GPT partitioned device if > the BIOS does not support it, but you can certainly use GPT on > non-boot devices. While I can't confirm for a drive larger than 2TB, it is not true that you can't boot a Linux kernel close to the one in CentOS using a GRUB similar to the one in CentOS from a GPT partitioned disk. People are doing this all the time using bootloaders like Chameleon and PCEFI (used typically to build a 'hackintosh'), dual-booting with Mac OS X on semi-generic PC hardware. Here's what the GPT looks like for such a system, dual-booting Fedora 14 and Mac OS X (using gdisk): [root at localhost ~]# gdisk -l /dev/sda GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.1 Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT. Disk /dev/sda: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 1BE631E1-4E0C-4D33-9108-9F7E5EBB411A Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134 Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries Total free space is 525717 sectors (256.7 MiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition 2 409640 386210423 184.0 GiB AF00 Flopdinger 3 386473984 402104319 7.5 GiB 8200 LinuxSwap 4 402104320 484024319 39.1 GiB 0700 F14 5 484024320 861511679 180.0 GiB 0700 LinuxHome 6 861511680 976510983 54.8 GiB AF00 Interchange [root at localhost ~]# Using parted -l: [root at localhost ~]# parted -l Model: ATA ST9500420AS (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 500GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot, hidden 2 210MB 198GB 198GB hfs+ Flopdinger hidden 3 198GB 206GB 8003MB linux-swap(v1) LinuxSwap 4 206GB 248GB 41.9GB ext3 F14 5 248GB 441GB 193GB ext3 LinuxHome hidden 6 441GB 500GB 58.9GB hfsx Interchange hidden [root at localhost ~]# Installation of the GRUB bootloader is simple; it's installed to /dev/sda4 instead of /dev/sda (since Chameleon is sitting in the MBR and in the EFI system partition): [root at localhost ~]# cat /boot/grub/menu.lst # grub.conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg. # root (hd0,3) # kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda4 # initrd /boot/initrd-[generic-]version.img #boot=/dev/sda4 default=0 timeout=9 splashimage=(hd0,3)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora (2.6.35.14-106.fc14.x86_64) root (hd0,3) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.14-106.fc14.x86_64 ro root=UUID=8cda63bd-9eed-4a65-a834-138df5dca1a2 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 rdblacklist=nouveau initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.14-106.fc14.x86_64.img Booting a generic BIOS PC from GPT is a solved problem, just not in the 'usual' Linux space.