rEFIt is an open source project.
[url=http://refit.sourceforge.net/]

They have a bootable CD based on HFS file system.

I made an iso of this CD and have used the usual lines in menu.lst to boot this .iso

Since Grub4Dos does not support HFS at this time,

perhaps there is an intermediate step(s) like a bootloader to call up first that then points to this .iso

I have tried tboot using:

title rEFIt
find --set-root /ubcd/custom/rEFIt0.14.iso
map /ubcd/custom/rEFIt0.14.iso (hd32)
map --hook
kernel /memdisk
initrd=/boot/tboot

Also, chainloader /boot/tboot

no luck yet. I'm doing this in Virtual Box but also have burn a CD to test directly on a mac.

Ideas welcomed indeed...thank you.

It is not possible to boot rEFIt with MEMDISK or grub4dos.
The rEFIt ISO is not a BIOS bootable Eltorito CD (which format is understood by MEMDISK and grub4dos), but a CD format only bootable on a Mac which uses EFI (the CD has hfsplus as filesystem).

_________________
Download Ultimate Boot CD v5.0: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Use Parted Magic for handling all partitioning task: http://partedmagic.com/

Although this is not the most adecuate section of the forum for this topic...

That CD comes not only for MACs, but also as an ISO download, so you don't need to make a new ISO. Just download the ISO from their site.



Your problem is not so much HFS(plus), but (U)EFI. The "rEFIT" tool is NOT for BIOS-based systems.
From http://refit.sourceforge.net/

That means, at least in theory, (U)EFI and no need of a special bootloader.



Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Virtualization_support

In addition, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Boot_manager

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Operating_systems

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elilo#elilo

GRUB version for EFI: http://packages.debian.org/sid/grub-efi

HTH.

Thank you very much for input and links. I actually did down load their iso. Just to be clear.
So this is interesting indeed. I had wondered about linux booting EFI. I will study this. Thanks again.

Ok, so if I wanted to do this, I would need to extract the file/folder tree from the iso and put it in the root of the boot CD build. Then I could start it from isolinux via a call to the .efi boot file.

Are you asking? Or are you stating that your described method actually works?

Hello Ady,

I'm thinking out loud on. However, how would you go about this?

I was thinking it would be better not to have to lay out the entire directory from this iso into the root of the CD. What about extracting the iso into memory, and then executing it from there? Or re-compressing the image into a format Linux understands, so it can be executed once called.



Thanks.

I think you need to read the rEFIt documentation (from 2007) at their website. It is supposed to be much simpler than that. The docs include install from CD, booting either the CD or another already-installed OS, and so on. So, no need to extract/expand the ISO.

The key here is to understand what is (U)EFI, which already includes a boot loader. There are several boot managers somehow compatible, and I already posted links to them.

So to test this in VirtualBox, you MUST set your VM to use EFI (in the "system" properties of your VM), and to understand that the OS needs to be EFI-aware.

The links I already provided state several examples of Apple-based OSs that should work with EFI, in addition to some links to Fedora, Gentoo and Debian (and even some versions of Windows).

The CD of rEFIt is supposed to be added to the boot menu, and the rEFIt documentation also explains how to display the boot menu (command key related).

Just take all the links I posted, and read.