Installing BackTrack 3 Final to an Intel Mac

[macpentester]

I know that there have been several threads created about installing BT3 Final to a Mac, but I tried three times unsuccessfully, but the fourth time I got it done. I have borrowed much of the information that I will be sharing from the following people: jeroenimo, Action discrete, Super n00b, and pureh@te.
FYI before I get started, I installed BT onto an Intel Mac Mini. And as always BACKUP YOUR HARD DRIVE (that means make an image of the Macintosh HD if you need to restore it, which I did the first time I messed up, but then I realized that I hadn't deleted data, just messed rEFIt up beyond recognition!)
I did not make a swap partition because I heard that I did not need to since I had a gig of RAM.
I am skipping the swap part because I did not need it (so have at least a gig of RAM), so if anyone needs my help on that I think that I am not of much assistance because I tried that and it did not work out for me.
Let's get started:


Make a 5 gig boot camp partition.
Download and install rEFIt, making sure that you read the documentation extensively so that you know it like the back of your hand.
Insert the BT3 Final CD.
Restart your computer (for me rEFIt did not show up the first time, so restart again and it will appear).
Select the rEFIt partition tool and make sure that you carefully read the tables and then sync them.
Boot the LiveCD of BackTrack (choose VESA KDE immediately).
Once you get to the desktop, open up a shell.

fdisk /dev/sda

Hit p
You should see the Boot Camp partition as sda3 (it will say something like W95 FAT).
If you only have OS X on your drive then you will see an EFI partition and an "unknown" partition (which is OS X).
Hit t.

Partition number (1-3):

Hit 3.

Hex code (type L to list codes):

Hit 83.
Hit w.
Now this part is important, make sure that the following command works (it should just act as if nothing happened, like you hit enter. To check if it worked successfully, type "mount" without the quotes at the Konsole).

umount /dev/sda3

Now it's time to make the filesystem.

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda3

Now we install BackTrack.

mkdir /mnt/backtrack
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/backtrack/
mkdir /mnt/backtrack/boot/
cp --preserve -R /{bin,dev,home,pentest,root,usr,etc,lib,opt,sbin,var} /mnt/backtrack/
mkdir /mnt/backtrack/{mnt,proc,sys,tmp}
mount --bind /dev/ /mnt/backtrack/dev/
mount -t proc proc /mnt/backtrack/proc/
cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/backtrack/boot/

That was pureh@te's code modified in one way, we did not have to make a root or swap partition.
Finally we get to editing the lilo.conf file.

chroot /mnt/backtrack/ /bin/bash
nano /etc/lilo.conf

Now here is my lilo.conf file:

lba32
boot = /dev/sda3
prompt
timeout=60
change-rules
reset
vga=791
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda3
label = BT3

Now we are ready to execute lilo.

lilo -v

Now we exit the chroot environment and we reboot the system.

exit
reboot

If something goes wrong right off the bat that means you were not very careful in checking each of these commands entered.
When I installed it (which just so happened to be about two hours ago), I was having trouble with rEFIt so I did not trust it, which meant that I used the Boot Camp boot menu to choose the LiveCD before i installed it, but that was because I had messed up my other three times. So what I did was first try the Boot Camp menu, which did not work (i selected Windows, because I only had Mac and Linux on it), so then I tried rebooting and using rEFIt, which worked! However, I played around with BackTrack and then I rebooted it and I could not get back in to it. The solution was to boot into OS X and reboot from there and then boot into rEFIt.
If you have a lot of trouble with this, then delete the partition with Boot Camp Assistant and start over from the beginning.

Hopefully this helps all the other people out there like me!

[LeeRock]

I started with a fresh 5GB partition using Boot Camp, copy and pasted each command from this page then rebooted into OS X with no problems.
When I rebooted the rEFit menu had three options: OS X, Boot Linux from HD, Boot Linux from Partition 3.
Selecting either Linux option would give me a screen full of "99 99 99".

[macpentester]

Well, I think that the commands must be verified because your computer is different and it may have a different partition number. I don't think copying all of the commands very fast is a good idea. I don't know what to say except to delete the partition with bootcamp and sync the tables and then start over from the top.

[balmung135]

Great post! worked flawlessly. you should keep writing guides for bt3 on the macbook. i need them

[toohxc]

Well I followed your guide and it worked great...

Edit:
Well I hit the alt/option key at the boot sound and it brought up rEFIt and displayed both OSX and BT3, but when I select BT3, the little penguin just stares me in the face...

The partitions are sync'd according to rEFIt and look to be correct. So it might be my lilo.conf maybe?
Mine looks just like yours

lba32
boot = /dev/sda3
prompt
timeout=60
change-rules
reset
vga=791
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda3
label = BT3

[macpentester]

Originally Posted by toohxc

Well I followed your guide and it worked great...

Edit:
Well I hit the alt/option key at the boot sound and it brought up rEFIt and displayed both OSX and BT3, but when I select BT3, the little penguin just stares me in the face...

The partitions are sync'd according to rEFIt and look to be correct. So it might be my lilo.conf maybe?
Mine looks just like yours

lba32
boot = /dev/sda3
prompt
timeout=60
change-rules
reset
vga=791
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda3
label = BT3

Well that happened to me when I first installed but a boot into OS X and reboot from there fixed it for me. If that solves the problem then in the future just always reboot from OS X if the penguin is just sitting there.

[toohxc]

Originally Posted by macpentester

Well that happened to me when I first installed but a boot into OS X and reboot from there fixed it for me. If that solves the problem then in the future just always reboot from OS X if the penguin is just sitting there.

Well it works now (am currently posting from it) i redid the lilo.conf and I might have messed up the first time but its works now... Thanks for the great write-up!

[WinstonSmith]

Ugh, I keep getting :

Reading boot sector from /dev/sda3
Fatal: creat /boot/boot.0800: Read-only file system




any ideas?