[Novalug] MAC mini PPC and Ubuntu

[Michael Quaintance]

I think you're actually running into problems with the Mac's GUID partition
table and MBR partition table being out of sync.

I was messing around last night with trying to put Linux on an Intel Mac
Mini and I could install but not boot (I know that's not the same problem
as you are facing). The following page seems to have some useful
information:

http://sowerbutts.com/linux-mac-mini/

Basically, it seems to boil down to the old advice of use the native
partition editor (i.e. Apple's Disk Utility) to create your partitions (not
gPartEd) and then don't change your partitions as part of the Linux
install. Whilst the partition management on commodity PCs is now as good or
better than using Windows to achieve the same results, on the Mac platform
we seem to be back in the old days. Probably just due to a lack of eyeballs
and interested coders for that configuration.

Hope this helps.

-Michael

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Mark Smith <mark at winksmith.com> wrote:

> the installer doesn't recognize or won't even display the disk drive if
> it has the wrong partition type on it?  i have never observed a debian
> installer do that, but i've also never installed ubuntu/debian on a
> mac either.  oddly, i didn't see any references in google to someone
> else having the same problems which made me think there was something
> special in my case.
>
> On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 03:59:45PM -0500, Mark A. Metz wrote:
> > I think you'll have to remove the Apple OS partition table with the live
> image or GParted first.
> > I think it will work unpartitioned.
> >
> > Mark Smith <mark at winksmith.com> wrote:
> >
> > i tried an 11.10 install last night. after a couple of false starts
> > i was able to boot from a usb key and everything looked keen until i
> > reached the disk partition section. no hard disks were represented.
> > i booted back to macosx and lo and behold my disk was there so obviously
> > it's missing a driver or something. it's a standard ata disk bus so
> > i'm not sure why it failed. google revealed nothing interesting.
> >
> > anyway, i'll give debian 6.0.3 a go tonight unless something else comes
> > to mind.
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 02:46:59PM +1300, Mark Smith wrote:
> > > Hey... I was gonna buy my daughter a smallish desktop computer for her
> > > room, but then i remembered that i had a MAC mini (one of the older
> > > PPC varieties). I had originally purchased it due to its size and
> > > noiselessness; both of these features will be helpful here too. It's
> > > not the latest and greatest, but for her needs it should be completely
> > > adequate.
> > >
> > > I looked it up for Ubuntu and it turns out that it's supported in a
> > > fashion. I have 32b PPC for 11.10 and 11.04. At least it's way better
> > > supported than by Apple!
> > >
> > > I found the right images to try and I found some documentation to help
> > > me along. Has anyone given this a go? or has some additional comments
> > > regarding this platform/os combination?
> >
> > --
> > Mark Smith
> > mark at winksmith.com
> > mark at tux.org
> > _____________________________________________
> >
> > Novalug mailing list
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> > http://calypso.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/novalug
> >
>
> --
> Mark Smith
> mark at winksmith.com
> mark at tux.org
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