Boot mac Mini 1.1 from memory stick

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I've had an iMac for over a year and got an Air when the new ones came out several months ago.
I have an old mini with Snow Leopard on it that has been sitting in a closet since I purchased an iMac There is a problem with the CD/DVD drive that I didn't want to fix ($$). I'd like to load Ubuntu on it from a memory stick so that I can learn some LINUX for work related tasks but the memory stick does not show up as a boot-able device even though I created it on the mini.

Is there anyway around this? (I do have instructions on how to do this over a LAN but it involves loading a server and other software on the other computer and I don't want to do this as it will probably take a long time and it's complicated.)

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dtravis7


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Since it has Snow Leopard I take it this Mini is an old Intel Mini? The Intel Macs all boot from a USB drive. I have made a bootable USB Flash drive with Linux, OSX, Haiku and others using the DD command from the terminal.

How are you putting the image on the flash drive? You have to use an image that works with a flash drive and make it bootable.

let me find you the URL on how to do it with DD from the terminal. That has always worked for me.

Edit: This works for me here. Read it CAREFULLY.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/How to install Ubuntu on MacBook using USB Stick
 
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I've had an iMac for over a year and got an Air when the new ones came out several months ago.
It's an older Intel Mini. Your link is the one I followed but I did not strip .dmg from the image filename (since the instructions are unclear on this).

I repeated the process stripping the .dmg from the image file name and got the same result: everything looks good except that when I boot with the stick in the slot only the HD shows as a boot disk. When I use diskutil info the report says that it's not boot-able (although it mounts automatically).

My memory stick is a Kingston Elite 2GB. I presume that it is formatted as FAT.
 
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I've had an iMac for over a year and got an Air when the new ones came out several months ago.
I re-partitioned the memory stick with a MAC partition, used dd to put the image file on the stick, and got info for it (/dev/disk1). It lists as not bootable and rebooting with the stick in a USB slot confirms that.
 

dtravis7


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There is something that is being done wrong somewhere. Are you sure that the kingston drive does not have a hidden say U3 boot partition? The Boot partition for Linux has to be the first partition on the drive. If anything else is there like a U3 partition, it will not boot.
 
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Why do you want Ubuntu? It'd be like driving your car using your push bike attached by a piece of string.

You have BSD-based UNIX. Do you have wifi on the mini, to share another CD/DVD drive? What about target disk with Firewire to give it a jump-start - just hardware sharing.

If you have a LAN hub, even if it's slow (10Mb/sec), all you need to do is look at your other machine, and enable file sharing in SysPrefs --> Sharing... including CD/DVD, select a directory, such as Volumes/HD/Users/Public

No need for server software

Linux is worse than Windoze
 

dtravis7


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Um, the OP clearly said why he wants Linux. To learn it. If he wanted OSX he would leave it be. The OP wants Linux on the Mini for a reason and a very good one. Lets keep it on topic please and try and help.

You can say what you want about Linux, but it's far from being Worse than Windows.
 

dtravis7


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To the OP, What exact Image of Ubuntu are you trying to install on that flash drive? Can you give us a URL? If you do, I will grab it and take a spare 2GB Flash Drive here and install it and see if I can get it to boot on my First Generation Intel Mini.
 
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I've had an iMac for over a year and got an Air when the new ones came out several months ago.
I don't believe that there is another partition, such as U3. I have the mini at work. My LAN for this consists of one other machine with Ubuntu SE. I cannot connect the machine to the corporate LAN as It wouldn't work and it would be detected. It's a firing offence. There's a non work WiFI available but for some reason the mini accepts my password but isn't assign an ip address. So all I have to work with is the USB port. I have no USB optical drive and have found none here.

I'm willing to purchase a new 2 or 4 GB drive if need be.

The Ubuntu ISO I downloaded to another machine, copied to the USB thumb drive, and then copied to the MAC is 11.04 64 bit from Download | Ubuntu
I converted it to an IMG file and have tried to use dd to install it both with and with out the .dmg stripped from the file name. It all appears to work but the resulting device, /dev/disk1 always shows as not bootable. I also had the mac create a mac partition and repeated the steps.

Should I try to remove the partition and use dd on it. Not sure if it will let me do that.

The reason I'm doing this is that I am attempting to write some software that will run on 3 LINUX headless LINUX machines and drive some sensors. The 4th machine will host supervisory software, server software, and the user GUI. The assembly will reside on an aircraft and communicate through a tiny LAN. I have a note book that I salvaged and installed Ubuntu SE on but need a second for testing and there are no more here that I can use. I'm not wedded to Ubuntu but that's what I have right now.

Thanks to all of you for responding.
 
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I've had an iMac for over a year and got an Air when the new ones came out several months ago.
I think I see a problem. The ISO file for Server has "amd" in it so I guess it's not for Intel. I didn't notice the complete name. The server for 10.xxx is the same.
 

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Linux Ubuntu server 11.04 download is the same for an Intel CPU and AMD CPU. Are you downloading the 32 bit or 64 bit version? If your Mini is a Core Duo, it won't run the 64 bit version of Ubuntu.
 
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I've had an iMac for over a year and got an Air when the new ones came out several months ago.
32 bit doesn't work either, sigh. Could it be the old thumb drive?

(Is that a B26, chscag?)
 

dtravis7


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I was going to suggest possibly the thumb drive. I owned one Kingston 2GB that out of the wrapper had issues. No OS would boot from it and some computers refused to read it no matter how it was formatted. I gave it to my neighbor and replaced it with a 4GB San Disk and the issues went away. If nothing else works, worth a try.
 
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I've had an iMac for over a year and got an Air when the new ones came out several months ago.
No Joy

Just purchased a 4 GB SanDIsk and installed the image using both my Mac and Ubunto machines to install the image onto the new thumb drive. When I press option on restart the only drive that shows is the HD.

It must be the computer.

:(
 

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