I've made a little bit of progress trying to get my MacBook Pro 5,1 to boot a live version of Linux. I found
this web site.
It contained a zipped file that I downloaded. Using Disk Utility, I created a GUID partition on a thumb drive and formatted it with a FAT16 file system. I then extracted the contents of the zip file to that drive.
When I booted the computer, the rEFIt boot loader would recognize the thumb drive and allow me to selected for booting. This got me into a GRUB menu where I could attempt to select from various Linux operating system and try to boot them. Unfortunately, none of the items in the menu would actually boot I'd get two lines of text on the screen and then nothing would happen.
I used the contents of zip file, and the contents from the live ISO image I have from the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 11.04 to try and create my own GRUB menu that would attempt to boot the live image. I met with similar results as the original zip file configuration. I'm not sure how useful it is; here is what printed on the screen when I tried to boot:
[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x3800, size=0x44c350]
[Initrd, addr=0x4f33b000, size=0xcc49b3]
The original zip file configuration had an efi directory with a boot sub directory in it. Within that boot directory were two executable files bootia32.efi, and bootx64.efi. These would show up in the rEFIt boot loader. I got an error message when I choose bootia32.efi, however bootx64.efi would display the GRUB menu. There was a file called grub.cfg which contained these contents:
Code:
set timeout=10
set default=0
menuentry "Debian Squeeze" {
fakebios
linux /efi/boot/linux-squeeze priority=low vga=normal video=efifb
initrd /efi/boot/initrd-squeeze.gz
}
menuentry "Debian Squeeze 64bit" {
fakebios
linux /efi/boot/linux-squeeze64 priority=low vga=normal video=efifb
initrd /efi/boot/initrd-squeeze64.gz
}
menuentry "Fedora Constantine" {
fakebios
linux /efi/boot/vmlinuz-constantine askmethod nomodeset xdriver=fbdev
initrd /efi/boot/initrd-constantine.img
}
menuentry "Fedora Constantine 64bit" {
fakebios
linux /efi/boot/vmlinuz-constantine64 askmethod nomodeset xdriver=fbdev
initrd /efi/boot/initrd-constantine64.img
}
menuentry "Ubuntu Karmic" {
fakebios
linux /efi/boot/linux-karmic priority=low vga=normal video=efifb
initrd /efi/boot/initrd-karmic.gz
}
menuentry "Ubuntu Karmic 64bit" {
fakebios
linux /efi/boot/linux-karmic64 priority=low vga=normal video=efifb
initrd /efi/boot/initrd-karmic64.gz
}
This is what I created for my grub.conf that I used:
Code:
set timeout=10
set default=0
menuentry "Try Ubuntu without installing" {
linux /efi/casper/vmlinuz file=/efi/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=${iso_path} quiet splash --
initrd /efi/casper/initrd.lz
}
My /efi/boot directory just had the bootx64.efi and grub.conf file in it. Aside from that I copied all the files and directories from the Ubuntu live image on into the efi directory except I excluded the boot directory from that image and a couple of .exe file which I figured where meant to be used on Windows.
I don't know how well I have explained everything here. Anyway I'm wondering what ideas anyone has about how I could possibly get a live image to boot seeing as how the system is booting to a GRUB menu off the thumb drive.
