MacLinux

[John F]

FWIW I run Ubuntu as a VMware virtual machine on my MacPro, iMac and Mac Air and it is effortless. With Tools installed I can even C & P between machines.

 

[leadfoot]

Could try narrowing the problem first by removing the hard drive by unplugging and leaving the dvd player in. Put snow leopard disk in and boot up to see if the mac osx setup is working as will act as a live dvd. Same with the iso for linux live. MAC OSX are from BSD stables another version of UNIX where Linux a different version of UNIX. Sound like the hard drive as you wrote before is now set for fully linux only /dev/sda linux swap.
1. Disconnect Hard drive and boot from live dvd from either to confirm if dvd player is okay.
2. If no joy you have a failing dvd player and not really noticed or needed a firmware upgrade.
3. if dvd is okay then you will need to format hardrive via the linux setup using gparted which you can split the drive in 4 partitions.
4 if still no joy from hard drive and dvd is okay the problem maybe the hard drive is failing pending on age
hope this helps

 

[RavingMac]

Since he has other Macs, he could also pull the HD from the MBP and put it in an external case to reformat and install OS X

 

[singleshot]

Some great suggestions, thanks for the replies.
Been working on this all night. Had to reinstall Snow Leopard on the Mini (forgot I had Lion on there).
I had to delete a recovery partition to get SL to load but finally got it. Then I pulled the hard drive out of the Macbook Pro, erased, formatted, partitioned it and loaded SL on it. While the HD was out of the MP, I tried the DVD install leadfoot suggested but no joy. But then, when the HD failed to boot after putting it back in the MP, I'm giving up for tonight, it's 2:30 in the morning and I am going to bed.
I'll see you all mañana.

 

[cwa107]

I've tested the Snow Leopard disk on my Mac Mini and it worked fine.

I loaded the 64 bit version of Mint via the optical drive on the Macbook pro, so I know it works.

Your machine is having a kernel panic when you go to boot it from that particular disc. The likely explanation is that either the EFI version for that model or the model itself was released subsequent to 10.6.0 and it needs a newer version.

Rather than screw around with what is now a deprecated OS X version, why don't you just upgrade it to Macericks?

 

[singleshot]

Your machine is having a kernel panic when you go to boot it from that particular disc. The likely explanation is that either the EFI version for that model or the model itself was released subsequent to 10.6.0 and it needs a newer version.

Rather than screw around with what is now a deprecated OS X version, why don't you just upgrade it to Macericks?

My 2010 Macbook Pro came with 10.5, I upgraded to 10.6
If it is a kernel panic, how to do fix that?

 

[singleshot]

Since he has other Macs, he could also pull the HD from the MBP and put it in an external case to reformat and install OS X

That is what I did last night. It would not boot in the laptop and when I plugged it into the Mini, it showed up as an "Install" disk.
I don't think that is what I want, right?

 

[cwa107]

My 2010 Macbook Pro came with 10.5, I upgraded to 10.6
If it is a kernel panic, how to do fix that?

Did you upgrade anything hardware-wise from new? For example, did you did you add memory? If so, try putting the factory memory back in - particularly if you didn't purchase the memory from a top tier vendor.

Aside from that, it's possible that Apple issued a firmware update along the way that rendered it incompatible with earlier versions,

Again, why not upgrade it to Mavericks? It's free - and with Apple likely dropping update support for 10.6 this year, you don't want to be running it at this point on an Internet-connected machine.

 

[singleshot]

I am running updates on Mini to bring it up to 10.6.8
Will use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a copy of the Mini HD and see if that works in the MBP.
Will post results.

 

[singleshot]

Did you upgrade anything hardware-wise from new? For example, did you did you add memory? If so, try putting the factory memory back in - particularly if you didn't purchase the memory from a top tier vendor.

Aside from that, it's possible that Apple issued a firmware update along the way that rendered it incompatible with earlier versions,

Again, why not upgrade it to Mavericks? It's free - and with Apple likely dropping update support for 10.6 this year, you don't want to be running it at this point on an Internet-connected machine.

I did upgrade the memory and the hard drive but that was months ago.

Up until the 23rd of this month (a scant 3 days ago), the only update I did not download and install was something about the Apple store.

 

[cwa107]

I did upgrade the memory and the hard drive but that was months ago.

Is it decent memory or cheap, no name crap? The latter can cause very unpredictable behavior.

Up until the 23rd of this month (a scant 3 days ago), the only update I did not download and install was something about the Apple store.

Like I said you may have picked up an EFI update (and it could have been years ago) that rendered it incompatible with versions earlier than 10.6.xxx.

And again, why beat yourself up over 10.6?

 

[singleshot]

The crisis is over. The CCC worked liked a champ. I'm updating with Time Machine as I type this.

Thanks to everyone who participated, I'm a novice at this (duh) but you've all been a big help educating me.

 

[MBP17•David]

It's good to hear you've sorted this out, just in case you decide to experiment with Ubuntu again, have a look at Full Circle magazine, scroll down to page 19, and you'll see a very informative article entitled 'Put Ubuntu on a Mac' - that should give you all the answers

 

[singleshot]

It's good to hear you've sorted this out, just in case you decide to experiment with Ubuntu again, have a look at Full Circle magazine, scroll down to page 19, and you'll see a very informative article entitled 'Put Ubuntu on a Mac' - that should give you all the answers

Thanks, David, this is the kind of stuff I need. You've just opened up a wealth of information to me. You must have read my mind because I have been thinking about starting a new thread "how to use Linux with OS X on a Mac"... I think this info has answered that.

I will post my results here.

 

[MBP17•David]

Glad I can help.