mactel-support team mailing list archive

[Mikael Strom <mikael@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, sorry for late reply. I noted that many instructions found on the net
fail to suggest use of GPT partition for USB boot on Mac. The USB creator
in Ubuntu typically repartition USB drives to MBR which does not work on
all (most?) Macs when booting in EFI mode. However, if a USB disk is
correctly formatted to FAT16 on a GPT partitioned USB disk, USB disc
creator in Ubuntu will install without erasing the drive and thus keep the
GPT. The above concern EFI booting only.

Another thing that is confusing for Ubuntu users is the "+mac" images,
which for the latest few releases is a worse choice than the standard
images (+mac have EFI boot removed and relies on BIOS emulation). I read
quite a few threads of users who get stuck with BIOS emulation issues when
using the "+amd" images. I think Debian is better of in that sense(?).

Finally, I think many issues arise from the dual GPU's on Pro's. I need
some "outb xxx yyy" in /etc/grub.d/00_xxx to enable the right GPU on my Pro
5,2. I found no other working solution to select the 9400 GPU.

Mac is quite tricky overall to use with Linux, I think mostly due to the
small user base and the resulting lack of resources. I mostly use VM's for
Linux on Mac, but some things won't work so I'm still booting booting Linux
occasionally :-)

Hope this is valuable information.
On Apr 13, 2014 9:22 PM, "Israel" <israel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  It seems like the hfs-bless utility should be in the repos.  I wonder if
> Thibaut can successfully get this into Debian.
> I would like for things to be a bit easier for Mac, as it seems everything
> is so very difficult to do sometimes :)
> Thanks for this e-mail this is really good info!!
>
> On 04/03/2014 05:50 PM, Jason Heeris wrote:
>
>  Hi Thibaut,
>
>  I actually have successfully gotten my Mac Mini 6,1 to boot via Grub 2. I
> used these instructions:
>
>  http://glandium.org/blog/?p=2830
>
>  ...adapted for my machine. Note that I don't dual boot: it's Ubuntu only.
>
>  I also created a PPA for the hfs-bless utility here:
>
>  https://launchpad.net/~detly/+archive/mactel-utils<https://launchpad.net/%7Edetly/+archive/mactel-utils>
>
>  ...and the packaging source is here:
>
>  https://github.com/detly/mactel-boot
>
>  Let me know if you have any questions :)
>
>  — Jason Heeris
>
>
>
> On 3 April 2014 07:52, Israel <israel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>   On 04/01/2014 07:18 AM, Thibaut Paumard wrote:
>>
>>  Dear Ubuntu Mactel team members,
>>
>> We have created a [1]team at Debian with the same goal as yours,
>> although it does seem that we have much less man-power than you do. The
>> primary purpose of this mail is to introduce ourselves.
>>
>> Ideally, I would like to incorporate all the nice work that you do into
>> Debian.
>>
>> I have a specific question for you: I am trying to package everything
>> necessary to configure macbooks with hybrid graphics to boot in EFI
>> mode. Do you have any experience with this? I personally [2]succeeded
>> rather well, but in a very hacky manner which cannot be packaged as
>> such. Did you manage it better in Ubuntu?
>>
>>  [1] https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-mactel/
>>  [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741438
>>
>> Kind regards, Thibaut.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>  Hi Thibaut,
>>
>> I personally have not had success using Grub and EFI... I actually had to
>> use rEFInd from MacOSX in order to get to Ubuntu.  But, my machine is
>> older, and does not have hybrid graphics, only nvidia.
>>
>> I would really like to figure out how to use Grub2 as the main boot
>> mechanism... but I would also like to use the nouveau drivers and still
>> suspend/resume.  :)
>> I have a 3,1 Macbook so if you would like me to test something on it I
>> would be glad to help if you need.
>> I would also like to circumvent using rEFInd and use only Grub2-efi if
>> possible
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
>
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>