Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dfacto
@hueythecat,jebus I believe there was some discussion already in this thread about reinstalls as I had to go through this process. Have looked at this?
Hi dfacto,
Actually the post of hueythecat's that I responded to is such a very old discussion but i was looking for more details about what he did since its not clear from his post. I did a search on the thread for grub related stuff and his was the main relevant post i found but I haven't tried reading all 42 pages... I will look through the thread more but since I found huey's post I was hoping he could tell me what he did (since he seemed to have the same problem). If you're referring to your gdisk post I tried that and it let rEFIT resync but didn't help with booting...
thanks!
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
I've been going through the full thread trying to find relevant advice but haven't yet hit it. I'm guessing my problem comes from having grub installed on /dev/sda (instead of /dev/sda5) so was thinking of trying to remove it using dd:
# dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1
a command I found from:
http://linux.koolsolutions.com/2009/...os-bootloader/
But since mac's use EFI and have weird setup I'm not sure the above command is correct. Anyone know if this is a Good or Bad Idea (tm)?
Ideally I'd like to avoid wiping my OS X install since I've already spent some time installing some programs on it (I had to get some work done while trying to get linux installed ;->).
thanks!
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
I would not do that. That kind of dd magic just seems like a recipe for disaster, although its quite possible that it would work.
Have you read this thread?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1849373
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dfacto
Thanks, that's very useful but it hasn't solved my problem :-( I created a usb-boot for faster "livecd" access and chrooted but for some reason aptitude is not installed and apt-get behaves strangely. It let me uninstall grub but not reinstall it. So I just did another install (with a usb-stick and the fast ssd this is not even that painful -- its probably the 4th time I've tried).
Unfortunately this got me nowhere. After reinstalling grub gave me a giberrish screen (ASCII chars) and then when I rebooted again just the blinking cursor. refit wouldn't touch the MBR so I went back to OS X and did the whole gdisk thing. Strangely, and this should somehow be my problem, when I go back to refit after created a hMBR in gdisk refit wants to overwrite my MBR. It shoes the hMBR which I created with a bootable 4th partition (/dev/sda5) but tells me it must be updated. It wants to update it with an MBR with /dev/sda4 (my swap) instead of /dev/sda5 (my root). Morevoer it wants to set the HFS+ (OS X main) partition as bootable. This must somehow be related to my problem but I don't understand why. Will try reinstalling refit and see if that helps...
Otherwise I'm kind of going in circles...re-installing ubuntu doesn't seem to be changing anything.
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
So I re-installed switching my swap and root partition so now root is /dev/sda4 and swap /dev/sda5. When I run gdisk and then refit the latter gives me a more sane result...it just keeps the hMBR I setup in gdisk. So that seems like some progress. But I still get the blinking cursor of frustration and still have two penguins on my refit screen. Do I need to try re-installing grub again?
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
Re-installed grub (purge/installed packages), ran gdisk and still this blinking cursor. I'm beginning to think it will never go away...
Any ideas?
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
Quote:
Originally Posted by
diafygi
I installed Oneiric on my 4,2 today according to the
wiki, but I am getting an error in post-install-oneiric.sh on line 404 (see my
post)...
Same here. Fresh install Oneric (Official release), mba4,2 13" getting
Quote:
Making xmodmap run after resume (custom keys).
./post-install-oneiric.sh: line 404: syntax error near unexpected token `fi'
./post-install-oneiric.sh: line 404: `fi'
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mike909
Same here. Fresh install Oneric (Official release), mba4,2 13" getting
Same also here. Oneric official amd 64 desktop install cd on mba 4,2 13"
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
Ok, I managed to get grub to work!!!
I tried the instructions on this thread which probably got me part way but ultimately didn't work:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1849373
What finally worked was creating a BIOS grub partition as explained here:
http://www.rodsbooks.com/ubuntu-efi/index.html
Thanks a lot dfacto and srs5694!
To give more details:
I rebooted into OS X, started gdisk and deleted my linux root and swap partition. I then created just a BIOSgrub partition of 128 Mb size as explained in the second link above. I then booted from the live-install CD and used gparted to create a root and a swap partition. Then I continued installing on the live-install as normal and, at the ubuntu installer partition screen I chose /dev/sda as my grub partition (again as in the second link above). When I rebooted I tried refit gptsync but it wouldn't touch the partition. I did _not_ run gdisk to fix this but just tried booting into linux (there should only be one penguin on the refit menu) and that just gave me the gray penguin screen. I rebooted and tried again and this time I got the grub menu!!
There's still the little issue that my MBR in refit is wrong (i.e. not synced and refit won't touch it) and I haven't blessed the disk. I don't know whether I should try to fix these things as I now have a booting install and don't wanna risk messing that up. Anyone know if there's a risk or reason to fix my MBR or bless if I can boot?
I think it would be good to link to srs5694's page from the wiki. If no one else wants to do this I can later once I've gotten my system up.
I'm on fighting with the install script...
Re: MacBookAir4,1 & MacBookAir4,2 (MBA 2011) support
Quote:
Originally Posted by
charlies8282
Same also here. Oneric official amd 64 desktop install cd on mba 4,2 13"
Yeah I'm having the same problem. But even on the way to this error the script is giving all sorts of weird errors. Even though my laptop (13" macbook 4,2) is identified as a MacBookAir4,2 the script is giving a weird error, not accepting it. It then gives a few other (non-fatal) errors before giving the final error quoted by charlies and mike. Also, after the script ran and failed my fans just went crazy and stayed that way until I shut down. Anyone else have the same?
I think I'm just gonna try to manually redo what the script does to see what's causing the problem.