Ubuntu on MacBookPro - difficulties w partition tables

[cath0dez]

It's wonderful how computers are logical machines and you can just deduct why they do what they do.

</sarcasm>

What on earth is the Apple EFI doing when it loads a legacy os... it shouldn't _modify_ any data on hard drives, should it? Can you compare your GPT and MBR after and before booting with EFI? And maybe also the MBR bootloader data (the first 440 bytes)?

Did you mean changing the partitions in Linux, OSX or both?

I'm sorry but I do not have all of this documented. All I can tell you is that, in the event of rEFIt hanging on the penguin logo, you can use the Apple boot loader to boot to grub. Maybe rEFIt is pointing incorrectly to /sda3 and the Apple boot loader corrects the error and ponts to the proper grub partition...

It seems like the apple boot loader does a probe if anything changes from the last time it was ran - rEFIt doesn't seem to identify the correct partition when you run its sync command.

[MountainX]

I am running on an iMac, but I did run into the exact same situation as you. I use the following steps to get rEFIt working - it now either boots me straight into OSX or hands off to grub which takes me into Ubuntu.

*Lets assume that you already have free space on your hard drive and rEFIt installed and you can boot to the bootcamp loader by holding the option key. Also, read the whole guide first - if you just did an install, deleted the bios partition, and synced the tables in rEFIt you can jump ahead to step 7.

1. Boot to the lucid live CD/USB (I think you have to use bootcamp's loader on this one).

2. Use Gparted to delete the partitions from the last install. You may have to turn off the swap partition before it allows you to delete it (right click on the partition, swapoff).

3. Install to the largest continuous space/ Don't bother with any of the advanced options - grub is installed to to the ext4 partition by default. Just click through and fill out your user info and do the normal install.

4. DONT CHOOSE THE RESTART OPTION WHEN ITS FINISHED INSTALLING. You have already waited for the Live CD to boot once and you dont need to do it again.

5. Go back to Gparted. If you are dual booting OSX and went with the default install options the table should show:
/sda1=EFI,/sda2=NFTS+,/sda3=Bios (I think it has a bios flag on it), /sda4=ext4, /sda5=swap.

Delete /sda3. I don't know the exact reason why its there, but its going to cause the overlapping partition error in rEFIt if you leave it.

6. Now you can do a full shutdown. Go to rEFIt and sync the partition tables.

7. At this point (I think you have already gotten here once..) rEFIt is sync'ed but freezes on the penguin if you try to go straight to Ubuntu. Restart your computer and hold down option to go to the bootcamp loader. Ubuntu should show up as "Windows" on this page - boot it.

8. You should get to the grub prompt... yay. All you need to do know is let it boot into the GUI and shut down (don't resart or log out). Next time the computer boots to rEFIt click on the penguin and it will take you to grub. Any time you change your partition table you will need to use the bootcamp loader the first time, but from here out it should work.

Let me know if this gets you going. I tried to figure out the logic of this process in another thread - there has got to be an easier way. I cant see Ubuntu expecting the guy that bought his computer at a place called the "genuis bar" to be able to discern the dynamics of hybrid boot tables (no offense to mac users, I own two).

This is the only post in the whole thread that I understood.

I did understand enough from some of the other posts to gather that maybe deleting /sda3 isn't the best solution. But I also didn't see a single other suggested solution that looked approachable. So... what to do?

[mediamind]

I am running on an iMac, but I did run into the exact same situation as you. I use the following steps to get rEFIt working - it now either boots me straight into OSX or hands off to grub which takes me into Ubuntu.

*Lets assume that you already have free space on your hard drive and rEFIt installed and you can boot to the bootcamp loader by holding the option key. Also, read the whole guide first - if you just did an install, deleted the bios partition, and synced the tables in rEFIt you can jump ahead to step 7.

1. Boot to the lucid live CD/USB (I think you have to use bootcamp's loader on this one).

2. Use Gparted to delete the partitions from the last install. You may have to turn off the swap partition before it allows you to delete it (right click on the partition, swapoff).

3. Install to the largest continuous space/ Don't bother with any of the advanced options - grub is installed to to the ext4 partition by default. Just click through and fill out your user info and do the normal install.

4. DONT CHOOSE THE RESTART OPTION WHEN ITS FINISHED INSTALLING. You have already waited for the Live CD to boot once and you dont need to do it again.

5. Go back to Gparted. If you are dual booting OSX and went with the default install options the table should show:
/sda1=EFI,/sda2=NFTS+,/sda3=Bios (I think it has a bios flag on it), /sda4=ext4, /sda5=swap.

Delete /sda3. I don't know the exact reason why its there, but its going to cause the overlapping partition error in rEFIt if you leave it.

6. Now you can do a full shutdown. Go to rEFIt and sync the partition tables.

7. At this point (I think you have already gotten here once..) rEFIt is sync'ed but freezes on the penguin if you try to go straight to Ubuntu. Restart your computer and hold down option to go to the bootcamp loader. Ubuntu should show up as "Windows" on this page - boot it.

8. You should get to the grub prompt... yay. All you need to do know is let it boot into the GUI and shut down (don't resart or log out). Next time the computer boots to rEFIt click on the penguin and it will take you to grub. Any time you change your partition table you will need to use the bootcamp loader the first time, but from here out it should work.

Let me know if this gets you going. I tried to figure out the logic of this process in another thread - there has got to be an easier way. I cant see Ubuntu expecting the guy that bought his computer at a place called the "genuis bar" to be able to discern the dynamics of hybrid boot tables (no offense to mac users, I own two).
Last edited by cath0dez; 2 Days Ago at 11:53 AM..

Thank you cath0dez - your instructions worked perfectly for my iMac (Snow Leopard & Ubuntu 10.10 dual boot)!

[MountainX]

Thank you cath0dez - your instructions worked perfectly for my iMac (Snow Leopard & Ubuntu 10.10 dual boot)!

What model iMac do you have? My 11,1 iMac 27" won't boot with a LiveCD.

[MountainX]

If the presence of that partition is triggering a bug in whatever creates the hybrid MBR, then the best solution is to fix that bug.

I just realized that the Ubuntu 10.10 installer is creating this sda3 partition. (I guess everyone else in this thread already knew that.)

Now I'd like to know what is creating the hybrid MBR... rEFIt?

[mediamind]

What model iMac do you have? My 11,1 iMac 27" won't boot with a LiveCD.

24" aluminum iMac 9,1 (purchased August 2009).

[darkvad0r]

Ok, so I just bought a new macbook pro (MacBookPro6,2) and after reading this thread I almost abandoned the idea of installing ubuntu on it.

I finally gathered the courage to do it and, based on cath0dez' post and some common sense, and I'm glad to report that I now have a fully working dual boot with Leopard and Maverick. So here's what I did (your mileage may vary) :

1. install refit (though I'm almost sure it's not needed). In order to see the refit boot menu, you need to reboot TWICE

2. use the bootcamp assistant to make place for ubuntu

3. Boot the live cd (I tried booting an ubuntu flash drive made with unetbootin and one made with the ubuntu tool, and none worked, it appears it's a mac firmware bug, but I didn't find any reliable information)

4. Install ubuntu choosing manual partitioning : you will see 3 partitions /dev/sda1 is the efi boot partition, /dev/sda2 is the OS X partition, and /dev/sda3 is the partition created by the bootcamp assistant. Delete the last partition (/dev/sda3), create a root partition for ubuntu ("Use as: Ext4", "Mount to: /"), leaving enough free space for the last partition you'll create : the swap partition. At this point you'll have the following partitions : /dev/sda1 is the efi boot partition, /dev/sda2 is OS X partition, /dev/sda3 is ubuntu root partition and /dev/sda4 is the swap partition. Before proceeding to the next installation step, choose /dev/sda3 as the device for boot loader installation on the drop-down menu. Now you can finish the ubuntu installation.

6. Now you can do a full shutdown. Go to rEFIt and sync the partition tables (you might not need this as the partition tables might already be synced)
7. At this point rEFIt is sync'ed but freezes on the penguin if you try to go straight to Ubuntu. Restart your computer and hold down option to go to the bootcamp loader. Ubuntu should show up as "Windows" on this page - boot it.

8. You should get to the grub prompt... yay. All you need to do know is let it boot into the GUI and shut down (don't resart or log out). Next time the computer boots to rEFIt click on the penguin and it will take you to grub. Any time you change your partition table you will need to use the bootcamp loader the first time, but from here out it should work.

So basically, you should avoid letting the ubuntu installer do the partitioning, and install grub to the ubuntu root partition, then you can follow cath0dez' post from step 6 to the end, and have a fully working dual boot.

[Lingonsylt]

I tried to follow darkvad0rs instructions and do the partitioning of the free space manually. For each partition I made, an empty free space of 1 MiB was automatically created, dont know why.
When I came to the "click advanced and choose to install grub on sda3"-step, it wouldnt let me put it anywhere else than default anyway.

So I tried cat0dez version and now it works. The sda3 partition that I deleted was labeled bios_grub and almost 2 MiB. Think it was created automatically, as happened when I tried to do the partitioning manually, and became the bios_grub-whatever just because it was there.

But I dont know this well, didnt understand much of the thred, else than the instructions I followed. Just know that it works now, and that next laptop I buy will be a PC that is know to work out of the box with Ubuntu...

...may even be fighting what Apple wants - to weld their OS to their hardware.

If thats true its a scandal. One of the marketing arguments for the macbook I bought was that it could be used with both windows and linux. If they are fighting that they are doing false marketing and should be suited! No,no, PC next time! Thanks anyway for helpful info.

[sum_ozzi]

Guys,

I had similar problems with setting up my MacbookPro with an 2.66 i7

I installed rEEIt before I started and initially after restarting all seemed fine.

Then I noticed that the rEEIt menu had disappeared unless I pressed a key or two during boot. (like the arrow keys)

When I managed to get the menu up I noticed that the Partitioning tool would tell me that my MBR was invalid and that partitions overlap.
<Whole Bunch of Photo's Showing this are here --> http://gallery.me.com/noxid/100272

The rEEIt program wouldn’t fix this. Despite the problem both OS’s did seem to work, however for how long and how well was unknown. Since I wanted the rEEIT menu on boot I thought I’d try to resolve this further.

I tried the option of booting from the Live Unbuntu 10.0.4 LTS CD.

I noticed that unless I cold booted and held down the “c” key while booting I had problems with the CD even booting. (ie. It would hang on the penguin boot logo)

Anyway after managing to start up the live Ubuntu CD. I then deleted the bootloader partition, which on my system was dev/sda3

On shutting down Ubuntu and restarting the Mac I automatically got my rEEIt menu.

On choosing the Partitioning tool it then told me it wanted to Synchronise the GPT partition and the current MBR (Yes...! )

On accepting this it updated the MBR successfully.
I rebooted the Mac another time.

On opening the Partitioning tool the next time (See pictures) it told me my tables were synchronised and that there was no need to do further syncing.

Problem fixed..
I am now able to boot into the MacOSX successfully.
I am now able to boot into Ubuntu 64bit successfully.

[jjinux]

I know this is kind of lame, but my solution to this problem was to not dual boot. That made my life so much easier. I just used a normal MBR and didn't install OS X. Fortunately my wife has my old MacBook running OS X in case I need it. I may eventually buy an external harddrive and put OS X on that for the rare cases in which I might need it.