8.04 won't boot

[ThatGuyThere]

The CD shows up in the Startup disk part of System prefs now too. All that is solved.

Not that I can get it installed and booting, even with refit.

From the live cd, I used gpartition to create space after my OS X partition, and installed Ubuntu into there. No problems. The installer setup a swap and ext2 space and completes installation.

Then when I rebooted the Mac, I got a black screen saying, "no bootable device found -- insert disc etc."

I rebooted into OS X holding down the option key, installed refit, and rebooted. From the refit screen, I chose the Linux option for my internal HD. It then sat on the grey screen with penguin in the middle indefinitely and didn't boot Ubuntu.

I give up. This is beyond me.

This is a known issue. When you get to the rEFIt bootup screen, go to the partitioner. Tell it to update the tables, then try it. That's what worked for me.

[darcyb]

This is a known issue. When you get to the rEFIt bootup screen, go to the partitioner. Tell it to update the tables, then try it. That's what worked for me.

Before I let refit update the tables, I would bet a black screen with "no bootable device" errors. When I let refit update the tables, it wouldn't get past the centered penguin on grey background display. I let it sit for 5 minutes just in case, but ubuntu didn't boot.

Did you change the partition map in Disk Utility to MBR instead of GUID or anything?

[mrsteveman1]

I would install Ubuntu over again, but first use the disk utility in OS X to reset all the partition data. Create a single large partition after OS X and use that for Ubuntu. You really don't need a boot partition it just makes things more complicated.

Then go into refit and sync the partition tables to make sure the MBR table is correct.

When you get to the Ubuntu installer, make sure you tell it to install grub to the ubuntu partition itself by going in to that advanced menu at the end. There should be 3 partitions on the disk at this point, the EFI partition, OS X, and Ubuntu. The disk number to use for grub should be (hd0,2) or (hd0,3), i can't remember if partition numbers start at 0 or 1, perhaps someone else remembers.

[darcyb]

mrsteveman1, doesn't Ubuntu need two partitions for itself, one for the OS+software (ext2) and the other for virtual memory (SWAP) ? So there would be:

EFI
OS X
ext2
swap

(I'm not saying I would create more than one partition after the OSX one, because Ubuntu would split that extra one into two on its own.)

If there was a boot partition created, it's whatever the default Ubuntu install process creates. I've never intentionally created one. I hadn't tried the advanced menu though. Thanks for that. I'll give it a try.

[Klondike]

For the record darcyb, I'm having the identical problem as you, and am about to try the Advanced stuff at the end of the process for the first time. And yeah, I've used a swap partition for my installs of Feisty and Gutsy before without a problem. I also never needed to choose where to put the bootloader, or go into Refit and sync my MBR. :/

[darcyb]

For the record darcyb, I'm having the identical problem as you

Good to know. If you figure it out before I do, be sure to share. I'll do the same.

[billbear]

darcyb:
Open a terminal in OS X and type
diskutil list
sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0
and copy the output of the command here please.

[darcyb]

I've since gone back to one partition for OS X until my next attempt, but here goes:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *111.8 Gi   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         200.0 Mi   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Cloud                   111.5 Gi   disk0s2

Disk: /dev/rdisk0	geometry: 14593/255/63 [234441648 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  234441647] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

[mrsteveman1]

Yea if you want swap that would be a 4th partition, i tend to leave out swap because you can do everything swap is used for with files on the main partition, virtual memory can be in a file, as can hibernation files.

Definitely don't let the Ubuntu installer do whatever it wants, choose manual partitioning when it asks in the installer.

[darcyb]

mrsteveman1, what kinds of steps are required to tell a linux system to use a swap file on the main partition instead of a dedicated swap partition?