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installing Linux on Mac Mini as dual boot

I am trying to install Linux on a Mac Mini, which currently has Snow Leopard, as a dual boot system. Bare in mind, I am a Mac beginner.

I have installed rEFIt and also created a partition for the installation. All good so far.

I have tried both Linux Mint (latest version) and also Ubuntu 11.04, with I think, slightly more success with Mint. I am following this instruction set: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/install_linux_your_mac

This is the issue. When I boot Mint from my cd, I get a lot of text messages going by showing the booting process. Good so far. However, it reaches a certain point where the screen blanks. The cd drive continues to chatter for a bit and then silence and a blank screen.

It seems to me (just a guess) that it is using a simple tty driver during the boot process and then when it boots it switches to a graphical video driver which does not work. Just my thoughts. Both mint and Ubuntu behave in a similar fashion, though I think I get more initial messages from mint.

I should point out, that with Mint in the cd, when I reboot with the 'c' key held down, I get an initial Mint screen which has several options: Start Linux Mint, Start Linux Mint (compatibility Mode), etc etc. If I choose Start Linux Mint, I get the effect as described above.

Any idea on how to fix this? Is there another distro which might work? Has anyone here done this successfully?

BeerFizz

ASKER

Just to add. It seems that when I have the initial Mint screen, I can move throught the boot options. If I have a boot option selected, I can press the tab key and there is the oportunity to modify the boot parameters. Anything there that migth affect the issue I am having?

Thanks
Phil

BeerFizz

ASKER

Well, I got a bit further.

The Initial Mint menu I mentioned above, is called a Grub Menu.

If you select the first option, press tab and put this:

nouveau.modeset=0

in as the last paramenter, then the video works.

However, I'm now stuck because my mouse and keyboard are BT and are not talking to Mint.

Any ideas anyone?

BeerFizz

ASKER

Dug up a USB keyboard and Mouse from the basement.

Got a bit further.

I think I have everything fully installed. When I power up, I have the choice of booting to osx, which works fine, or to Linux, which does not.

When I choose Linux, it appears to boot and then the screen goes blank??? Is this the same issue as before? Video driver not working??

Any ideas?

Thanks
Phil

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

TobiasHolm

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BeerFizz

ASKER

Hi Tobias,

Thank you for your response.

I seem to be caught in a bit of a catch 22.

I can't boot into mint, because I can't see the screen...

I can put in the install disk and boot from that. From there, using the file browser, I can see under places, the 'File System", on the apple hard drive. If I open that, I can navigate to etc/default, gedit grub and make the changes and save the file. So far so good.

However, when I try to run update-grub I have issues...

1) where is update-grub looking for the grub file? Probably the non modified one on the cd.
2) when run, it gives an error... grub-probe: cannot find a device for / (is /dev mounted)

since I still running off of the CD, I assume /dev is not mounted, or there is not a writable one, or at least its the wrong one.

Any ideas? Is there a way to update a 'foreign' grub file to the boot area of a 'foreign' disk?

Thanks
Phil

BeerFizz

ASKER

Looking at:
Editing the GRUB 2 Menu During Boot
in:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
it seems to indicate that I can edit the grub command lines during boot, by holding down the shift key.

When I am in the rEFIt menu, I can right arrow over to TUX, the penguin, hit return and hold down the shift key, and sure enough, the menu comes up. I can then make the nouveau.modeset=0 change again to the end of the boot line and it boots.

I can now reboot and login after shudown. Need to fix the enet, and then get the correct nvidia drivers.

Thanks Tobias for the help.
Phil

.

TobiasHolm

Hi!

To be able to run update-grub when booting from a CD you have to mount the Linux root harddrive partition.

Boot an Ubuntu or Mint LiveCD and start a terminal window. Check which partition you want to mount:

sudo fdisk -l

Open in new window

Mount the right partition and set it as root (I use sda1 in the example below):

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo chroot /mnt
sudo update-grub

Open in new window

But it might be faster to boot from harddisk and enter Grub menu to manually add the nouveau.modeset=0 argument. Then enter a terminal window and use the sudo update-grub command.

Regards, Tobias

BeerFizz

ASKER

Hi Tobias,

Thanks for your help and great responses...

Going to post another question regarding Mac Mini, Linux and Ethernet