I am trying to get up a 2008 Macbook (4,1) as a single-boot to Ubuntu MATE system. I’ve been following these instructions in order to set it up in pure EFI mode, no BIOS, no Mac OS X. (This is an old machine with only a 250GB HD. I don’t want to waste a bunch of the space on OS X.)
http://heeris.id.au/2014/ubuntu-plus-mac-pure-efi-boot/
I used Startup Disk Creator on another Ubuntu machine on a USB flash drive with the Ubuntu MATE 15.04 64-bit ISO.
I am able to boot the Macbook with it and get the drive partitioned and get Ubuntu MATE installed on it. When I get to the part of the instructions under The Manual Boot where I am booting to the installation using the Grub command line, my boot process hangs.
I have linked to some photos of the boot process. The first one shows that everything stops when it gets to ntp.service. This happens with or without an Internet connection (via network cable). After that if I push one of several buttons, like maybe an arrow button, the screen switches over to what you see in the second image. Finally, if I push another keyboard button it still switch back to the boot log but it looks somewhat different than what you see in image 1. This first two times I did the the last line on image 3 was “Started flush journal to persistent storage” instead of what you see in this last try, “Starting cryptography setup for cryptswap1”. Other buttons like Enter, Spacebar, Esc, etc. either don’t do anything or just switch screen between image 2 and image 3.
Boot images
(Sorry for the long, big, image. I was only allowed 2 links and no image uploads as a new forum user.)
Have you tried Refind? It’s not as “pure”, but I’ve had good luck with it.
That will be the next thing I try if I can’t get this working. Apparently there is a bit of a performance hit (to using CSM and I don’t need to dual-boot), so I figured on an older machine I would try for the cleanest method.
Still, the problem I’m having is during the actual Ubuntu MATE startup, so I don’t think the boot manager is in play at this point. I might redo only to have it hang in the same spot.
Refind is an EFI boot manager, so it would still be all EFI, not CSM/BIOS. If you’re careful when installing, I think you could remove your OS X partition after installing it to the ESP, although I’ve not tried it.
Since your issue is only after manually booting, hopefully with Refind you could just boot normally and ahve it work!
I ended up going with rEFInd. Ubuntu MATE starts up nicely now. Thanks for the nudge.
It all feels as though it’s held together with a bit of bailing wire. For example, rEFInd does not show up unless you power on from a cold boot. If it is a restart, or after choosing Ubuntu in rEFInd, it goes to a Grub menu with options of Ubuntu, recovery (I think it was) and two Mac OS X options, but those don’t actually work for booting into OS X, they cause a screen of text and a freeze. The only way to get back to OS X is restart and then hold option to get Apple’s boot manager and choose the drive with OS X, or power cycle to get back to rEFInd.
Not a deal breaker, but a bit odd and annoying.
Yeah, Apple only really cares that their (U)EFI implementation will boot OS X. . . . And maybe Windows, but even that booted via emulated BIOS for a long time. (Maybe it still does?)
Newer machines have worked a bit better for me — my MacBook aluminum (5,1 I think) won’t even see an Ubuntu live USB in the option boot screen without Refind — as do some distros. The Fedora live USB even includes a Mac partition so OS X sees it as a valid boot disk.
