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Linux only on Macbook Air?


Colin Adams
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I would like to replace Mac OSX on my Air with Fedora Linux 12 (I do not have enough disk space to have a dual-boot setup, as I need it all for storing digital photos when I am on holiday).

 

I have a USB DVD drive, and I tried pressing the C key when booting (with a Fedora 12 x86_64 DVD in the drive). This works up to a point - that is, I can start to run the installation program. I haven't proceeded far - I stopped when it was time to decide to re-partition.

 

So I have some questions which I hope people here might be able to answer:

 

1) I guess the installation will work OK. But will Linux boot from the hard disk without problems?

2) Will Airport work?

3) If all goes disasterously wrong, can i simply re-install Mac OSX from CD?

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I would run a Carbon Copy Clone off to an USB hard drive. As a check boot the MBA from the clone drive. At this point you can recover by reverse cloning to the internal drive. Then you can proceed with an LINUX install and recover/go back when ever you desire.

 

Neil.

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That's good enough for me - I'm giving it a go.

 

Thanks.

 

It doesn't work.

 

That is, the installation completes OK, and it tells me to reboot.

 

But when i reboot, all I get is a grey folder icon with a flashing ? on it.

 

I'm guessing that is telling me it can't find an operating system to boot.

 

I installed grub (I think) on /dev/sda2, as suggested by anaconda. /dev/sda1 is the system boot loader (or whatever it's called on the Mac). i think this is the problem - it doesn't know to look for grub and/or linux on /dev/sda2.

 

i can boot the rescue disk, and it finds my installed Linux OK. What do I need to do do patch things up?

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It doesn't work.

 

That is, the installation completes OK, and it tells me to reboot.

 

But when i reboot, all I get is a grey folder icon with a flashing ? on it.

 

I'm guessing that is telling me it can't find an operating system to boot.

 

I installed grub (I think) on /dev/sda2, as suggested by anaconda. /dev/sda1 is the system boot loader (or whatever it's called on the Mac). i think this is the problem - it doesn't know to look for grub and/or linux on /dev/sda2.

 

i can boot the rescue disk, and it finds my installed Linux OK. What do I need to do do patch things up?

 

This time I deleted the EFI System partition, and installed the boot loader on the MBR for /dev/sda.

This gives the same behaviour.

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This time I deleted the EFI System partition, and installed the boot loader on the MBR for /dev/sda.

This gives the same behaviour.

 

But at least re-installing Mac OSX worked OK.

 

So can anyone tell me what i need to do to get Linux to boot from disk? Do I need to leave the EFI system partition on the disk? Where do i install the boot loader?

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