Arch Linux

Spara06

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2014-08-28

Posts: 18

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Trying to run Arch Linux on a mid-2009 Macbook

Good day everyone,

I recently acquired a mid-2009 (Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM) Macbook laptop and I'm interesting in running Arch Linux on it. I don't want to dual-boot, I just want Arch Linux. I've already done a bit of research into the matter and I attempted to setup Arch Linux on it which didn't work out for me. The Macbook didn't boot and I just got a grey folder with a flashing question mark on it. I have quite a bit of experience setting up Arch Linux with MBR/BIOS but this is the first time I've had to do an EFI install. I've read through these sections in the Arch Linux Wiki:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide

I formatted the drive using sgdisk --zap-all /dev/sda and partitioned it using cgdisk.
I used GRUB and installed it for EFI. My partitioning scheme was as follows:

/dev/sda1 - mounted to /boot
/dev/sda2 - mounted to /boot/EFI (when I ran grub-install, I set this as my EFI partition -- also changed the partition ID to ef00, EFI System Type, partition type is FAT32, as needed)
/dev/sda3 - swap
/dev/sda4 - root partition
/dev/sda5 - home

I feel like I've done the steps properly but it refuses to boot. Anyone have any ideas, direction on what I could try next? I've done this before so I'm sorry if any of this comes off as silly.
I also tried a normal MBR install just out of curiosity but it didn't work, as expected.

I'd really appreciate any advice. :-)
Thanks!

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Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux.