Arch Linux

MacNoob

Member

Registered: 2009-03-23

Posts: 4

Mac OS X drive unbootable after booting from Arch cd

I don't know if you guys can help me with this as its not actually involving Arch, though it was caused by the installer disk. I booted my intel iMac from the arch disk, thinking I could boot into the OS to check it out and see if this is the distro I want. However it seems like you have to install it first, so I shut down the computer(without installing anything), ejected the disk and turned it back on. Then I just get a black screen with a "_" , so I thought it was still trying to boot from the CD drive (though I thought usually if theres no CD then it tries the hard drive). So I put in my Leopard CD and set the boot device back to the hard drive. Now when I start up I get a folder with a ? on it and cannot see any boot devices. I'm sure theres something really stupid that I did wrong, but please any help would be appreciated. I've been doing lots of searches, so if you can't help me with this and there's another forum that might help, please point me in the right direction.

CheesyBeef

Member

Registered: 2008-06-04

Posts: 190

Re: Mac OS X drive unbootable after booting from Arch cd

What did you do when you were in the Arch CD?  A list of all your steps would be essential to helping you figure out what is wrong. (e.g. from inserting the cd to rebooting and seeing just a _)

MacNoob

Member

Registered: 2009-03-23

Posts: 4

Re: Mac OS X drive unbootable after booting from Arch cd

After I inserted the CD I went to startup disk and set it to the CD drive, then restarted. The arch menu came up after it loaded. I believe I chose the first option from the initial menu. I thought I would be booting Arch, but I think I started the installer. It began with a command line asking me to log in as the root user. I thought that I probably hadn't done anything yet, as I didn't enter a single command, and just wanted to get back to OS X so I could get my partitions ready for the actual install. So I powered off the computer at that point. That may have been my error, I'm not sure. But not I have no bootable disk. I've run disk utility to check it, and its readable and nothing seems to be wrong with it, all the data appears to be intact, its just not bootable. Thats about it. Thanks for any help you can give.

Last edited by MacNoob (2009-03-23 03:00:23)

CheesyBeef

Member

Registered: 2008-06-04

Posts: 190

Re: Mac OS X drive unbootable after booting from Arch cd

After I inserted the CD I went to startup disk and set it to the CD drive, then restarted. The arch menu came up after it loaded. I believe I chose the first option from the initial menu. I thought I would be booting Arch, but I think I started the installer. It began with a command line asking me to log in as the root user. I thought that I probably hadn't done anything yet, as I didn't enter a single command, and just wanted to get back to OS X so I could get my partitions ready for the actual install. So I powered off the computer at that point. That may have been my error, I'm not sure. But not I have no bootable disk. I've run disk utility to check it, and its readable and nothing seems to be wrong with it, all the data appears to be intact, its just not bootable. Thats about it. Thanks for any help you can give.

Ok, the "arch menu" you saw was the Grub bootloader.  That should do absolutely no harm with picking the first option.  After that, it does boot into a command prompt, asking for you to login.  After you login, you have to run "/arch/setup" to begin the installer dialog, and from there you can begin installing your new system and are prompted before it does anything potentially harmful.

So my best guesses, based on the information given, are that the boot order is messed up from choosing the CD drive to boot (I don't know if you do this through the bios or by pressing a key during boot and selecting a boot device) or the hard reboot did something to your drive.  But still, I am pretty darn sure the Arch setup does not mount any hard drives or partitons unless you really begin the installer, and it doesn't sound like you did.

MacNoob

Member

Registered: 2009-03-23

Posts: 4

Re: Mac OS X drive unbootable after booting from Arch cd

Ok, the "arch menu" you saw was the Grub bootloader.  That should do absolutely no harm with picking the first option.  After that, it does boot into a command prompt, asking for you to login.  After you login, you have to run "/arch/setup" to begin the installer dialog, and from there you can begin installing your new system and are prompted before it does anything potentially harmful.

So my best guesses, based on the information given, are that the boot order is messed up from choosing the CD drive to boot (I don't know if you do this through the bios or by pressing a key during boot and selecting a boot device) or the hard reboot did something to your drive.  But still, I am pretty darn sure the Arch setup does not mount any hard drives or partitons unless you really begin the installer, and it doesn't sound like you did.

Ok, so I booted into the command prompt, and yes, I did not begin the installation. However, at this point I simply powered off the computer, then I held down the option key durring startup to bring up a menu which allows me to choose where to boot from. All I saw here was the arch cd, which I then ejected, leaving nothing left. So I inserted my Mac OS 10.5 install disk and ran disk utility to see if there was anything wrong with my drive. Everything seemed fine. So I went into the startup disk selection, and saw the drive, with OS 10.5 on it and selected it as the boot drive, and restarted. But still when I try to boot it goes to a blank screen with a folder that has a ? on it. I know that something is amis here, and I'm really trying to figure it out. It must be some way connected with what I did, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with arch, from what I've read its a really good distro. I'm just stuck and frustrated is all.

MacNoob

Member

Registered: 2009-03-23

Posts: 4

Re: Mac OS X drive unbootable after booting from Arch cd

Did more research on some apple forums and it seems like it is my hard drive going bad, not anything to do with arch. So lucky me, I got the apple protection plan, and its still under warranty. (2nd time thats come in handy.) Well, I'll get that fixed and try it out again. Maybe someday I'll be 'Arch Macster' instead of MacNoob.

CheesyBeef

Member

Registered: 2008-06-04

Posts: 190

Re: Mac OS X drive unbootable after booting from Arch cd

Did more research on some apple forums and it seems like it is my hard drive going bad, not anything to do with arch. So lucky me, I got the apple protection plan, and its still under warranty. (2nd time thats come in handy.) Well, I'll get that fixed and try it out again. Maybe someday I'll be 'Arch Macster' instead of MacNoob.

Haha. 

Well I hope your data is ok.  Do please try Arch again, we'd love to have you, Arch Macster.