Arch Linux

EmyrB

Member

From: Wales, UK

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 122

Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

Hi All,

I want to install Arch on an Intel based Mac Mini. I currently have Ubuntu 10.04 on it as well as OSX 10.6.3. Ubuntu boots with no issues and this is what I want to replace with Arch. I have installed reFIT and according to that my partitions are synced.

When I boot the Arch install CD and get to the partitioning bit, when I try and manually add file systems and mountpoints all I get is : -

/dev/sda1 raw>no_fs
/dev/sda2 ram>no_fs
/dev/sda3 raw>no_fs
/dev/sda4 raw>no_fs

I know that the Ubuntu install uses sda3 as '/' which is ext4 and sda4 is the swap. Is it normal for the manual set mountpoint option not to see existing filesystems?

Is there a guide I can follow, as all I can see in the official wiki is how to install arch on a MacBook.

Cheers

EmyrB

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Proud Arch Linux User

TheCox

Member

From: Orlando, FL

Registered: 2010-02-23

Posts: 34

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

I don't think you should have any issues following the standard install guide for a mac mini. The "no_fs" just means the installer won't be formatting that partition. It doesn't detect existing filesystems.

EmyrB

Member

From: Wales, UK

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 122

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

Ah cheers TheCox for the reply. I made a mistake in the above, the '/' partition is ext3 and not ext4 as I said above. Just to clarify things a bit, when I install the Grub boot loader, I install it to sda3 and not sda?

Cheers

EmyrB

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Proud Arch Linux User

TheCox

Member

From: Orlando, FL

Registered: 2010-02-23

Posts: 34

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

You should do whatever you did with ubuntu. Putting it in sda will mean you boot os x from grub. If you put it in sda3, you'd have to boot arch from os x's bootloader, which I'm not familiar with.

TheCox

Member

From: Orlando, FL

Registered: 2010-02-23

Posts: 34

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

You probably want sda.

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

It's been a while since I set up my dual boot Mac/Arch machine. I think you *must* boot into refit to be able to boot into OSX. refit will show you a list of pictures of attached partitions that it believes to be bootable. When you select the penguin picture, you'll proceed into the GRUB menu for the attached Linux drive. That's what you'll end up with. I wasn't able to set it up so that GRUB would come first and give me the option to boot into OSX.

Now to get this setup, it may be possible to just have GRUB on your sda3. If you do install GRUB to sda, you may then have to reinstall refit afterwards. And/or, you may need to go into a refit shell when refit pops up and request that it synchronizes the refit-style boot records with the GRUB-style boot records. I forget what these are called right now: EFI and GMT perhaps? Anyway, read the refit docs and google a bit for <dual-boot mac linux refit> or somesuch.

It'd be good if you could document what ends up working for you here or in the wiki, while it's fresh in your memory.

demian

Member

From: Frankfurt, Germany

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 709

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

You can use this guide to dual-boot linux and mac os via grub.
Install OSX first, then install grub (to /dev/sda) and follow the instructions for pc_efi.

Regards,
demian

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no place like /home
github

Picoli

Member

Registered: 2010-06-29

Posts: 17

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

Hello,

I have a problem with the installation, too.
I installed first My OSX, then i partitioned my HDD with diskutil. Now i have an EFI partition, an OSX partition and one for arch. I installed rEFIT, too. All works fine until i get to the installation of grub. First i tried to install it on /dev/sda3 (that's where my "/" from archlinux is. But i got an error "Error installing Grub on /dev/sda3 see tt7 for log". Actually, i couldn't install grub on any partition. I always got the same error. So i tried it with the console and then i got the error 17 and sometimes i got the error "partition type unknown 0xb", and nothing worked except an installation with automatically formatted HDD.
Anyone an idea? I don't wanna install an ubuntu...

greetings

dsulli99

Member

Registered: 2010-11-18

Posts: 31

Re: Installing Arch on an Intel Mac Mini

Picolo,

I am experiencing the same issue.  Did you ever resolve this?

Thanks,

Dan