Arch Linux

nTia89

Banned

From: varese, italy

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 1,230

old macbook (2007) pure EFI installation issues

Hi fellows,
I'm going to install Arch into my old macbook 2,1 model.
I'm following our wiki (similar model sub-section).
The problem I'm not able to solve is about bootloader installation because page says that I'll not able to use efivars efibootmgr but doesn't say how can I bypass it!

Thanks in advance

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+pc: custom | AMD Opteron 175 | nForce4 Ultra | 2GB ram DDR400 | nVidia 9800GT 1GB | ArchLinux x86_64 w/ openbox
+laptop: Apple | MacBook (2,1) | 2GB ram | Mac OS X 10.4 -> DIED
+ultrabook: Dell | XPS 13 (9343) | 8GB ram | 256GB ssd | FullHD display | Windows 8.1 64bit ArchLinux x86_64 w/ Gnome

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: old macbook (2007) pure EFI installation issues

At the risk of making a fool of myself (again) -- have you looked at rEFInd?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/REFInd

I don't go near anything made by Apple so I may be wrong here but Rod Smith seems to know his onions...

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

nTia89

Banned

From: varese, italy

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 1,230

Re: old macbook (2007) pure EFI installation issues

You are not wrong but this is a special (my model) case of a special ( apples)  case

Because my Mac doesn't support 64 bit EFI which is the only supported by our ISO, I need to boot in BIOS compatible mode and this cause other problems: efivars are not exposed so I can't run refind script and efibootmgr doesn't work...

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+pc: custom | AMD Opteron 175 | nForce4 Ultra | 2GB ram DDR400 | nVidia 9800GT 1GB | ArchLinux x86_64 w/ openbox
+laptop: Apple | MacBook (2,1) | 2GB ram | Mac OS X 10.4 -> DIED
+ultrabook: Dell | XPS 13 (9343) | 8GB ram | 256GB ssd | FullHD display | Windows 8.1 64bit ArchLinux x86_64 w/ Gnome

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: old macbook (2007) pure EFI installation issues

If you use gummiboot, it will install the configuration files and the bootloader file even in non-EFI mode.

You could then try booting a 32-bit Ubuntu or Fedora image in EFI-mode (if that is even possible), switch to the console and use `efibootmgr` to write an NVRAM entry to boot the gummiboot loader manually:

# efibootmgr -d /dev/sd<x> -p <y> -c -L "Arch" -l /EFI/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi

Or create an entry to boot the kernel directly:

# efibootmgr -d /dev/sd<x> -p <y> -c -L "EFISTUB" -l /vmlinuz-linux -u "root=/dev/sd<x><z> rw initrd=/initramfs-linux.img"

Replace <x> with the drive letter for your main drive (probably "a"), <y> with the partition number for your EFI system partition and <z> with the partition number for your root partition (add any kernel parameters after "rw").

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2015-03-15 15:54:41)

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî