Old Mac Mini

TheChickenMan · 2015-10-13 06:00:31

I have an old (circa 2007 maybe 2008) Mac mini sitting around which I was looking to turn into a server. It has a 64bit capable Intel core2 duo but only 32bit UEFI and therefore can only operate in 32bit mode. I would like to install Arch on the old machine but it does not recognize the installer from either usb flash or cd. I saw somewhere in my research that the official Arch installer does not support booting to machines with 32bit UEFI. I could go with something else for this machine but what are my options if I would really like to get it running with Arch? Can I remove the hard drive and perform an install to the drive while it's plugged into another machine running Arch via USB? Would I be able to / better off making a custom installer cd that supports this hardware? Is it even possible to get this machine running with Arch?

olive · 2015-10-13 08:15:07

If your processor supports 64 bits, you can install arch in 64 bits mode even if the UEFI is 32 bits only. But whatever architecture you choose, you have to take extra step to make it works. I wrote a post on the subject here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 7#p1563787

Because it is a mac, I do not know if the UEFI is completely standard, though. I don't have a MAC, but I think these mac have BIOS compatibility, if is really the case you may find easier to proceed this way.

Last edited by olive (2015-10-13 08:15:34)

TheChickenMan · 2015-10-13 10:52:43

Interesting. That definitely gives me a place to start from. So I will need to create a custom bootable USB image which week load 32 bit grub efi and then start a kernel. It would be nice to be able to use it in 64 bit mode too. I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-10-13 06:00:31

Old Mac Mini

#2 2015-10-13 08:15:07

Re: Old Mac Mini

#3 2015-10-13 10:52:43

Re: Old Mac Mini

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