[ubuntu-uk] Borked my Mac installing Ubuntu 11.04, now blackscreens & beeps on restart then takes exactly 4 attempts to boot

[doug livesey]

Hi -- a few other people have seen this, so I thought I'd post the links
here, for anyone interested.
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/774089
*
http://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-update-manually-on-a-macbook-51/

The second article looks like the answer. Unfortunately, there are firmware
updates available for all *but* my model (MBP 5,4), so it looks like I'm
going to have to talk to someone at Apple to find out what firmware package
I can use.

On 30 April 2011 15:58, Matthew Daubney <matt at daubers.co.uk> wrote:

>
>
> On 30 April 2011 01:55, doug livesey <biot023 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So guess who broke his Mac trying to install the latest Ubuntu?
>> Every now & then, I think I'm more of a geek than I really am, and try to
>> do something to make myself feel hardcore, but that ends up just being plain
>> humbling!
>> There follows a cut & paste from a post I left on the Ubuntu forums, but
>> basically I've been stung by over-ambitious early-adopter's syndrome (which
>> may or may not be a real term, I've been trying to fix my computer for the
>> last 2 days straight & can't remember how humans actually talk to each
>> other).
>> Anyway, in the hope that some local talent may see this & know what's
>> going wrong ...
>>
>> Hi -- I've tried to install 11.04 on my Macbook Pro (5,4) today.
>> I had two drives in the machine, an SSD as my main drive, and an HD.
>> I installed rEFIt before attempting to install Ubuntu.
>> I moved my Snow Leopard install to the secondary HD & made sure I could
>> boot to it.
>> Then, I used the live CD & gparted to clear the 1st drive (the SSD),
>> create the swap space, create the Ubuntu partition, and launch the install,
>> where I used what I had just created on the SSD.
>> The install completed okay (but with no option to select where the GRUB
>> installer went, like some tutorials tell you to look out for).
>> This seemed to go okay, so I went to restart at the end of the install,
>> but the machine didn't come back up.
>> Instead, the power came on & I could hear the drives, but the screen
>> stayed black, the battery light flashed a load of times really quickly (too
>> quickly to count, but at least 10 times), and then the machine let out 1
>> long beep and stayed on the black screen.
>> I forced it to power down & tried again, and just got a black screen, the
>> battery light shining steadily, and no beep.
>> I forced it to power down again, and got the same, then again, and got the
>> same, and then a 4th time, which actually allowed me to boot.
>> And this has been the pattern since then. I shut down, and my first
>> attempt to restart gets me the flashing light and the beep, with the black
>> screen. I try 3 more times to power down and restart, and just get the black
>> screen. Then, *every* time on the 4th time, I'm allowed to boot.
>> The same routine will be gone through the next time I power down and try
>> to restart.
>> I've tried totally clearing the disk in gparted, restoring the OSX install
>> from TimeMachine, everything I could think of, but all to no avail.
>> Finally, thinking that maybe the OSX install I had safe on the secondary
>> HD might still be okay (looking at it in gparted showed an EFI boot section
>> & everything), I opened up my MBP, swapped the drives around so that the HD
>> is now the main drive, and the SSD the secondary, and renamed the drives so
>> that the primary HD is now called 'Macintosh HD' and is first in the list of
>> drives that appear when I manage to boot each 4th attempt.
>> But, to my great disappointment, I still got exactly the same error.
>> Can anyone offer any advice on how to:
>> 1) Get my machine booting to a safe Snow Leopard install on the (now
>> primary) HD?
>>  2) Safely install Ubuntu on the (now secondary) SSD?
>> Obviously the first is a top priority, as I need my machine in order to
>> work!
>> Then I can concentrate on moving my dev environment to Ubuntu, which I've
>> been dying to do for ages.
>> Thanks very much for any & all assistance.
>>
>> Bed, now. I hate going to sleep defeated, but I've no idea what else to
>> do.
>> 'Night!
>>    Doug.
>>
>> PS -- apologies to any Geekuppers for the cross post.
>>
>
> If you have a time machine backup I'd do the following.
> 1. Grab the OSX install CD and throw it into the drive
> 2. Using that CD flatten the OSX drive using the disk utility on the CD
> 3. Reinstall OSX
> 4. Attach time machine disk and restore from backup.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> -Matt Daubney
>
> --
> ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
>
>
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