ubuntu 7.10 gutsy on apple intel xserve

[Jason Joines]

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: ubuntu 7.10 gutsy on apple intel xserve
From: Sarunas Burdulis <sarunas at math.dartmouth.edu>
To:
Date: Wed Oct 31 16:00:28 2007

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> Jason Joines wrote:
>>     I'm a Linux person who just inherited a bunch of apple and dell 
>> boxes.  Naturally the first thing I've done is begin replacing windows 
>> on the dells with Ubuntu, no problems there.  Now on to the macs.
>>
>>     I was given a macbook pro for a laptop and had no problems getting 
>> Kubuntu on there.  However, I can't get the intel xserve to even boot 
>> off of an Ubuntu CD.  I tried holding down the C key, the cd is just 
>> ignored.  I tried powering on while holding down the system identifier 
>> button, eventually it just spits the cd out.  I yanked the hard drives 
>> out and powered on with the cd in the drive, it's been setting there 
>> with a blinking question mark on the screen for more than an hour.  I 
>> tried all of those things with both an i386 and an amd64 cd with the 
>> same results.  Both cds had been used to install onto the dells.
>>     A "mac person" tried to help me.  They went to a boot drive setting 
>> in a system preferences application in os x.  I assume it writes changes 
>> to the efi on disk or something like that.  However, the cd wasn't 
>> listed which the mac person took to mean it wasn't a boot cd.
>>
>>     When I put Kubuntu on the intel macbook pro, it was 7.04 feisty.  I 
>> haven't tried 7.04 on the intel xserver yet and I haven't tried the 
>> powerpc boot disk on any of the powerpc xserve boxes.  I thought using 
>> the same thing that worked on the dells on the intel xserve boxes would 
>> be the easiest starting point.
>>
>>     Any ideas?
>>
> 
> This may be your answer...
> 
> http://community.brighton.ac.uk/ajd9/weblog/16003.html
> 
> Sarunas



     I'm not sure if that's the issue or not.  I started down the efi 
path when I first started trying to get Kubuntu on the intel macbook 
pro.  However, I was able to boot off of the installer CD.  I then used 
dd to wipe the drive which got rid of the efi partition and let me 
install grub to the mbr.  Without wiping the efi partition away, I could 
  not get a bootloader to work.  The macbook pro was supposed to be 64 
bit  but I had to use the i386 cd as the amd64 said the cpu was not 64 
bit.  Unfortunately on the xserve, I can't boot off either cd.

     Right now I'm installing the latest osx so I can install boot camp 
so I can install linux so I can dd the drive and see what happens.  I'll 
  probably end up being stuck with a dual boot configuration.


Jason
===========