Cannot boot new base Ubuntu Server 13.04 installation on Mac Mini 6, 1

[Jason Heeris]

I'm trying to install Ubuntu Server 13.04 on a Mac Mini 6,1, *without*
wanting to dual-boot. I've installed Ubuntu and Debian on esoteric systems
before, but the specifics of this have me stuck. The trouble is, as much
information as there is out there, most of it is out-of-date or pertains to
dual-boot systems.

What I've done so far is create a bootable USB thumb drive from the 13.04
server ISO (via usb-creator-gtk) and boot into that on the Mac. I'm pretty
sure it's booting in EFI mode, because I get the black background/white
text menu, and see the partitioning details below. From there I could
install a base system (albeit without the necessary drivers to connect to
the network) on the hard drive. I also installed GRUB via the menu entry.

>From this point I haven't been able to actually boot into the system
though! (Remember, I *can* boot into the USB installer system, as well as
the OS X recovery system.) GNU parted tells me (from the installation
rescue system) that there's a GPT partition table for /dev/sda, a bootable
boot partition on /dev/sda1, a single-partition system on /dev/sda2 and
swap on /dev/sda3. Although if I look in /boot/efi on /dev/sda1, it's
empty. I don't know if that's significant. I can chroot into the new
system, install stuff from the USB drive (if I bind-mount it)... but I
can't boot it. I've tried installing both linux-generic and
linux-signed-generic kernels during the installation process.

I didn't think I needed to install refit/refind, but I just can't find an
authoritative answer to that. Given that I'm not dual-booting, even if I
did install it, would the changes it made remain in place after wiping OS X?

Any tips would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Jason
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