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

[Patrick Asselman]

On 2013-08-08 04:56, Jason Heeris wrote:
> 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 out-of-date or pertains to dual-boot systems.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

You forgot to mention what the error is you are getting when booting.

Also useful might be to show your /etc/fstab file, and to check what 
type of filesystems your partitions are.

Best regards,
Patrick Asselman