Re: Boot delay when using grub.efi on Mac Mini

[Peter Cros]

A brief read of the mininmyth docs suggests it can also run on a fat partition on the gpt hard disk.

You can put an hfs+ partition on a msdos disk, or a fat32 partition on a gpt disk and grub.efi can handle both. plus linux ext2/3.

Have you installed the rEFIt boot manager http://refit.sourceforge.net/
It simplifies testing and the web site has good information on Apple efi booting and some history.
You need to read the Mac OSX bless manual closely to compare the options, and experiment.

Seems to me the key issue is getting your kernel and system running, identity any grub development issues, the other stuff can be optimised later.

My experience has been with other users of Apple Intel Macs  bootng Debian/Ubuntu linux and Mac OSX, using grub-pc and grub-efi. It helps to have a linux installation on the hard drive.

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Grant Edwards <address@hidden> wrote:

On 2009-03-12, Peter Cros <address@hidden> wrote:

> I have used a separate small hfs+ partition, works well, and
> fast if blessed.

I think that's what I'll try next.

The other option I'd like to try is a GPT-partitioned USB flash
drive.  For that to be advantageous, I would need to add GPT
partition table support to my Linux kernel to avoid having to
plug in a second USB flash drive for the MiniMyth files.

[The goal of the exercise is to use a Mac Mini as a "diskless"
MythTv frontend using the distro from www.minimyth.org. This
Mini is my first Mac since the 68k days, and I'm very impressed
with the hardware, but the firmware seems mediocre at best.]

> The EFI FAT32 partition is OK and a good backup if using rEFIt
> to recognise it without needing to bless, but cant be blessed
> --folder.

That's what I'd more-or-less concluded. I tried blessing the
device (/dev/disk0s1) and that didn't make any difference
either.

What's odd is that I found step-by-step instructions that
specifically show booting elilo from the EFI partition on an
Intel Mac Mini at

 http://www.mythic-beasts.com/resources/macmini/walkthrough.html

Did other versions of firmware allow blessing the EFI partition
somehow?

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Now I understand the
                                 at               meaning of "THE MOD SQUAD"!
                              visi.com

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-- 
Cros (pxw)