Re: [Bug-xorriso] grub-mkrescue does not boot on older Macs as USB stick

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

23.12.2015 01:02, Andrei Borzenkov пишет:
> I tested stock grub-mkrescue on MacBook 3,1 (late 2007, Core 2 Duo) and
> iMac 9.1 (2009, same CPU) as USB stick. Neither boots; moreover,
> inserting USB stick when boot manager is shown hangs system (it stops
> reacting to mouse/keyboard); if stick is inserted during boot it never
> gets as far as even showing boot manager.
>
> Alexander reported something similar for 2007 Macs.
>
> Stick is not detected even when inserted under OS X. MacBook runs 10.7
> and reports that USB stick is not readable and suggests to iniitialize
> it; iMac runs 10.9 and simply ignores it (may be I do not know where to
> look).

Thank you for looking into this. The description does match what was 
communicated to me by the person who owns that 2007 Mac.

I have compiled grub as of git revision a9399f2 on my virtual machine, 
with the same options as Debian does. Actually, I used their packaging 
minus all patches and minus 915resolution add-on. So, I will be able to 
test any further patches on my zoo of machines, too.

The first thought, though, is related to the fact that the Porteus Kiosk 
image uses partitions aligned to 1 MB. It may be a good idea to force 
this on grub-mkrescue command line and test-boot the result.

The second thought is that they built grub with a lot more preloaded 
modules, and removed boot.efi from the EFI image. Instead, they put a 
startup.nsh script there, which tries to run bootia32.efi and bootx64.efi.

--
Alexander E. Patrakov