Install on Old Mac Mini, no install screen with Flash drive

Any other ideas?

Is there a way to alter the Endeavor USB stick so that it accepts 32 boot?

Iā€™d try rEFIt instead of rEFInd. It canā€™t do any harm! All the links for it are on the rEFInd site.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#UEFI_firmware_bitness

Iā€™ll look at bitness.

In the meantime I installed on a different machine and put the hard disk in the Mac.
It wonā€™t boot except for the fallback method.

With the primary boot
Starting v 249.3-1
ERROOR: device /dev/mapper/luks, not found.s Skipping fsck.
Dropped into emergency shell
sh: canā€™t access tty; job control turned off.
[rootfs ]#

I think because itā€™s a 32 bit UEFI?

It boots into the fallback (2nd line on boot).

Is there something I can do at that rootfs prompt? or in the fallback boot.

Honestly i have never used any mac products so iā€™m kinda where you are at. :wink:

What is the difference between regular boot and fallback mode.

I see the same error here
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=264521

I am not sure its 32 bit related. I havenā€™t looked in detail.

No it has to do with the vmd module needing to loaded in mkinitcpio. Does your mac mini use raid instead of ahci on the drives?

Edir: Does you Bios have vmd setting?

I am not sure there is a BIOS.
There is no BIOS like on a PC. Doesnt it use EFI.
The disk is is a regular SSD; I doubt it would be raid.
Is there a command with which I can check in Linux. I can log in with the fallback setting.
I cannot reach anything like a BIOS or EFI at boot. I havenā€™t used MacOS, just linux.

I can login with Initramfs. I understand it loads all the drivers as opposed to the ones from the setup.
This could be because I installed in a different machine and then moved the hard disk to the mac mini.

How could I get a normal boot i.e. change to only the drivers necessary in the new machine.

I have never use any mac products. I donā€™t even know what processor it uses. Youā€™ll have to search and follow other guides for the era of mac mini you have. I would have to have the hardware and do the same.

I think Iā€™ve got part of this sorted. Running an iMac6,1.

Formatted a USB stick on a Mac but I doubt this was essential.
Took a 64-bit Linux distro, wrote that to the USB drive from ISO using UNetbootin (https://unetbootin.github.io/)
Mounted the thing in my LinuxVM as I tried a bunch of failed things there first, but copied this file into the/EFI/BOOT folder. (https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asus-t100ta/blob/master/boot/bootia32.efi)
Went to the Mac and powered on holding down alt (option on mac keyboard). Selected efiā€¦ made the grub selection. (I think the next step is using this approach to install and make rEFInd locate the OS. Not sure how yet)

So far these look like the useful pages.

https://ldx.ca/notes/intel-mac-efi32-linux.html

(I likely used a patched ISO made with the utility on Mattā€™s site.) I need to circle back and confirm if this was the case.

Anyhow, if youā€™re still playing to get bootable USB on the old Mac this is the seed of what Iā€™ve been doing with the success of running a live Linux CD image off a USB storage device. Just had success today.

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