Installing debian on a macbook pro
There seems to be a lot of tutorials and info on this subject but some how i didn't come across a single tutorial which worked directly for me. I spent last night harvesting tutorials and forum posts to make a flowing debian install on my macbook pro. So these are the steps i followed to get it working on a 4th generation macbook pro, but warned this is not a process for the faint hearted:
Next install refit from source forge. This will install a boot menu where you can select the partition to boot from.
Download the debian net install 386 cd and burn it.
Insert the cd into the drive and reboot the machine. The refit menu should appears and you should see an option to boot from the cd. Choose that option.
Start the debian installer. Choose you settings accrodingly up to the partition bit.
Here delete the partition /dev/sda3 and then recreate the partition with about 1GB less the the free space available. Use ext3 for the format and mount it at /
Mark the partition bootable. Next create a new partition on /dev/sda4 size about 1 GB and format it as linux swap. write the changes to the disk, and proceed with the installation. At the boot loader step you'll get an error about grub not being installed. Say ok, and proceed without
installing a boot loader. We'll get to that in a bit.If the installer asks you to install LILO don't bother just yet as this will also fail. After the installation completes, boot into OSX once again and open a terminal.
Goto the /efi folder. There is a script under one of the sub directories called enable.sh. Run that script and reboot. Now at the efit menu, select disk partition and press Y to sync the MBR. now reboot again boot up from the debian cd. after the installer starts press ctrl+alt+f2 to enter a virtual console. At the prompt type
create lilo.conf
in OSX open /Applications/utilities and fire up boot camp. Resize the partition accroding to your needs. I split the hard disk in 2 equal parts. This will create the partition /dev/sda3.
Choose not to install the windows stuff and exit boot camp.
Next install refit from source forge. This will install a boot menu where you can select the partition to boot from.
Download the debian net install 386 cd and burn it.
Insert the cd into the drive and reboot the machine. The refit menu should appears and you should see an option to boot from the cd. Choose that option.
Start the debian installer. Choose you settings accrodingly up to the partition bit.
Here delete the partition /dev/sda3 and then recreate the partition with about 1GB less the the free space available. Use ext3 for the format and mount it at /
Mark the partition bootable. Next create a new partition on /dev/sda4 size about 1 GB and format it as linux swap. write the changes to the disk, and proceed with the installation. At the boot loader step you'll get an error about grub not being installed. Say ok, and proceed without
installing a boot loader. We'll get to that in a bit.If the installer asks you to install LILO don't bother just yet as this will also fail. After the installation completes, boot into OSX once again and open a terminal.
Goto the /efi folder. There is a script under one of the sub directories called enable.sh. Run that script and reboot. Now at the efit menu, select disk partition and press Y to sync the MBR. now reboot again boot up from the debian cd. after the installer starts press ctrl+alt+f2 to enter a virtual console. At the prompt type
mkdir /mnt/sda3
mount /proc /mnt/sda3
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/sda3/dev
chroot /mnt/sda3
next create the /etc/lilo.conf file with the following content. You can use vi to do this:
create lilo.conf
boot=/dev/sda3
map=/boot/map
image=/vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img
root=/dev/sda3
then run lilo -b /dev/sda3 to install the bootloader. Now remove the cd from the drive and reboot. At the efit menu you should now see a linux option. Select it and your debian system should boot and run fsck and reboot again automatically. At the efit prompt select linux again and you should be in your newly installed debian system.
