Booting linux from USB drive on a recent MacBook air (e.g. late 2010) - even with FileVault 2
I've spent a while figuring out how to boot linux on my MacBook air 3.2 (aka late 2010)
from an USB stick, since I needed to image its disk before and after enabling full disk encryption (Lion's FileVault 2).
There are many tutorials out there but most of them either don't work, are not for the
correct combination of hardware/software or miss some details. So here I give you the
facts for booting a linux live image (I've used Ubuntu) with a MacBook Air that perhaps
has Lion (although I am sure it works with Snow Leopard as well) and may be even with
FileVault2 (full-disk encryption) enabled.
If you don't have FileVault enabled, I recommend you install
rEFIt from your Mac OS X using the dmg
installer, and follow the steps at the END of
this
page. Now, for the details....
- If you can, use Ubuntu (yes, from a different PC) to create the USB
drive with Ubuntu by means of "Startup Disk Creator" (See System/Administration).
- Once you have the USB drive, if you run mmls (a forensic utility from
the sleuth kit), you should see actually
several partitions including a Win 95 Fat32 (0x0C).
This is actually the partition
you need to dd, i.e. "dd if=/dev/disk2s02 of=/dev/disk0s3" bs=1M count="size_of_that_partition_in_blocks";
where disk2s02 is the Win95 FAT32 partition in the USB drive and disk0s3 is a
partition you have created on your Mac disk).
- Now (having installed rEFIt as I mentioned above), reboot your MacBook and
use the partition utility of rEFIt (one of the items) to fix the MBR (is a hybrid MBR/GPT
partition table). Simply answer yes to have the linux partition (the one where you've
copied from the USB) correctly set up.
- Restart again the MacBook and use rEFIt to boot the linux install/live partition.
Now, if you have FileVault enabled things are a bit more tricky. The reference post
about how to do this is
here.
However, again there are some details that should be made clear.
- First of all, I highly recommend you do an image of your drive (either directly from
MacOS by using the low-level disk, e.g. /dev/disk0 - not the one showing as /dev/disk1 unencrypted).
There is a risk you won't be able to boot OS X anymore after you apply these steps.
- Next, follow the steps in the post I mentioned above.
- When it refers to "bless" the efi partition, look at the end of the post in the StopService()
code and you should see what to do.
- gpt fdisk refers to the command "gdisk" in repair mode (r). Here you need to use the Hybrid MBR,
by typing (h). I recommend you read this.
When asked for partition code use "0C" (Windows95 FAT32 for your linux partition).
- I'm not sure if is a good idea to put the EFI partition (code 0xEE) at the beginning, or if you
should create extra protective MBR partitions. I've put the EFI partition at the end and didn't
create any extra protective MBR partitions and I was able to boot linux. However I wasn't able
to boot the Mac OS X anymore. So that's why I recommend the prior image.
Looking at the results and comparing with the partitions in a USB drive with rEFIt I suggest
you actually create all the protective MBR partitions suggested by "gdisk".
I've recently purchased a Macbook Air superdrive. You can easily boot linux using that and avoid
all the trouble and possible problems with the steps above. So if you want the quick and safe way
I suggest you spend about $66 and take the superdrive. It works also when FileVault 2 is enabled.
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