For various reasons I like the Apple Mac Minis, they are cheap, compact, silent, energy efficient and quite powerful. So sometimes I use them as mini servers for some tasks, like as an rsync backup server. For that, I usually install Fedora on them…these Macs are supported since Fedora 9 or so.
When you want to install Fedora on one of these machines, you have 2 choices:
- Use Bootcamp to create an OS X/Fedora dual boot system.
- Install Fedora natively as the only OS.
If you use the second option (which is what I do), you will soon be faced with an annoying problem: the Fedora you just installed via the graphical interface probably won’t boot. Your Mac will display a message saying something like “No boot device found, please insert a bootable media”. Duh.
The problem is that Intel Macs are using EFI instead of a standard BIOS, and the hard drive is pre-formatted with a “gpt” partition table instead of the standard “msdos” partition table. To install a working stand-alone Fedora on such a machine, you have to do ONE thing at the right moment:
- When you launch the Anaconda installer from the DVD, hit ctrl+alt+F2 to switch to a console.
- Run “parted” to modify your hard drive structure.
- In parted, run “mklabel msdos” to switch from gpt to the more standard msdos disk label. This will destroy all your data, so be careful.
- Switch back to the installer with ctrl+alt+F6.
- Install Fedora 11 like you do it usually.
That’s it…it can be quite frustrating if you don’t think about it.
