How can we make F17 be able to boot on Macs (with or without reFit)

[Chris Murphy]

On Feb 28, 2012, at 12:53 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Yes. I'm mostly working on the netinst isos, and right now if you take 
> that and dd it onto a USB stick, then insert that and hold down alt on 
> boot, you'll get a Mac install.

OK so color me extremely confused. Starting with a zero'd USB stick (no APM, GPT or MBR), dd'ing the netinst.iso to the stick, I end up with a stick that all tools claims has a GPT, but is a broken GPT (see previous emails on this).

When I burn it to a DVD, diskutil and gdisk claim the partition scheme is APM! It's not GPT at all as far as they are concerned. I don't know how this is possible...but I've reproduced the results twice.


DVD version behaviors, on a 2008 Macbook Pro:

1.) Upon boot with option key, to get the Apple-EFI boot screen, there are four new options. Windows, EFI Boot, EFI Boot, EFI Boot.

a.) When I choose the CD/DVD icon labeled Windows, I get syslinux, and then a menu from which I can start Fedora. It produces a text anaconda installer which appears to function, although I did not proceed with an installation.

b.) When I choose the CD/DVD icon labeled EFI Boot, I'm dropped to a GRUB prompt.

c.) When I choose the Fedora icon labeled EFI Boot, I'm dropped to a GRUB prompt.

d.) When I choose the last CD/DVD icon labeled EFI Boot, a Mac OS login window appears and the computer appears to be booting from the hard drive, not the DVD at all.


On a 2011 Macbook Pro, there are only three new boot options when the DVD is present with behaviors 1a, 1b, and 1c. (Icon 1d is not presented.)

In any case, only the "Windows" option, which results in a CSM-BIOS mode boot, produces a booted system from which Fedora can be installed.

Chris Murphy