Booting live usb stick off iMac

[James Heather]

Can anyone tell me how I can create a live USB stick that will boot from
an iMac?

The restriction here is that I mustn't alter the config of the Mac in
any way (because it's not my machine and I can't risk screwing it up).

Googling suggests that I need to mess with EFI, but I don't really
understand the details.

J.

[Stewart Adam]

On 2010/07/09 10:31 AM, James Heather wrote:
>  Can anyone tell me how I can create a live USB stick that will boot
> from
>  an iMac?
>
>  The restriction here is that I mustn't alter the config of the Mac in
>  any way (because it's not my machine and I can't risk screwing it up).
>
>  Googling suggests that I need to mess with EFI, but I don't really
>  understand the details.
>
>  J. 
See section "Making Fedora USB Media with dd" here:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/Mak...

Note that this method will erase all data currently on the disk.

YMMV, in my case booting from EFI is broken an hangs just after loading 
vmlinuz in GRUB.

Regards,
Stewart

[Scott Dowdle]

Greetings,

----- Original Message -----
>  Can anyone tell me how I can create a live USB stick that will boot
>  from an iMac?
>  
>  The restriction here is that I mustn't alter the config of the Mac in
>  any way (because it's not my machine and I can't risk screwing it up).
>  
>  Googling suggests that I need to mess with EFI, but I don't really
>  understand the details. 
I've tried and failed.  From what I understand booting from USB is basically broken on
the EFI-based Mac.

While there might be a way that I'm unaware of to alter the EFI settings to it will
allow you to boot from a USB device... that violates your "I mustn't alter the
config of the Mac in any way" statement, right?

You can boot from CD and DVD media though.  That works fine for me.

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
[phone] [home]
[phone] [work]

[James Heather]

Thanks Scott/Stewart.

Well, I did get some way. I got past the grub screen, but the display
was so corrupted from the graphical loading screen onwards, including
when switching to text mode, that it seemed more hassle than it was
worth.

Possibly I could get somewhere if I mucked about enough, but I won't be
here long enough to warrant too much investigation.

(I'm sitting in an office with an iMac with a gorgeous 24" screen and a
horrible proprietary operating system. I was hoping to use Fedora on
it... the screen is built into the machine, though, so no chance of
disentangling it and attaching it to my laptop.)

James

On Fri, 2010-07-09 at 17:55 +0100, Scott Dowdle wrote:
>  Greetings,
>  
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  > Can anyone tell me how I can create a live USB stick that will boot
>  > from an iMac?
>  > 
>  > The restriction here is that I mustn't alter the config of the Mac in
>  > any way (because it's not my machine and I can't risk screwing it up).
>  > 
>  > Googling suggests that I need to mess with EFI, but I don't really
>  > understand the details.
>  
>  I've tried and failed.  From what I understand booting from USB is basically broken
> on the EFI-based Mac.
>  
>  While there might be a way that I'm unaware of to alter the EFI settings to it will
> allow you to boot from a USB device... that violates your "I mustn't alter the
> config of the Mac in any way" statement, right?
>  
>  You can boot from CD and DVD media though.  That works fine for me.
>  
>  TYL,