[Bug 1369187] [NEW] Installation on Macs could use EFI booting instead of legacy BIOS

[Jason Heeris]

Public bug reported:

I recently installed Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (Trusty) on my Mac Mini 6,1
using the server installer. First I tried the "+mac" variant, which gave
me a system that booted in legacy BIOS mode, and then then I tried the
normal variant, which gave me an unbootable system.

I eventually got the EFI installation working, resulting in an Ubuntu
installation that boots directly from the Mac bootloader firmware (ie.
no rEFInd/rEFIt). The basic steps are to use an HFS+ filesystem instead
of VFAT for the EFI partition, to "bless" the EFI boot image, and to
create a couple of files that the Mac bootloader requires.

I wrote the full procedure up as a guide:

http://heeris.id.au/2014/ubuntu-plus-mac-pure-efi-boot/

While my guide only covers single-boot into Ubuntu on a Mac Mini, I hope
there's enough detail there to illustrate what's needed for a more
general case.

Note that grub-efi-amd64 already does the right thing (except for Debian
bug #716927 [1]). The only tool that isn't already in the repos is the
mactel-boot utility (aka. hfsbless), which I've made available in my
PPA[2] (see also the Github repo[3], which has the Ubuntu packaging
metadata in various branches, and is git-buildpackage friendly).

So it should be possible to install Ubuntu in EFI mode on Macs. This
would reduce the options presented to a user when downloading the
installer, and result in a more consistent experience for users across
Windows and Mac.

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=716927#20
[2] https://launchpad.net/~detly/+archive/ubuntu/mactel-utils
[3] https://github.com/detly/mactel-boot

** Affects: debian-installer (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1369187

Title:
  Installation on Macs could use EFI booting instead of legacy BIOS

Status in “debian-installer” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I recently installed Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (Trusty) on my Mac Mini 6,1
  using the server installer. First I tried the "+mac" variant, which
  gave me a system that booted in legacy BIOS mode, and then then I
  tried the normal variant, which gave me an unbootable system.

  I eventually got the EFI installation working, resulting in an Ubuntu
  installation that boots directly from the Mac bootloader firmware (ie.
  no rEFInd/rEFIt). The basic steps are to use an HFS+ filesystem
  instead of VFAT for the EFI partition, to "bless" the EFI boot image,
  and to create a couple of files that the Mac bootloader requires.

  I wrote the full procedure up as a guide:

  http://heeris.id.au/2014/ubuntu-plus-mac-pure-efi-boot/

  While my guide only covers single-boot into Ubuntu on a Mac Mini, I
  hope there's enough detail there to illustrate what's needed for a
  more general case.

  Note that grub-efi-amd64 already does the right thing (except for
  Debian bug #716927 [1]). The only tool that isn't already in the repos
  is the mactel-boot utility (aka. hfsbless), which I've made available
  in my PPA[2] (see also the Github repo[3], which has the Ubuntu
  packaging metadata in various branches, and is git-buildpackage
  friendly).

  So it should be possible to install Ubuntu in EFI mode on Macs. This
  would reduce the options presented to a user when downloading the
  installer, and result in a more consistent experience for users across
  Windows and Mac.

  [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=716927#20
  [2] https://launchpad.net/~detly/+archive/ubuntu/mactel-utils
  [3] https://github.com/detly/mactel-boot

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