GRUB hangs on Mac Install

[thephotoman]

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Wade Smart wrote:
> 03262007 1305 GMT-6 DST
> 
> My client has a new iMac with intel core 2 duo with 1gb ram and 230gb
> hd. After bragging about how great Ubuntu is he tried to install it on
> his system. He gets most of the way through install but then when it
> comes to booting it throws this message:
> GRUB loading stage 1.5
> GRUB loading, please wait...
> 
> 
> and never gets beyond this. He said he left it for about three hours
> thinking it would just get through whatever it was doing - but
> apparently not. Any suggestions?
> 
> wade
> 
> 

As I read that you're using 6.06 LTS, this problem is quite well known.
 I got a MacBook around the final testing stages of 6.06 myself and
noticed this problem. In fact, Edgy isn't much better.

The problem is actually rather interesting.  When Apple switched to
Intel x86/EMT64 (also known as AMD64 and x64), they didn't take the old
BIOS system.  Instead, they used the EFI system, which was designed with
the IA-64 series in mind, though PA-RISC also adopted it.  Aside from
Apple, nobody else uses EFI on x86-style platforms, including x86-64
(which is what you're using).  Porting the proper utilities to handle
these compatibility issues was a major undertaking, and the fixes in
GRUB (Ubuntu's boot loader of choice) are still in (at best) the beta
stage.

Many hacks were published about syncing the partition tables using rEFIt
and loading up LiLo on Intel Macs.  However, the process is, even with a
howto, very hard to actually do.

Your best bet is to wait until the end of the month for Feisty to come
out.  It should be much easier to install on Intel Macs.  Personally, I
installed a Parallels session on my MacBook, though if you want to use
the free virtualizer Q (based on QEMU), that should work fine as well.
Honestly, both solutions allow for far more interoperability between
your Linux sessions and your OS X sessions.  Furthermore, it's a lot
easier to open a virtual machine than it is to dual boot.
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